Lost opportunities

Why have I never seen Riot before? Because it was never made directly available to me. What situatino would have made it directly available to me? If TBS was always showing it in the middle of the afternoon so I could watch fights while taking a nap or recovering from a hangover. Why did TBS not buy the rights to it? Apparently the budget of showing Very Funny reruns all the time did not allow them to spend $120 to purchase the rights to show Riot.

Here are the great in a Saturday-afternoon-as-a-child-or-adult-drifting-in-and-out-of-consciousness-great way things about Riot:

• Importantly it stars Gary Daniels, who, when he appears in The Expendables, will make everyone 90s action movie fans say, "Hey it's the 17th biggest action draw of the 90s! I'm so glad he's in this movie and not Jean Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal!"
• Racial stereotypes galore amidst the backdrop of turf riots in what is purportedly a Florida city.
• It takes place around Christmas so we get some action scenes with strings of multicolored Christmas lights in them, which is great because I'm sure that reduced the lighting budget of the film.
• A fight against roller hockey players. Hooray the 90s.
• Sugar Ray Leonard, the man who set the trend of "When in doubt, nickname a boxer 'Sugar'". I get that its 'the sweet science' but Leonard, Robinson, Mosley... isn't this a bit much? Do we call all of our great basketball players "Magic" or "White Jesus With Offensively Short Shorts"? I don't think so.
• Really bad dialogue and acting. Like, seriously jr. high level acting.
• Sugar Ray falling 30 some stories into flaming bushes. Ouch.
• Rocket launchers!
• It would be brilliant with censors on TBS because in solid action movie form every big emotion or declaration is punctuated by a profusion of profanity.
• A nice flashback scene to show us that Gary Daniels and love interest previously had a relationship after we're told, by her father who obviously knows him very well, that Gary Daniels needs to go rescue his love interest. Thanks for that. I really would have been left in the dark otherwise.
• Machine guns!
• Do you need more of an excuse than "the movie is set in the middle of a riot" to have fires burning around every corner? The creative team behind Riot doesn't think so!
• Running/riding dirt bikes on cars!
• The most unrealistic walkie-talkie chatter ever, all in the name of expository dialogue. Which is nice because I always find it annoying when trained militants use efficient military-sounding lingo- the realism just smacks of desperation.
• Dirt bikes crashing through plate glass windows!
• A real panopoly of accents which would be a great learning experience for America's youth- despite speaking the same language, black guys, brits, and irish all sound different! Drastically so! Sadly this movie would also teach children that people who sound different don't get along very well.
• Someone agreed to give someone else money to make this movie. That is an awesome job of convincing people with money to give up their money, or an awesome job of keeping the people with money from reading your script critically. I have no problem with getting in to the story as it is a fun one and the action is at least passable, but sweet lord must dialogue be this bad?

Man, Gary Daniels really is one tough dude. He doesn't just face your average irate combatants on foot. He has to deal with them on rollerblades and motorcycles too. Color my lazy Saturday self fully impressed. And sleepy. I think that would be a dark shade of blue. But not too dark, because of the impressed part. Actually, make that a medium green: yellow with impressed and blue with sleepy. Yep. That's it. Nap time.

If I had a network, you can bet it would be showing movies like Riot, Fist of the North Star, and Masters of the Universe every Saturday afternoon. I can guarantee every nine year old boy who wanted to watch TV while playing with his Legos would be riveted to my network, and I could sell a lot of ad time to Nerf and video game companies. Such an untapped market. And no, children should not be playing outside on a Saturday afternoon. Not when it's -20 degrees outside. Nor when there's a riot going on.