Laser Mission (1990)

I had heard of this movie a long time ago, but had completely forgotten about until reminded by my friend at Movies in the Attic. I knew it was vital to have this reviewed for the DTVC, especially since it has Brandon Lee before he died, and Ernest Borgnine.

Laser Mission has Lee working as a freelance spy-type dude who's hired to free Ernest Borgnine from the Soviets, or the Germans, or the Cubans, or some guy who likes to hunt... or... I don't really know, and does it matter? He's joined by a hot blond he thinks is Borgnine's daughter, and they travel to Trinidad and Tobago... or maybe it's Angola... or Namibia... or Grenada... again, does it matter? Hella explosions, sweet Brandon Lee martial arts: just a good old time.



Me and some friends watched this the night after seeing Lorenzo Lamas and Mystikal in 13 Dead Men (which I've reviewed below), and one of them couldn't take it anymore. He wanted to watch "something good", and we rented that James Bond movie Casino Royale on On Demand. I know I usually sound facetious when I make comments like this, but I thought Laser Mission was better. Other than the best foot chase since Point Break, Casino Royale had nothing going for it that I couldn't get out of a Steven Seagal flick. Laser Mission, on the other hand, was hilarious, and plot wise wasn't much more of a stretch than the yarn I was served in the Bond film. Just because the store packages the generic cola in a better looking bottle, doesn't make it taste more like Coke.

For a Dr. Rocket or Mr. Pibb, this wasn't a bad alternative to Dr. Pepper. I mean, it was cheap as hell; the plot made no sense; and I had no idea who anyone was or where in the world we were. One minute Lee's in a desert, the next he's in Trinidad and Tobago. But it hit it's spots. The main baddie kept coming back to life, and finally died when Lee rammed him into a concrete wall that exploded when he hit it. That's what I'm talking about. The movie also had it's surprises. There was a helicopter that managed to avoid being blown up. I was shocked.



Brandon Lee was pretty sweet in this. He wasn't used as effectively as I would've liked, with the director favoring shots of him hanging outside of a van with his mouth open firing an uzi, as opposed to him flexing his martial arts; but overall, he was good. He was as funny as he was in Showdown, which is impressive, when you consider how often these bad movie fall on their face when they try to make jokes (see the recent Zombie Strippers! for example). It's really a shame we only have a few movies with him before he died, because he'd have been a definite in the DTVC Hall of Fame after his career waned with Van Damme and Seagal's (you know it would've, I'm just keeping it real).

Ernest Borgnine was totally wasted here. He was given a crappy accent. I just don't get this fetish people have with making actors affect crappy accents. They sound stupid. Granted, some sound funny and stupid, which can be great to laugh at. But most seem to me as ways to ruin what could've been otherwise great appearances by great actors. Would anyone have liked The Wild Bunch better if Ernest Borgnine had a bad accent in it? No, they would've thought it a stupid move on the film maker's part. As an aside, Borgnine won the Best Actor Oscar in 1955 for Marty, even though I've always thought James Dean was better in Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, both from the same year.



One thing that was interesting about seeing Casino Royale and Laser Mission in the same night was the juxtaposition between the Cold War and espionage, and now the attempt to remake the genre with international terrorism as the monolithic bad guy. I guess there isn't much to juxtapose: whether it's big budget gritty new millennium fare, or campy low-budget Regan era fare, it's pretty much the same thing. I haven't seen Quantum of Solace yet, but I'm not too excited about the prospect either. I think the spy film needs an overhaul, and selling it as hard-edged because a guy gets hit in the balls a lot and another one cries blood out of his eye, isn't reworking it. These people need to go back to some greats like Le Samourai or The Maltese Falcon, neither of which is about spying, per se, but the suspense and action and cool characters are all elements we'd want out of a good spy picture.

