When it comes to underground film. I have always felt that the high octane revenge fantasy is the mirror image to pornography. One represents illicit love, the other represents illicit hatred and yet both are filled with awe inspiring visuals, unchecked testosterone behavior and all shorts of extreme adult action that most of us don't get to see on a daily basis. Done properly, you will never notice that the plots in either case are just to show as many bodies and bodily fluids as they can in the allotted running time. But hey, that's how babies/ film formulas are made...

CA$H is the story of an ex-con who gets out of jail after being betrayed by a completely evil crime lord named Hector Gonzales. During the commission of a bank heist Ca$h was shot in the back (literally) and left to die for reasons that are still unknown. But don't concern yourself with "reasons" in this thing. The word "reasons", and by default reason, as in human reasoning have very little meaning in this film so you won't need to think much, unless you want to tabulate the body count and to so this movie I recommend you get you get one of those clickers that umpires use to keep score without forcing them to look down. The gunshots not only punctuate sentences in this movie, more often than not, they are the only form of higher communication between the characters.

What makes this different from any of the Punisher movies or that old PAYBACK movie starring Mel Gibson? Just two things, first of all Ca$h doesn't have a love interest, or any emotional tie to anyone in this world whatsoever. ALL movies of this kind portray their protagonists as a one-man wrecking ball, devoid of feeling but in the case of Ca$h it is all but true. He has no family, friends or even last name. He does have relations with a prostitute, but only it seems so he can talk to her about his dead wife who was killed by Gonzales (of course). Gee, if only there was something he could do about that...

And rest assured he does DO something about that. Though I compared him to the Punisher because of the whole dead wife angle moments ago, he is actually more akin to a gun toting Incredible Hulk throughout the duration of this film. He blasts bodies through walls with a shotgun, takes out squad after squad of uzi-toting gangsters without ever breaking stride and shrugs off near-fatal bullet wounds like Jason Voorhees. And thankfully the police never see fit to intercede, even as Ca$h goes everywhere with guns in hand and pretty much kills anyone he wants with random and brutal efficiency. At 115 minutes, his bloodthirsty rampage ends exactly where you think it will. Which is good, because there aren't many options for a sequel.

This movie was impossible, irresponsible and idiotic, but so were MOST Rambo films and that is obviously the vibe they were trying to capture here. Because Ca$h will kill anyone in his path with little or no provocation, he never really struck me as a character you could identify with of feel any sympathy for. But if I may link revenge fantasy and pornography one final time, let me say that Ca$h is aptly named because the final death blow he delivers is a "Money Shot" the likes of which even I have never seen before, steeped in self-sacrifice if not heroism.

Sinferno Says...
Yucko/Neato Factor: The touching story about one man's complex need to rediscover himself by killing everyone in sight in a two hour shooting spree.
Production Values: Guns fire actual blanks, camera work is surprisingly good, some Tarantinoesque time-shifting and Thom Doty as Ca$h is, for lack of a better word... money.
Realism: He single-handedly fought an army of machine-gun-toting enemies who ALWAYS ran out of bullets at the worst possible times.
Value for Price: $24.95 I am deducting a finger for sending me a shit promotional copy with no plastic case and Promotional Use Only flashing on the screen at the most inopportune times, often times blacking out the subtitled dialogue with the Asian Kong gang. While a retail copy will NOT have this "special feature", for $24.95 you can buy a used copy of every Punisher movie ever made on DVD. TWICE! Now you know why they called him CA$H!
Plot: Something tells me the original screenplay to this was written in crayon... red crayon. Lots and lots of red crayon....