Overrated and overhyped

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Blistering performances.

WE RECALL FINDING this little tidbit of Marveldom accidentally. It was probably on its maiden voyage on the Open Seas of Networkdom at the time. We were and are comics people, who were brought up on the likes of Superman, Batman, Justice League, Fantastic Four, Spider-man,Dennis the Menace, Little Lulu, en ad infinitum. The Nick Fury character was quite familiar.STARTING OUT ITS 4 colour life as a World War II army strip, SGT. FURY & HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS.* It was a action above all strip that was populated by a group of non-conformist regular GIs. Their relationship reminded us very much of that which we had become familiar with in such Marvel Comics mainstays as FANTASTIC FOUR and X MEN. Not so surprisingly, SGT. FURY was the brainchild of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby team.** BEING EVER THE opportunist, Stan Lee took the character from the U.S. Army of WWII and projected him into the world of intelligence and international intrigue. This was 1968, and the end of the great war was a mere two decades & a little change removed from then contemporary times.ALSO, JAMES BOND had firmly entrenched its franchise in our collective conciseness; along with a healthy number of pretenders to the Spy King throne. Marvel's adaptation of Nick Fury from Soldier to Super Spy was more a case of "but of course"; rather than "wow, how original!"REGARDING THE FILM with Mr. David Hasselhoff as Fury, we found it to be a pleasant surprise. It did a fine job in bringing the imagery and storyline of the comics page to the small screen. The sets were impressive, the costuming most modern and storyline satisfying. It's possible that this was meant as a sort of Pilot Film for a TV Series much like the Marvel adaptation, DR. STRANGE TV Movie. Neither one made the cut.NOW WITH THE miracle of fast forwarding through time, we find that today's Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Samuel L. Jackson)is not only Master Spy, but also the catalyst of bringing the Marvel Super Hero team of THE AVENGERS together.AS FOR THIS movie, Schultz liked it, I liked it and so did our buddies at Chicago Police HQ, Missing Persons on that premiere night.NOTE: * Quite possibly,this HOWLING COMMANDOS title was Marvel's answer to DC Comics' highly successful SGT. ROCK & Easy Company in OUR ARMY AT WAR (comic book's title).NOTE** We've long held that SGT FURY & HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS was a direct ancestor of TV's A TEAM.

Marvel's hard-boiled hero (David Hasselhoff) is brought to TV. He is brought back to fight the menace of Hydra after exiling himself in the Yukon since the end of the Cold War. The children of the former Hydra head, Baron Von Stucker, have taken charge of the terrorist organization.I did not expect much from this one. A made-for-TV movie starring David Hasselhoff that never made it to DVD... that should be a series of red flags that scream "terrible movie". But I figured it would be entertaining -- not good, but bad enough to be fun. Instead, it was just bad.Hasselhoff did alright and actually looks a lot like Nick Fury (with all due respect to Samuel L. Jackson, who now ones the role). The general plot was good. The effects were weak (but not awful). The biggest mystery is Sandra Hess' voice -- she was born in Switzerland, but has no ability whatsoever to have a German accent.Watching this with two non-comic book fans made another shortcoming abundantly clear: the film did not adequately explain what Hydra or SHIELD were. I know because I grew up reading comics, but within the film it is not very obvious who is who and what is what. I am also unclear about Baron von Strucker being born in 1932... that makes him a bit young to be a Nazi serving alongside Hitler.

Okay, I wanted to see this movie for one reason and ONLY one reason: Lately Marvel comic books have been reincarnating their works that have already been adapted to screen and will continue to do it (There is yet a third Fantastic Four movie in development), I decided to look at the first Nick Fury incarnation because I want to compare it to the recent, more well known Samuel L Jackson incarnation. Needless to say, this one is inferior.David Hasselhoff's performance as Nick was rather tiring, he could not act the part of Nick Fury (An expected turn), but surprisingly he is not the worst actor in the film. The worst actor in the film is Sandra Hess, the main antagonist, This has her doing an over-the-top performance with an unconvincing German accent. Needless to say I was rooting for Fury to kill her NOT because of the writing.Now onto the writing, David Goyer has done some pretty good work, even by this point. But this time round (although he is not entirely to blame with this movie) it was sub-par in comparison, it was like a low-budget B-movie with a villain with cheesy material. He was doing better material for Blade and therefore made me jump to the conclusion he cared more about Blade than he did about this.So in my opinion this is only worth the watch if you are a Nick Fury fan (of which I am not, I just don't find him that interesting as a character) or want to see how Marvel Comics has improved over 14 years with this character.

I have honestly not read all that much about S.H.I.E.L.D.(though I wouldn't mind doing so), but I would wager that those in charge of this haven't, either. They certainly don't manage to raise the characters presented in this above base stereotypes by endowing them with a shred of actual personality, make this anything more than a forgettable, unintentionally campy and cheesy B-grade action-flick or treat the medium of comic books with greater respect than Schumacher did, or that Batman got on TV in the 60's. So, Nick comes out of retirement to combat bad deeds, in the form of hideously overdone German accents(so thick that one has to be in awe of the... sigh... actors' ability to actually deliver lines without choking), as spoken in by the villains, with pure evil particularly being incarnated in Andrea, who has a serious fixation on her pinkie, and Werner's eyes that were cast primarily because they come off as being up to no good. All four of them ham it up enough to cause the entire vegetarian population worldwide to stand up and protest. How will the continually grumbling Hasselhoff ever defeat such wrong-doers? Don't worry. He's got Lisa Rinna, Rex Buckland and I Can't Believe It's Not James Earl Jones backing him up. You don't need depth perception to realize the sheer enormous amount of clichés in this(they may very well succeed in fitting every single one of them in). The plot is standard. Casting varies, David wasn't the worst possible choice. Fights and the like are relatively dull. This is mostly predictable. The effects are unimpressive. You get to see the Albatross... in fact, they were so proud of the one or two passes they did on it, they kept showing us that whenever an image of said vessel might help. Don't forget, in a movie put together by blind people, the one-eyed man will be spared at least some of the horror. Fox... why? There is relatively moderate and infrequent language, and violence and sexuality are similarly mild. I recommend this to those who must watch every single one of these, as well as anyone who wishes to MST3K it. 1/10