You need to see this if you haven't just for the Brandon Lee factor. He doesn't have much work out there, but what he has is all good-- at least he is in them, in my opinion. It's a fun actioner with plenty to make fun of, but beware, it's very bad and very low budget. Be ready to crack plenty of jokes.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099978/

Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991)

A buddy of mine recently had me and a few friends watch The Dark Crystal with him. He said it was an important film in his life because it's what started his interest in fantasy films. I'm not sure what vulture puppets called Skankies have to do with that, but I took his word for it. Then I thought about what films were seminal in my love of movies. I guess Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon would be the ones that got me interested in Bogey films; or La Strada and Yojimbo got me interested in Fellini and Kurosawa films respectively. But that's not what the Direct to Video Connoisseur is about, it's about bad movies, and when I think of the film that got me interested in baddies, especially bad action, I think of Showdown in Little Tokyo.

I had a friend growing up whose parents stole cable, and we saw this on Pay-Per-View; for free obviously. I was twelve at the time, and though I'd seen many other bad action films before this, Showdown was the one that made me love them, and I haven't looked back since. Now I'm not saying that without Showdown I wouldn't have eventually found something else to pique my interest in this kind of schlock fare, I'm just saying that this one was lucky enough to be the one.



Showdown in Little Tokyo is a buddy action film with DTVC Hall of Famer Dolph Lundgren as a police detective of Caucasian-American decent that's also a samurai. He's a loner, and can't keep partners. Enter Brandon Lee (before he died), an Amerasian who could care less about his Japanese half. Dolph teaches him to be more Japanese, Brandon admires his penis, and the two protect Tia Carrere while beating down Cary Tagawa and his Yakuza bad dudes. Way better than the Lethal Weapons or Rush Hours.

I don't know where to begin. One of the best scenes is in the beginning, where a bad guy is in police custody, and instead of talking to the police, he breaks his own neck. In school, my friends and I used to mimic this when a teacher was especially boring. I know necks break very easily in action movies, but this one takes it a step further.



In another scene, Dolph does Carrere in his rice paper hut, and Tagawa's men surprise them. A scantily clad Dolph tries to fight them off, and Brandon Lee remarks, after looking at his crotch: "[y]ou have the biggest dick I've ever seen on a man". This is the kind of line in a Van Damme film that a woman would say, and Van Damme would seem proud of himself. With Dolph, though, we know it's supposed to add to the tongue-in-cheekness, which makes it even better.

That's not Brando's only great scene. At the end, he throws a guy in a vat of something, and holding a lit Zippo, says "you have the right to be dead" then tosses the Zippo in, making a huge explosion. This is, to my mind, Brandon Lee's finest performance, and it's too bad this film doesn't get more run.



Tagawa and the Yakuza are great too. They constantly cut off people's and their own limbs. Fingers, arms, heads. Like in Bridge of Dragons, Tagawa is a sexually frustrated crime boss, and has his hottie Asian woman stolen from him by Dolph. This time the hottie is Tia Carrere. Despite posing nude in Playboy, in this film, her nude scenes were done by a body double. Not a big deal, but just something to keep in mind as you're watching this.

The ending is spectacular. Dolph dons a samurai outfit with a complete straight face. He and Tagawa take swords from a parade, which means the figures in the parade were walking around with real samurai swords. Dolph gets sliced up, yet survives it all, just so he can pin Tagawa to this large wheel with fireworks surrounding it. The wheel spins, and Tagawa explodes.



This is bad action at its best. Tons of killing, tons of martial arts, tons of car chases, a bad guy who kills people who work for him and people he makes criminal deals with, hot chicks, and, of course, Dolph Lundgren. There may be better action movies, but there isn't one that's more fun.

I bought this on DVD recently for $5. There really is no reason why you shouldn't do the same. If you watch it on TV, make sure it's on a channel that isn't censored or edited to fit a time slot. Don't watch this on Spike or USA or what not. You're really better off just buying it anyway, so that way you can see it on Spike or USA, and you'll know what you're missing. Believe me, at $5, it's so worth it, and I'd pay even more if I didn't know I could get it for that cheap.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102915/