Someone had the bright idea to basically make a Jason Bourne movie with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. And when I say bright idea, I of course mean terrible idea. It’s not entirely Austin’s fault, per se. He’s taking a check, and trying to branch out a bit from the comfort zone of his more natural skill sets (i.e., cracking heads). But this desultory, slapdash, poorly directed straight-to-video flick about an amnesiac, double-crossed killing machine takes ideas and scenes we’ve seen dozens of times before, and then executes them lazily and poorly.

Austin (above) plays a hulking guy with no name and no memory (and thus nothing left to
lose, Bob Dylan might opine). When he finds himself being hunted by the Russian mob, however, this amnesiac decides to fight back. Working with FBI agent Mason Reese (Adam Beach), Dr. Grace Bishop (Erica Cerra) is also trying to track down Austin’s character; she’s treated him, and is convinced his faulty sense of self-identity, in which he randomly “reboots” every couple weeks or months, can be cured. Enduring beatings, bullets and betrayal, Austin’s stranger slowly starts to remember bits and pieces of
the horror that took away his career, his family and his life. Naturally, more fisticuffs ensue, against a backdrop of governmental let-down and duplicity.

Working from a script by Quinn Scott, director Robert Lieberman delivers messy, uninvolving action, indiscriminately mixing slow-motion and regular-speed mayhem, and cross-cutting in a manner that mars whatever intent stunt coordinator Lauro Chartrand might have had. Austin, meanwhile, is required to do stupid things (like show up at Dr. Bishop’s hotel room… after she drops off her business card at a bar he frequents?), and do some ruminative emoting, which doesn’t come all that naturally to him. If there’s at all a silver lining to this yawning mess, it’s that The Stranger is at least rated R, so it doesn’t pull punches on its bloody beat-downs. Even hardcore action fans will be hard-pressed to care about this Stranger‘s identity, however.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case stored in turn in a cardboard slipcover with lenticular imaging (that’s fancy talk for 3-D, folks), The Stranger comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional Spanish and English SDH subtitles. Apart from a trailer, its only supplemental feature is a six-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, in which Austin talks about the time constraints of the production and also (pretty intelligently, actually) about the difference in fighting for camera versus fighting in the ring, and how the former is “less of a dance.” To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) C- (Disc)