Black Dog (1998) Reviews

• Patrick Swayze's third personal favorite underrated best action film he ever did!

  ivo-cobra82016-10-10

  Black Dog (1998) is Patrick Swayze's underrated unappreciated explosive, nonstop high-speed adrenaline-pumping highway road war action film! This is my third favorite personal favorite Patrick Swayze's film! The first two are Road House and Steel Dawn, but Black Dog is my third favorite film and I love this film to death! Just recently finished watching this and I love it so damn much. I love Patrick Swayze's characters Nomad, Dalton and Jack Crews those are all my favorite characters! Directed by Kevin Hooks the director who directed awful Die Hard copycat film Passenger 57 and Fled, this film is very decent and a damn solid good action film of the 90's and finally Kevin Hooks made a movie that I love. "The only way to stay alive is to keep moving." Plot: An ex-con takes a job driving a truck cross country. What he doesn't know is that the truck is filled with illegal weapons and now he must fight to survive and save his family. Patrick Swayze is back and he teams up with Randy Travis and Meat Loaf to deliver explosive, nonstop high-speed action in this adrenaline-pumping highway road war. A 40-ton truck is a lethal weapon and veteran driver Jack Crews (Swayze) knows how to use it. Desperate for cash, he's got one last delivery to make. The trip's barely begun when he and partner Earl (Travis) discover they've been set up and are being chased by Red (Meat Loaf), a relentless fanatic who's as deadly as he is greedy. Now, with his family, his life and his freedom on the line, Jack's going to buckle up, put the pedal down and show Red and the Feds a thing or two about road rage. After being double-crossed and rudely underestimated, Jack and Earl shift gears, becoming a two-man wrecking crew, trucking down the highway blazing a trail of diesel-powered destruction. This film is for all of truck drivers out there, this movie is great not to many movies like this. Trucker that does not know of this movie, it is not a trucker. This movie it should be in every driving school, great movie. The acting in this movie is very decent and solid, Patrick Swayze is always awesome and fantastic! Randy Travis as Patrick's partner was excellent! Meat Loaf as the villain in this movie was fantastic! Jack Crews (Patrick Swayze) is an ex con and a truck driver who desperately needs the money to support his family and pay off his deb for the house. He accepts the offer from his manager to make a delivery from Atlanta to New Jersey a lot's of toilets' for $10,000 , so he thinks, this is cool easy money so he does what he is told too, on he's trip he find's out that he was set up and he is transporting illegal guns and now he has to fight for his life and for his family. Black Dog is Patrick Swayze's best underrated highway speed action movie that was released before The Fast and the Furious come out, it is an action film of the late 90's that I will always cherish and love to death. This movie is very underrated solid action film. I love it to death. I have this movie on Blu-ray the same Patrick Swayze movie I have on Blu-ray are Steel Dawn, Road House and this film, they are all in my collection, but I don't have Uncommon Valor because that film was never released on Blu-ray, I am still waiting on the release. Black Dog is a 1998 action film directed by Kevin Hooks and starring Patrick Swayze. The film tells the story of a trucker and ex-con who is manipulated into transporting illegal arms. The film co-stars musicians Randy Travis and Meat Loaf. R.I.P. - Patrick Swayze (1952 - 2009) I really miss you so much and I wish you could do more bad ass action movies, I am your biggest fan and so was my mom we all miss you and we all love you, I love you to death! Black Dog (why doesn't THAT film get the cult/appreciation/notice of this POS), Steel Dawn (underrated) and Road House are my top 3 personal favorite Patrick Swayze movies he ever did! This movie get's 10 out 10 for Patrick Swayze's best underrated action movie he ever did, alongside with Road House! But Road House for me will be his best action classic martial arts film a film of my childhood that I will always cherish it.

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• Funny action film.

