The Litmus Test for true love this holiday season is whether or not your loved one gives you "Mean Guns." Without a doubt, this movie has everything an action movie fan wants and needs. The movie, starring Christopher Lambert (pronounced 'lamb-bert') and Ice-T, takes place in a Prison owned by 'The Syndicate.' Ice-T has organized a game in which all who enter the prison shall die. Wanna Go? Throw in two dozen baseball bats, a whore, and an infinite number of generic bad guys and you have the recipe for mayhem. Had the Director (and we use this term ever so lightly) removed 90% of the dialogue, there would have been more money left over for blood and guts to spill on the floor. While we find the lack of blood and the terrible dialogue pretty bad, the overwhelming amount of unnecessary baseball bat beatings made the bad feel so good. Let us explain:

While watching "Mean Guns" one word comes to mind- Painful. Pain is the overwhelming element of this movie- sometimes intended, sometimes not. Mean Guns has lots of ass-kicking violence, so the pain there is no surprise. However, there is also a lot of REALLY bad dialogue in this movie. Really bad. So bad it is painful.

Mean Guns would be awesome if it weren't for all of the talking. The violence is of the highest order. The talking is of the lowest. The are only about 3 good lines in the entire movie, and all of them are uttered by Christopher Lambert- generally in the case of him calling somebody stupid. The most offensive dialogue is the blatant rip-off of Quentin Tarantino-style banter where two people are having a very fast paced conversation about something quite inane. We applaud the effort to be entertaining, but we would have much preferred somebody getting shot and/or bludgeoned to death.

Also, The attempt at a plot is pathetic- it too is fairly painful. But we'll get to that later.

That's the bad.. Now for the good. There are many good things about this movie. The best thing is that everybody dies. When we say everybody, we mean everybody. OK, there are actually two characters that don't die- but one of them gets shot. Otherwise, everybody dies. We feel no remorse in revealing this since it is pretty obvious that that is what's going to happen. That is the whole point. This movie is all about violence.

Also, Mean Guns stars Christopher Lambert (pronounce the "t", as he was born in Brooklyn- look it up in your almanac) and Ice-T. Every movie should have Ice-T. He brings a false intensity to all of his performances that turns any bad movie into ridiculous. Ridiculous is what makes movies like this bearable. That and the violence. This is Ice-T's best performance since his NBC series "The Players". Damn, we miss that show. It either made no sense or it contained the most brilliant plot twists ever. We’re not really sure as it's Friday night time slot wasn't exactly conducive to sobriety in TEEvee viewing.

But one of our favorite things about Mean Guns is the music. Some genius had the idea of setting most of the violence to Mambo. "It makes you want to dance," says Christopher Lambert's character. Dance indeed. The dance of death. Seeing how movie violence is choreographed just as much as an dance, it sort of makes sense. Plus Perez Prado ("the original Mambo King", according to Ice-T’s character) is in fact a musical genius. We need no excuse to listen to him.

That's the good- now here's what makes absolutely no sense. The plot. The plot is absurd. Whoever wrote this either has a sublime sense of mocking a stereotype, or he was a horrible writer who couldn't write anything but trite. The plot is this: an evil crime syndicate- known as "The Syndicate" is trying to get rid of all it's hit men that have betrayed it. They meet in an abandoned prison and duke it out. That's fine, but then the writer brings in all of the extraneous crap like personal history and all of That. Trying to make us care about the characters is pointless- just have them shoot at each other and let us watch!

There are also things that don't fit in at all- except that there is so much that is randomly out of place that it sort of makes sense. The prime example of this is that it appears that there are a few vampires around. Don't ask us. You'll see. It's funny more than anything else.

This is a confusing movie if you try to make any sense of it in your mind, but that's what makes it so good- that and the exceptional ass-kicking. That's what really makes this movie good. If all of these random and unexplained points (like the plot and the dialogue) are intentionally written to make no sense then this is a film that is far beyond brilliant.

This is not your mother's Action Flick. In fact, this story would be better suited for a comic book (graphic novel) format. Nevertheless, it is - and shall always be - one of the greatest action movies ever seen on video