“The Silencers” Theatrical Poster
Director: Richard Pepin
Cast: Jack Scalia, Dennis Christopher, Carlos Lauchu, Lucinda Weist, Clarence Williams III, Stephen Rowe, Lance LeGault, Madison Mason, Terri Poch
Running Time: 103 min.
By Henry McKeand
PM Entertainment always understood how to borrow the most successful elements of mainstream action cinema and synthesize them into sweaty, single-minded B-movies that somehow delivered more fireworks than tentpole films with three times their budget. If the composition of your average high-testosterone Hollywood effort was about 40% set pieces, a PM joint would manage to bump that number up to somewhere around 60%. To find this sweet spot, they treated the contemporary action landscape like a machine that could be stripped for parts; no trend or plot idea was safe.
The Silencers, a ’96 PM vehicle for Jack Scalia, is no different. Set in (you guessed it) sunny California, it looks and feels like so many other L.A.-set actioners of its time, regardless of budget. The use of a high concept sci-fi premise (here, the government’s infiltration by secretive extra-terrestrial agents) as a catalyst for copious amounts of gunfire and vehicular destruction will feel familiar to anyone who’s seen anything PM-related. Buddy cop banter and fish-out-of-water humor and divorced tough guy redemption…there isn’t a beat it doesn’t hit.
But it’s more interesting to look at how The Silencers was actually ahead of its time. That’s a sentence that probably would have surprised anyone involved in the production, but there are ideas at play here that would take cineplexes by storm only a few years later.
The script is simple, even when its imagined world isn’t. Set in an alternate history where the U.S. government made a secretive deal with aliens after Roswell, the film follows a Secret Service agent (Scalia) who finds himself pitted against the “Men in Black,” a shadowy group of extra-terrestrials whose goal is to ruthlessly cover up the truth.
The film immediately establishes these ideas by showing a UFO abduction near a farmhouse. It’s an opening that will remind most viewers of the first scene of Men in Black, released just a year later to international attention and monster box office returns. Interestingly, “Men in Black” was the working title of The Silencers before the production of the Will Smith megahit forced PM to change the title. Unlike Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, the Men in Black are the villains of this story, and their depiction stays truer to the original, word-of-mouth idea behind MIBs, which positioned them as fearsome agents of suppression.
There’s an undercurrent of distrust to The Silencers that sets it firmly in the “90s Paranoiac” canon of films that found popcorn potential in UFO conventions and thumb tack conspiracy boards. The film’s tone grows lighter as the plot progresses, shifting fully to dumb fun by the time Scalia’s gruff agent starts to bond with a benevolent alien visitor played by Dennis Christopher, but there’s an unease in the first act that makes it feel like one of The Matrix’s many precursors.
Sure, that may seem like a stretch. Action movies have often framed government agents in dark suits as the villains, and The Matrix didn’t invent conspiracy subcultures. Still, there’s a suspicion of power structures and a “you’ve been lied to” pathos here that became wildly popular come Y2K.
The similarities don’t end there. The central set piece of the Silencers is an extended highway action sequence that gives the infamous chase from The Matrix Reloaded a run for its money. This is where PM put their budget; vehicles smash into each other at dizzying speeds, there’s a “flaming car flying through the air” shot that ranks amongst the best ever put to film, and men hang off the side of trucks in a way that looks truly dangerous (it’s unclear when a stunt double is used, but Jack Scalia is doing a lot of heavy lifting as an action performer). It’s action movie bliss.
Then there’s the gunplay, which proves that B-filmmakers had a handle on HK heroic bloodshed action long before Hollywood ever attempted it. Like in The Matrix, outlandish sci-fi technology is forgotten the moment there’s the opportunity for a shootout. Who needs plasma rifles on alien spacecrafts when twin Glocks in a parking lot will do just as well? Even the aliens look like humans, so you almost forget you’re watching a sci-fi movie. What matters is that the action is staged competently, with plenty of squibs and emotional akimbo rapid firing to give the proceedings extra oomph.
It’s good that the gun choreography is well done, because there isn’t a ton of hand-to-hand stuff. The martial arts that’s there isn’t bad, mostly thanks to Carlos Lauchu’s good fight work as the villain, but it isn’t memorable enough to rival the best of PM’s kickboxing noir.
As for the 40% of the film that isn’t concerned with spectacle, Scalia and Dennis Christopher’s rapport is fun and silly. Scalia, with his effortless “action man” appeal, seems very at home with the material; he had already done a Richard Pepin PM movie about reluctantly teaming up with a non-human partner with ‘94’s T-Force. As the good guy alien, Christopher is given lots of cheesy fish-out-of-water stuff to work with, and his charms are enough to almost make you forget about his silly “Deep Space Nine season one” appearance (you never really forget).
Even though it starts out with a “fear the other” edge, the script eventually makes way for crunchy granola ‘90s speechifying about respecting our planet and those we don’t understand. It doesn’t matter that it lacks the nervy excitement of more serious work like The Matrix. It’s an exciting movie full of schlock and crowd-pleasing action, which is what you want from PM. The “actual” Men in Black went even further in softening conspiracy lore for mass audiences, but The Silencers is the real deal if you want something more action heavy.
Henry McKeand’s Rating: 8/10
