by: Dr. Boogie

...CONTINUED

Hammett and Pinkus are discussing some sinister big business stuff when Hayes interrupts them, threatening to call "the army". Hammett then turns the conversation around to find out why exactly this snake has a giant skewer on the end of its tail. Hayes, not used to being outsmarted, spills the beans about the serum and how it only works in snakes (and how the particular way it "works" is by turning them into dangerous mutants). She claims they were trying to save lives. Hammett responds by saying what we're all thinking: "I think you failed there." Now Hayes is really getting pissed, so she changes the subject to the reason she came with them: the titular "offspring".

The female snake (the green one that we haven't seen much of so far) is pregnant, and birth is set to occur in less than 24 hours. Better still, these newborns will grow up to be just like their knife-wielding father. Hammett calls her out for letting such an incredibly stupid act come to pass, and even the other trackers jump in to mock the sheer relentless stupidity that was being perpetrated at the lab.

Nick sides with Hayes in wanting to bring in the military, but Hammett disagrees. He points that calling the military ruin the trackers' mission and send Hayes to jail. Plus, they won't arrive in time to find the snakes. As an alternative, he reveals that he managed to shoot a tracking device into one of the snakes while it was menacing Hayes in the woods. A tracking device that cannot be shed away.

Later that night, Hammett approaches Hayes with an offer. Not an apology; he was right about pretty much everything so far. No, he wants to offer Hayes a job. Doing what? We'll never know, as Hayes refuses immediately. I would have at least heard him out, seeing as her time at the giant killer snake institute is no doubt coming to an end.

The next day, the tracking signal leads them to an old industrial park. The trackers leave Hayes at the jeep to monitor the signal and take Pinkus along as bait. They don't come out and say that they're bringing him as bait, but let's be honest: the guy can't do anything else. They give him a wimpy handgun and tell him to watch their backs.

They comb the building, but find nothing. Eventually, they're down to a single unsearched room. Since the snake must be in the room, they toss in a grenade and start firing indiscriminately.

They shoot the bejesus out of the whole room. Everyone's guns are ablazing, even some AK-47 that no one had is shown being fired into the room. How could the snake survive such a barrage?

By not being in the room, of course. Losing the first tracking device by shedding wasn't that big a surprise, but I imagine it must've been a little more painful to have a dart pass through the snake's stomach, stab into its lunch, then get vomited back up again. Still, partial credit to Hammett for making a decent attempt at tracking down the snakes.

I wonder how Pinkus is doing...

Geez, finally.

These guys must be getting pretty tired of the snake outwitting them.

Both of the snakes escape to the river. On the other shore: a city filled with snake snacks, and the perfect place for a bed of mutant anacondas. Nick berates Hammett for not calling the military sooner, but Hammett remarks that the military in this country (what country is this again?) is "about as reliable as a bottle of Jack at an AA meeting." What does that even mean? Are the citizens supposed to be the recovering alcoholics? Does the military represent temptation to a group of people who have abused the armed forces in the past? And how does alcohol at an AA meeting symbolize unreliability?

Hammett decides to call the military, if only to placate the whiners in the group. Phoning a Major he knows in the military, Hammett explains, with a straight face, that a pair of giant mutated anacondas are loose in the countryside. This scene could very easily have ended with him hanging up the phone and telling the group, "They didn't believe me."

Nevertheless, the trackers make their way to the opposite shore and resume their search. Hayes and Nick take the jeep, while Hammett and Andrei go on foot. Hayes deduces that the snakes will head towards an abandoned factory, while Andrei succeeds only in accidentally breaking their walkie talkie. Perhaps this is why Hammett only approached her with that job offer.

In the course of their search, Hammett discovers some leaves covered in melted ice cream. He declares that it is snake blood. What's more, "where there's blood, there's more blood." Sure enough, Hammett finds more "blood" in the direction of the factory. Looks like the two groups being incommunicado isn't going to play a big role in the movie.

