The Shepherd



The year is 2017, and after another World War that seems to involve a CGI satellite with the Turkish flag on it firing a laser beam somewhere (it couldn’t have been at Earth, it was clearly in the opposite direction to where the satellite was firing). So after, I presume, Turkey has destroyed the surface of the planet Earth and rendered it uninhabitable, humanity is driven underground into scummy-looking subterranean cities. Order has broken down somewhat, and now various psuedo-religious cults vie for control over what’s left of the human population. The three cult leaders we meet are Father Rizzo, who does nothing but make odd comments about whatever is happening in the plot, while sounding like he has a bad case of laryngitis; Sophia, leader of the Church of Xena and St. Cher, they seem to have silly battle-bikinis and big 80’s glam hair; and finally Miles (Roddy Piper!) as the most nutbar of the three, who thinks he talks to God and enjoys watching a video of himself carrying a cross over his shoulder. Each cult has groups known as Shepherds, people who ‘protect the flock’ by going around killing people. Funny how these warring cults all call them the same thing. Anyway, the best Shepherd Miles has is Boris Dakota played by C. Thomas Howell. Living out a shallow and miserable existence, Dakota lives in the past, reliving the memories of his life with his deceased wife and child through funky virtual reality sunglasses which make all his memories in the third person and superimposes them onto really fake-looking backgrounds.

Dakota is tired of his job, as he tells us in his best Martin Sheen voice during his numerous voice-overs, and just wants to be left alone. However Miles needs him for one last hit and sends his head Shepherd Lyndon (who talks back to Miles whenever he gets the chance, though no explanation is given for why Miles puts up with him, he's bloody useless) to recruit Dakota for the mission. Turns out Lyndon and Dakota used to be best friends, and after some reminiscing and a promise to leave him alone, Dakota agrees. His target – a woman and her young mute son, can you see where this is going? Well Dakota moodily trudges off the do the hit, not knowing that Miles has sent other men to follow him and to make sure he doesn’t leave alive! Zut! After seeing the woman and he cute little son, Dakota makes a 180 degree turn and helps them escape, stealing a car (dumb luck that the random car he steals just happens to have a tracking device attached to it) and hightailing with the woman, Lilith, and her son Abe. In the adventures that follow, Dakota discovers why everybody wants Lilith dead, he finds out the truth about what happens to his wife, and they meet an insane David Carradine playing a ventriloquist.

Yuck, where to start? Well if the above synopsis made the film sound in any way interesting, its not. This film has this weirdness and eccentricity going for it, but somehow it still manages to be annoyingly cheesy mind-numbingly dull. I can only guess that the filmmakers were trying to make something that resembled Blade Runner, Howell provides an insipid voice over which just starts to blend into one long Clint Eastwood/Martin Sheen-esque drone after 30 minutes or so, Howell hardly has an orator’s voice you see. Howell scowls through his thick beard for the majority of the movie too, so much so its difficult to decide whether he’s just fed up with being in this film or not, as the effort that goes into his performance is negligible. As for the rest of the cast, well they try a bit harder but are hindered by the fact that they’re just not particularly good, their po-faced deliveries are so devoid of emotion or understanding of what their characters are doing, it doesn’t help the limp pacing any and just adds to the overwhelming boredom factor. The poor attempts to keep you from changing channel by throwing in nudity and sex do nothing but insult your intelligence and smack of desperation, though I suppose it will keep the under-16s watching. The saving graces come from the most eccentric performances, which at least provide some humour, intended or not. Roddy Piper does us wrestling fans proud as the Miles who is utterly hatstand, spouting quasi-religious nonsense with every breath, and seeming to be one of the only performers not taking his role very seriously. Stranger still is David Carradine as the Ventriloquist, who appears a couple of times with a transsexual puppet on his hand, doing impressions of the likes of John Wayne and Marlon Brando, though its still not as entertaining as it sounds. Rounding off the weirdness is Raymond Serra (Wolfen, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the Movie) as Rizzo the monk, who pops up occasionally to make meaningless and confusing comments about the plot, and take bets on the outcome. The way he speaks, like he has something stuck in his throat, just makes what he says almost unintelligible and, well, weird.

One joy of watching low budget films is watching the creativity involved, when the movie makers manage to take a tiny budget and work wonders with it, making a believable world on par with a bigger film. Sadly, this does not happen in The Shepherd. The cars they travel about in (of which you never see more than two at once on screen) look like golf carts with cardboard shells put over the top of them, and race around at a thunderous 20 miles an hour. To make matters worse, they had three different locations made up to look like roads, and as there is a lot of footage to suggest ‘travelling’, we get to see each road several times, to the point that it looks like our heroes are driving around in a big circle, no wonder they were so easy to find. Plus, for an underground city, some scenes sure did look like they were filmed outside! If mankind is decimated and driven underground, how did they have time to dig out such enormous underground caverns, that some places look like they’ve just been filmed at night in an open area? Plus there are a couple of scenes where its obvious they’ve used the same set twice, they’ve just put up some drapes and a chair covered in tin foil in order to make it look different. If these things had been done with some sort of self-deprecating humour they might have been acceptable, but when the video box for the American version says “Before The Matrix there was…..” on the cover, well it just looks stupid, and not in a good way.

C. Thomas Howell has done better, Roddy Piper has done better, Blade Runner rip-offs have done better. Ultimately this is just a badly performed, badly written, badly made movie which would be near-unwatchable if it wasn’t for the occasional surreal touch to stop you from falling asleep. Damn you Turkey, this is all your fault.