A U.S. Ranger travels to Albania to seek revenge on a Ukranian arms dealer in Search and Destroy, a Bulgarian-produced action movie that was shot in the early 2010s but only recently completed and is now streaming on Netflix, where it has (in the Czech Republic, at least) appeared in the platform’s top 10 movies (#7 as of writing).
While the boilerplate plotline could be taken from any action movie, Search and Destroy is an utterly charming parody of an 80s actioner in which real care has been taken to create a genuine and authentic experience — and every shot in the movie is filled with bizarre choices and technical deficiencies.
The result is destined to confound viewers who stumble across it on Netflix: is this an authentic bad movie gem on the level of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room or some kind of brilliantly subversive satire? While the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, it ultimately doesn’t matter: Search and Destroy is a blissfully entertaining piece of work either way, albeit one that may only appeal to niche tastes.
After an opening credits sequence that may well be authentic 80s stock footage of Venice Beach – complete with lingering shots of butts and boobs in colorful bikinis – the events in Search and Destroy move “across town” in an unnamed African republic. Ranger John Cutter (Dylan Bruce) and his team are pinned down in an abandoned building by tanks belonging to arms dealer Igor Rodin (Sergey Badyuk)… for some reason.
Cutter calls in an air strike and Rodin’s forces are eliminated, but it’s too late: Cutter’s team is gone, and he’s the only survivor. Some years later, Cutter is living with a golden retriever in a cabin in the woods when his former commander Anderson (Eastenders’ Leslie Grantham, who can’t quite mask his English accent) pays him a surprise visit. Anderson tells him that Rodin isn’t dead – and that he’s building a bomb in Albania.
Needing someone to identify Rodin in person, Anderson gives Cutter a chance to join the mission — and Cutter leaps at the opportunity to take revenge.
No description of Search and Destroy could match the experience of watching it. There’s stock footage of planes, submarines, and explosions that fail to match the events of the movie that it surrounds; awkwardly ADR’d dialogue inserted to explain away major plot points (and character deaths!); camera shots that lop off the top of subjects’ heads; uncomfortably close close-ups; inappropriate music cues and tracks that get cut off mid-note; and shots that go on for that split-second too long and leave an actor on screen without knowing what to do. The list goes on and on.
When the emphatic title track, awkwardly warbled by The Scared Crows at the film’s climax over a montage of stock footage that we just saw in the previous scene, Search and Destroy has become an uproarious experience that is destined to draw guffaws.
Directed by Danny Lerner, Search and Destroy is a loving ode to foreign-shot 1980s action movies that so faithfully recreates the experience of watching one that it transports the viewer to another time and place. Shot in Bulgaria, filled with dangerous-looking practical effects and pyrotechnics, this is not a cheap Sharknado-like wink-wink riff on bad cinema but one that takes real care to deliver the real deal.
Search and Destroy shares roughly the same plotline, and numerous other similarities, with the recent big-budget Tom Clancy action movie Without Remorse, now streaming on Amazon. While that movie is technically proficient in every area that this one is not, it’s also slick and soulless, while Search and Destroy has been put together with homemade charm and a whole lot of heart.
Don’t miss a mid-credits behind-the-scenes segment dedicated to director Lerner, who passed away in 2015. It’s a revealing look at the production that may answer some questions for confused viewers, and a poignant five-minute tribute to a man who may not have made award-winning cinema, but touched some hearts behind the camera.
2 Responses
Thank you so much! I stumbled across this movie by accident, but I loved the 80’s soundtrack and your review is spot on!
Thank you for clarifying the facts and making me enjoy a movie that would have been misunderstood if it weren’t for your explanations… Gratitude…
“Search and Destroy (2020) Procurar e Destruir – It’s not all bad, but it’s weak, the script is simplistic, the effects leave a lot to be desired, the acting is modest, but I found the whole explanation on the net: Produced in 2010 in Bulgaria, but as a parody of the 80s (now I understand the soundtrack has nothing to do with it, heavy rock in scenes that have nothing to do with anything), “each scene in the film is full of bizarre choices and technical deficiencies” and edited and reworked 5 years after the film’s death from the director, now everything seems to make more sense, and I can watch it with more complacent eyes… Nothing like knowing the context of the work to better understand it…”