Barb Wire -

Ridiculous rehash of Casablanca in a soft-porn Blade Runner-ish world. Pamela Anderson Lee is the titular heroine, a mercenary bar-owner who refuses to take sides in the second American Civil War. When Cora D (Victoria Rowell), a biochemist flees the fascist Congressionalist government with the vacine for Red Ribbon (a government-created mutation of the AIDS virus that kills in 12 hours…but somehow seems to spread anyway), she comes to the Hammerhead, Barb’s bar, in search of a quick route to Canada. Cora D’s bodyguard/husband Axel Hood (Temuera Morrison) is, unbeknownst to her, an old flame of Barb’s. Well, with a few adjustments to fit the setting, the plot is Casablanca’s. Not that the filmmakers seem to care. Almost everything is borrowed from one movie or another. The filmmaker’s sacrificed originality so they could concentrate on how many ways they could flash Lee’s breasts without having an extended NC-17 nude scene. Lee follows along willingly, and though her acting is wooden, that’s not what she was hired for. The rest of the film is almost nonsensical. If the plot weren’t so familiar, it’d float away. The action scenes, though quick moving, don’t excite. In fact, the whole film is nothing more than just a tease, not worth the bother.