Director: Ted Post
Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Tommy Hinkley, Steve Inwood

In my massive book collection I have a copy of Growing Up Brady, by Barry Williams. As you may have guessed from the title of the book and the author's name, the book is a recollection by Williams about the various going-ons that happened to him and various other people during the production of the television series The Brady Bunch. The book is extremely funny and informative, even if you don't like the television show at all. One of the many parts of the book that has stuck in my mind is when Williams recollected a point in his career several years after The Brady Bunch had been cancelled. He got a call out of the blue from his agent that the show's producer, Sherwood Schwartz, had with his son written a script for a made-for-television movie called The Brady Girls Get Married, concerning the Brady characters reuniting for a double wedding of two of the youngest women in the Brady family. Williams recalled that even before his agent had finished his offer for Williams to appear in the movie, he gave a quick and firm response to his agent to tell him that he wasn't interested in the slightest. As it turned out, pretty much none of the other cast members of the original show were interested in being in this proposed movie. Williams explained the reason for this quite clearly. The reason was that Williams and the other former child cast members had been extremely typecast from appearing in the original show. It was extremely hard for them for years after the show to be even considered for much different kind of roles, even though by now they were all adults and not their former childish selves.

The proposed movie project didn't go away despite the former cast members showing no initial interest. That lead to a tough choice for Williams and the rest of the former Brady kids. Williams put it this way: "Do you retain your integrity, refuse to re-up as a Brady, and face the future hoping that you can hang on long enough to exorcise the Brady demons from the soul of your career? Or do you take advantage of the opportunity laid at your feet, make a few bucks, and worry about the consequences later?" Eventually, all the former Brady cast members agreed to participate in the movie after the production company increased their salary offers to the actors. Though afterwards, while Williams eventually had a fruitful acting career on the stage, most of the other former Brady kids did eventually leave the acting business and pursued other interests. The kind of dilemma Williams and his fellow cast members faced can, with a little adjusting, be applied to many actors in the past and today. Take Bela Lugosi, for example. After appearing in Dracula in 1931, he was instantly typecast, and the film industry subsequently was almost never able to consider him for roles that weren't creepy, evil individuals in a horror setting. Maybe Lugosi could have stuck it out until he could have possibly been offered a different kind of role, but instead he chose just about any role offered to him that fit the stereotype surrounding him. Then there was the case of Guy Williams. After appearing in the '50s television series Zorro, he too was typecast, and found it very hard to get hired for any subsequent projects. But he stuck it out, not giving up on shaking his typecasting, and eventually he was rewarded when he was cast in a much different role in the cult TV show Lost In Space.

And then there is the case of Michael Dudikoff (Avenging Force). As you may know, Dudikoff started off his acting career in minor roles in movies. Then he was abruptly hired by Cannon Films to be the lead actor in American Ninja, which ended up performing better than expected by everyone, including Cannon Films itself. With his sudden appearance in the spotlight, Dudikoff was promised by Cannon Films' head honcho Menahem Golan that superstardom for Dudikoff was ahead on the horizon, with the aid of Cannon Films. But almost as sudden as Dudikoff's profile rose, it started to fade. It seemed that every subsequent film Dudikoff made for Cannon films made much less money than the previous one. The rapidly depleting funds available for Cannon to make and market its movies was probably a big reason for this. But instead of walking away and seeing if he could reignite his stardom elsewhere, Dudikoff stayed with Cannon. It's unlikely he could have been bound by a contract for so long by a dying film company - remember, Jean-Claude Van Damme rid himself of Cannon after just a few films - so was he afraid of not being able to find work elsewhere? Who knows? In total, Dudikoff made ten films for Cannon before it finally breathed its last gasp, and from that point on Dudikoff was permanently in B movie land, though these particular B movies usually seemed cheaper and tackier than the average direct to video movie. But getting back to his Cannon days, I was interested to see an example of one of his movies during his freefall in part to see if he was still trying to give it his all. That's where The Human Shield comes in. In this Cannon effort (made without producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus), Dudkioff plays Doug Matthews, who at the beginning of the movie (set in 1985) is a U.S. Marine in Iraq training Iraqi soldiers in their fight against Iran. While in the field, Matthews encounters an Iraqi general named Dallal (Steve Inwood, Grizzly II) who slaughters a village of innocent civilians for his own twisted lashing out at Iran. Of course, Matthews intervenes to stop Dallal from going futher, injuring and scarring Dallal in the process. Over the course of the next five years, Dallal dreams of vengeance against Matthews. Just before the Gulf War breaks out, Dallal gets his chance - he and his men find Matthews' brother Ben (Tommy Hinkley, L.A. Story) while he is attempting to flee the country before the oncoming war gets going, and kidnap him. Of course, Dallal's plan is to lure Matthews into Iraq so Dallal can confront and kill him. Matthews does indeed respond when he gets word of his brother's kidnapping, heading straight to Iraq. But not only does Matthews know he will be hunted down by Dallal and his men, but complicating things further is that his former love interest in Iraq, Lila (Hanna Azoulay Hasfari, Delta Force 3), gets tangled in the stuggle between both men.