  poolandrews2007-08-03

  Black Dog starts as just out on parole truck mechanic Jack Crews (Patrick Swayze) is called into the office by his boss Cutler (Graham Beckel), he tells Jack he's got a job for him to drive a truck from Atlanta to new Jersey & he'll get paid $10,000 for it. Jack isn't keen on the idea since he has no license & wants to stay out of trouble for his families sake, at home that night Jack finds a foreclosure letter hidden by his wife from the bank who are going to repossess his families house. Amazingly they owe the bank $9,000 so that $10,000 he was offered just hours before suddenly looks very tempting. Jack accepts the job but soon finds himself hauling a lorry of guns which are being tracked by the FBI & local redneck scumbag Red (Meat Loaf) wants to hijack the truck & steal them for himself, I guess Jack is just having one of those days... Directed Kevin Hooks Black Dog is a cheesy but sort of fun action flick that could have been better but also could have been worse. The somewhat predictable script by William Mickelberry & Dan Vining doesn't take itself too seriously & feels like an extended version of the final climatic truck chase from Mad Max 2 (1981) in the sense Jack has to protect his truck from all sorts of marauding bad guy's, obviously Swayze is no Mel Gibson & the two don't compare in terms of excitement or quality but that's what I kept think while I was watching it. The character's are clichéd & one dimensional but they serve their purpose well enough, there's some alright one-liners including a funny one where a bad guy ends up splattered on the road & Swayze says 'Eeww, roadkill'! That line alone is almost worth watching this for. It certainly moves along at a brisk enough pace, you've got your bad guy's & you've got your good guy's as well as those caught up in the middle & you know what I actually thought Black Dog was pretty fun, it's not art but it's entertaining & how can you not like a film in which the main villain is Meat Loaf & the main hero is Patrick Swayze? You can't & it's as simple & straight forward as that. Director Hooks does alright, some of the truck crashes are impressive although the actual chase scenes lack a little spark, they are OK but not quite as exciting as I'd have liked. There's not much violence apart from a few shoot-outs & a fight at the end. Talking of the end even though Swayze has been hauling a lorry of guns & making lots of things blow up the FBI give him back his license, they let him go scott free, they take care of his $9,000 debt & let him drive the truck to the police pound. Isn't that a bit, well, generous? I mean he beat Cutler up didn't he? That in itself is assault & it doesn't matter if the guy he beat up is a scumbag either, also what about all the destruction he caused? Surely he broke the terms of his parole somewhere along the way, didn't he? Technically the film is fine, it looks like it had some money spent on it although it doesn't quite look like a mega budget affair. The acting is OK, Swayze looks bored & embarrassed, Meat Loaf is Meat Loaf while Charles S. Dutton puts in a funny performance as FBI agent Alan Ford (Ford? Trucks? Is that meant to be an in-joke because I ain't laughing guy's!). Black Dog is a silly, cheesy & amusing way to pass 90 odd minutes, it's a light hearted action flick using big trucks. It's watchable enough for sure.

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• surprisingly entertaining dumb action

  zimbo_the_donkey_boy2004-03-16

  I am no fan of the stars of this movie or a truckdriving buff or interested in country music (not that that's overly relevant.) I borrowed this tape with low expectations but was happily surprised by how entertaining it was. What has happened to Patrick Swayze? I thought he did a good job acting in both Donnie Darko and now this. THIS film is what goofy, illogical action flicks are supposed to be. This isn't simply a music video stretched out to an hour-and-a-half. This director actually knows how to make a movie. The plot ain't deep but there IS a plot, which is important. The ideas are dopey but the actors aren't simply laughing their way through but rather they treated this like a serious work. The actress who plays Swayze's wife has a style which usually annoys me but she, too, was ok in this thing. Even the little bits of country music didn't bother me. A stupid finale? Sure, but even that was fun. Wow.

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• Road rage with Patrick Swayze and Meat Loaf.

  Boba_Fett11382008-06-19

  For the genre movie that this is, it's a pretty enjoyable movie to watch. It's definitely no worse or better than any other similar simple straight-forward action flick from the '90's. Of course the movie is suffering from more than 1 problem though. One obviously is its story. It's simple and actually doesn't make a lot of sense and is a real unlikely one. I mean, why did Red ever let the truck drive off from his place, only to dangerously attempt to hijack it later, on the very same day. But oh well, without this story we wouldn't had all those exploding trucks and action scenes within this movie. Well, it's not like the action is much spectacular though. Funny enough there are lots of exploding trucks and cars but they already seem to blow up when one of the passengers farts. Action-wise this movie just isn't good or spectacular enough to watch. Another problem with the movie is that it has far too many villains in it. It's like the main characters against the rest of the world. The movie also doesn't seem to be able to make a choice who to make the main and most important villain of the movie, with as a result that all of the villainous characters aren't really anything memorable or evil enough, since the movie spends to much time on showing the many different villainous characters of the movie. The movie is from the period when Patrick Swayze's career of course already was more or less on a death end. Nevertheless he's always good and serious with every role that he plays. He's also credible in this role, despite his already showing age. He was perhaps a tad bit too old at the time of this movie to play the main lead in an action movie. Meat Loaf mostly seemed to have had fun with playing his role, which shows on the screen. But like I said before, since he plays a villain, he didn't get the screen time he deserved. There are parts in the movie were he completely disappears, only to show up 20 minutes later again. But despite this all, the movie is good and entertaining enough to watch. It's current rating on here would suggest that this is one of the worst action flicks of the '90's but it hardly is. It's also no better than some action flicks but also definitely no worse than some others. 6/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

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• Swayzerific! Two appendages upward!

  craZyforswayZ2005-04-20

  Patrick Swayze shines in one of the best films in the truck-driving genre. The main character Jack Crews (Swayze) plays an ex-con/truck driver/plaid shirt enthusiast who gets more than he bargained for! Literally. In effort to make some much-needed money for his poor family, Crews bargains with a small arms dealer, played by Meat Loaf. Crews agrees to deliver the shipment for Meat Loaf in exchange for some cool cash. As you may have figured out by looking at the movie cover, Crews encounters hordes of inept henchmen along the way. Fortunately for Jack Crews, their vehicles explode easily. Still, Crews n' Company face many action-packed twist and turns on their journey. Swayze gives a spectacular performance; deserving of the either an academy award or employee of the month. I would recommend this film to anyone with eyes.

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