Detailing what would happen if John Rambo had child maintenance bills to pay, This Park is Mine is a relatively forgotten action film from the mid 1980s. I assume there’s a whole slew of reasons this one been forgotten. From its made to television nature to its frankly overdone premise, there can’t be all that much to the film. Even with those restrictions, I went in hopeful of a moderately tolerable time where I’d see Tommy Lee Jones shoot, scream and sprint his way through Central Park after having a will left for him by his former Vietnam buddy.
The flagrant bashing and realisations of the watered down First Blood storyline doesn’t quite take off as well as it should. Director Steven Hillard Stern wastes no time getting into the action, and within ten minutes we’re planted firmly in Central Park with Mitch (Tommy Lee Jones) taking full control of the area. He does so because his friend was planning on doing it, and then died within the opening moments of the film. These aren’t spoilers, if anything it’s a startlingly decent excuse as to why there are automatic machine guns, claymores and explosives hidden away in a sewer inside of New York’s famous park.
A handful of scenes look to highlight the real message of This Park is Mine, and how they don’t make men like they used to. The veteran that takes over Central Park is a league above those thin-lipped talk show hosts. That’s not a criticism from me, it’s a vague line of dialogue in a sea of action quips, delivered with the unwavering conviction of a serious drama. Doubling down on the simplicity of its script by presenting it to us as a near-theatrical, farcical affair is rather entertaining to see. Pairing up a need to have some underlying message and criticism is all well and good, but you can’t have that with accidental one-liners. It creates a relatively dense tone and the movie struggles to keep up with this at times.
Dumb fun, that’s the best you can get out of This Park is Mine. Stern knows it, Lee Jones knows it and just about everyone else that dishes out bawdy B-Movie lines of dialogue know it too. Exceptionally driven in being a super serious action piece, while at the same time offering up a wry smile and a couple of oddly hilarious or even charming scenes.