The Human Shield was directed by Ted Post (The Baby and Whiffs), and was the next to last movie he directed in his very uneven career, eleven years after his previous experience directing feature films. Factoring that he was in his 70s at this point along with working for a dying B company may make you conclude the end results are a mess. While the end result isn't something to shout about, neither is it a total washout. Post does seem to have tried his best under the circumstances. Granted, he was held down by a limited budget, and it does show at times. Constructed sets depicting building interiors are unmistakably sets to even viewers who aren't too bright, and the producers no doubt dictated for Post to use an actual abandoned shopping mall, an abandoned hotel, and other derelict locations because of the limited budget. On the other hand, there are some locations (a refugee camp, a fortified border crossing) that look pretty decent. Post also had the fortune to be able to shoot in the actual Middle East (Israel, to be exact), and the desert landscapes and downtown exteriors do add some genuine authenticity. When it comes to the action sequences, Post is no John Woo, but all the same he actually manages to generally stage the action competently. While he may have to stage a chase in an abandoned shopping mall, he still gives it a little zip. The hand-to-hand struggles are surprisingly convincing and exciting. In fact, pretty much all the action sequences have a believable air around them, but I am not sure how viewers will judge them. On one hand, some may appreciate that nobody in the movie is a Superman. On the other hand, some viewers may be desiring more carnage and more impact.

Either way, I think that all viewers may be a little puzzled that Post largely eschews a common boost that directors usually use when it comes to action - music. There is often little to no music, and that results in the action sequences feeling a little... off. That seems to have been a conscious decision, because when it comes to the scenes not involving action, there is quite often less of a gripping feeling than you might think. There is no feeling of an approaching deadline, and not much feeling towards characters being in danger. The movie often feels almost leisurely. Lessening the impact are some badly scripted portions. Why, for instance, is Ben in Iraq after his brother Douglas severely soured the higher-ups in Iraq? Also, why does Douglas not seem to recognize that his actions in Iraq are resulting in a number of people getting hurt or killed? Is his brother really worth the lives of so many innocents, especially since several times his brother is offscreen for some really long stretches? To be fair, the movie does actually give a more balanced viewpoint of Muslims than you usually get in a movie of this nature. While Dallal and his men are certainly bad, the movie shows us a number of other Muslims that are good and want to help Douglas and the people he cares about, from his lost love Lila to his good Kurdish friend Tanzi (Uri Gavriel, The Ambassador). Gavriel, by the way, is very good in his role, showing that although his character is essentially a spy for western forces, he shows that he's someone who really cares and will take risks for his friend, despite his professionalism

Actress Hasfari is also very good in her role of the love interest of Douglas. It's a tough role, because she has to be believable as someone who is being pulled by more than one party. Although she still has feelings for Douglas, in one scene she has to confess the real reason why she had to part from Douglas all those years ago, and Hasfari pulls it off very well. As for the other major players, the character of Dallal is very disappointing. All we learn about him before 1990 is a few unsatisfying lines of blatant exposition in the opening few minutes. Then suddenly the movie jumps ahead five years, and we don't learn anything else about him except he wants to kill Douglas. He's even flatter and weaker than how that last sentence reads, especially with Inwood's unmemorable performance. Dudikoff's performance, on the other hand, is all over the map. Sometimes he will show great emotion when it's appropriate, and there are some quieter moments (like with a gun merchant at the refugee camp) where he shows the right amount of drive. But a lot of the time he keeps pretty stone faced and passive in his voice. It ends up feeling like Dudikoff couldn't decide whether to give a damn or not, maybe because some key things about his character are never properly spelt out. Or maybe he just got caught up in the uneven tone of Post's direction and the sometimes clunkiness of the screenplay by Mann Rubin. That screenplay, by the way, not only has those problems I mentioned earlier, it caps things off by deciding on an ending that while I guess does resolve the main conflict in The Human Shield, all the same ends with a few pretty important plot threads not given a proper ending. I guess it's possible that Cannon didn't give enough money to Post to film a definite conclusion, and thought that action fans would simply be satisfied by the main conflict being concluded. But whether it was for a lack of money, or a screenplay that decided to leave viewers hanging, I can tell you that this action fan was left pretty frustrated by the ending. The Human Shield is overall a very uneven exercise, and I think... wait, why bother giving this review a complete conclusion when the movie I'm reviewing doesn't bother to do that for itself?

(Posted January 23, 2026)