Back at the factory, Hayes and Nick have begun a painstaking search for the snakes, slowly moving through each and every room while the camera documents their every footstep. Along the way, they discover more of the snake "blood", but that's about it. Just when it seems like the last fifteen minutes of the movie are going to be them walking slowly around the factory, the male snake grabs Nick.

Hayes barely fights off the urge to leave Nick to die. This time, she even remembers that she's holding a gun. Sadly, her shots are so wildly inaccurate that you can't even see the ricocheting bullets when the camera moves to show the snake. Nick eventually grows tired of waiting for Hayes to make a shot.

He pulls a grenade out of his pocket and entices the snake to eat it. The snake obliges, and Hayes barely ducks around a corner in time to avoid the largest hand grenade explosion I've ever seen. How did she manage to outlast Pinkus?

The explosion as large enough to draw Hammett and Andrei to the site. Hammett grabs the satphone and calls his buddy in the military with the snakes' location.

Hey, remember when John Rhys-Davies was in this movie? Well he is again! Just for a few seconds, though. He's on the phone with some guy named "Mr. Reysner," otherwise known as Peter, that guy from the little vignette before the actual movie. The two of them have some sort of arrangement going, but we don't get to find out what it is yet. Let's get back to the movie, shall we?

Hayes gives Hammett and Andrei the rundown: there are only three of them left, one of the snakes is dead, and that disgusting mound on the ground means the queen snake has started giving birth. Andrei preps a brick of C4 to take out the remaining reptiles.

Whoops, turns out Hammett is a bad guy. He's being paid $10 million to bring back one of those baby snakes. "You're working with Murdoch?" Hayes says incredulously. YOU WERE ALL WORKING WITH MURDOCH!!!

Yes, rather than go with the plot twist of having Hammett working for a rival corporation, the writers decided they should have Hammett doing exactly what he was hired to do, while Hayes acted as though this was completely unexpected. Hammett tells Hayes that she can either serve as bait, or come work for another employer, which seems to imply the whole corporate espionage angle. I guess she meant to say "you're NOT working with Murdoch", but nobody, not the director nor the actors nor the editors, caught the mistake. Even the subtitles have her asking that strange question.

Screw it. The movie's almost over. She plays along with it for a little while, and then...

She unleashes a flurry of blows on Hammett. Not sissy punches like you'd expect from her; punches, elbows, kicks, she's suddenly a competent fighter. Hammett is almost as surprised as the audience. He has some difficulty keeping up with Hayes' fists of feminine fury, but he does manage to get her in a weak one-handed chokehold.

Luckily, Hayes has a switchblade in her fannypack. She shanks Hammett and knocks him aside. You can add "explosives technician" to her new list of competencies, because she's able to find and arm Andrei's bomb with no real difficulty. She takes a moment to mock the mortally wounded Hammett, then runs off to avoid the explosion.

Hammett struggles to reach the bomb amid all the newborn snakes, but the best he can do is give himself a front row seat to his own funeral. The bomb goes off and destroys the warehouse. Hayes drives off, confident that she has done all a herpetologist can do.

Little does she know, a sinister figure is investigating the warehouse. Peter, burlap sack in hand, has come to find one of the baby snakes. Instead, he finds a snake that looks nothing like the ones he's supposed to get, but he figures Murdoch won't know the difference. He stuffs the snake in the sack and takes off.

On the way back to Murdoch, he passes Hayes by the side of the road. She pulled over to burn her chemistry homework for some reason. All I can figure is that she blames her college professor for getting her interested in this line of work, thus resulting in her helping create a couple mutant snakes that killed a dozen or so people. With the documents burned, she drives off into the sunset, leaving the fire going so that it might burn down the city that narrowly avoided a giant snake infestation.

So now we're setup for the sequel. It takes place in the same unnamed part of the world with a couple of the surviving characters from this movie, particularly Dr. Hayes. I can only assume that she finds another group of cut-rate mercenaries to run around the woods with, all while John Rhys-Davies is "in" the movie. Whatever it is, I do not intend to find out for sure. I've seen enough crappy-looking snakes to last me a while.

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