FILM: LIGHTNING JACK

Lightning Jack is the classic western tale of an Australian outlaw and his black mute partner. Filled with varmints, whorehouses, and screaming stereotypical Indians, the only thing this brilliant comedy is missing is jokes. Paul "Crocodile Dundee" Hogan attempts a comeback from the Land Down Under as Lightning Jack, the far sighted sharpshooter out for one last robbery. He is joined on his sojourn into the Death Valley of creativity by Ben Doyle (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a black mute searching for acceptance and excitement in a cruel, politically incorrect world. As Jack prepares for his last heist, he travels throughout the wild, wild west. Along the way he runs into bad outlaws, bad lawmen, and worst of all bad INJUNS! Never fear kids, these heroes are unbeatable; not even the great Marshall of County Junction can catch them. Hogan does his best to teach Gooding the ways of the west, ranging from shooting to riding horses to losing his virginity in a whorehouse. After experiencing these cowboy rites of passage, Hogan and Gooding are ready for the heist that will make them as famous as the great Jesse James. Filled with all sorts of scary gun fights and bad men of all kinds, the zany duo come out looking like?well they look like buffoons in boots, and the plot runs like a bad mad lib. So fill in your own ending-- it will be better. In an attempt to pick up where Crocodile Dundee II mercifully ended, Hogan (who is also the screenwriter) has simply taken the one character he can play and changed the scenery and plot. The result is what amounts to Crocodile Dundee III meets the bad western. Gooding, on the other hand, has more funny faces than Paul Hogan has wrinkles. Despite the insipidity of his role, he does a rather impressive job of communicating via charades and note cards. Yet try as he might to overcome his surroundings and prove his acting merit, Hogan's script begrudgingly refuses to be improved. As Hogan and Gooding meander their way through the pointless plotlines of the ol' west they appear to get confused when they reach a fork in the road. Caught between the high road of inane drama and the low road of mildly amusing humor, our so-called heroes appear to be stranded without a map or a clue. Instead of choosing a road and sticking with it, they attempt to straddle the fence going nowhere fast.