Ticker



Ticker is a rarely-seen, forgettable, and all-but-forgotten 2001 action film directed by Albert Pyun, which frankly is probably best left as such.

The film opens with a hostage situation at the house of a United States Senator. A bomb has been planted somewhere within. Frank Glass (Steven Seagal) is in charge of the bomb squad out to difuse it. Alas, once it seems they've succeeded, they turn out to be mistaken, and the bomb explodes anyway. A year later, in San Francisco, two cops — Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore) and his partner Art "Fuzzy" Rice (Nas) are driving around talking. Nettles and Fuzzy are narcotics cops. Nettles is a cop on the edge. His wife and son were killed by a bomb. Ever since then, he has lost his enthusiasm for his job, hygiene, and life in general. When the two are dispatched to a crime scene where Irish mad bomber Alex Swann (Dennis Hopper) and his gang are hiding; Fuzzy ends up getting killed and one of the gang, Hot Scientist Claire (Jaime Pressly) is arrested. Swann escapes. He starts planting bombs all over the city, and demands that unless the police release Claire, he will detonate one every hour, killing hundreds of civilians. Nettles and Glass team up to stop him.

If it weren't for the presence of Steven Seagal, this film would probably be completely unknown, and almost certainly direct to DVD (it was direct to DVD in many countries). With a budget of only $7 million, even most of Seagal's own later direct to DVD films have bigger budgets than it. The problem with the film isn't so much that it's explicitly terrible, so much as the fact that it's profoundly bland. It can barely be called an action film; there's hardly any action in it. The acting isn't so much over-the-top or unrealistic so much as bored and detached. Thus, the film has not even So Bad It's Good or Camp value, and is hardly even a viable way to kill 90 minutes if it's playing on TV and you have nothing else to do.


 * Anticlimax: Ends with Nettles and Glass placidly defusing two bombs whilst mumbling to each other in hushed tones, succeeding, and then strolling about in the night by what appears to be some big stadium.
 * Bomb Disposal: The main theme of the film.
 * Hot Scientist: Claire.
 * Playing Against Type / Non-Action Guy: Steven Seagal is not only merely the second main character; he doesn't throw a single punch or shoot a single gun until around the last 15 minutes of the film.
 * San Francisco: Supposedly. This troper can't recall ever seeing the Golden Gate Bridge or anything; the place is borderline unrecognizable.
 * Stuff Blowing Up
 * Time Bomb: Lots of em.