Saturday, April 7, 2012

Mill Creek Review #4- Laser Mission

Legacy is a funny thing. Many of us long to be like our fathers, our brothers, the people we look up to. Sometimes we fail…and therefore, I give you Laser Mission.

Laser Mission was a 1990 direct to video movie staring Brandon Lee, who is most famous for…being Bruce Lee’s kid. Now don’t get me wrong. I like Brandon Lee. The Crow is still one of my favorite dark movies. Laser Mission...is not the Crow. 

Laser Mission is entertaining for what it is. A bad, late 80’s/early 90’s action film.

You get your obligatory bad lines like “I don’t like to put a price tag on women…its much more fun to take them off.”

As well as Lee falling onto a family dinner table and saying “I just dropped in to say…Bon Apetit.”

However this movie has something that most action movies don’t have….

 
ERNEST BORGNINE!

Because when I think action…I think….Ernest Borgnine.

Lee plays Michael Gold, a mercenary for hire. After a precious diamond is stolen, Gold is called upon by the CIA to help seize laser expert and physicist Professor Braun (Borgnine.) before the KGB does.


Because when I think brilliant physicist I think…Ernest Borgnine.


Gold comes in contact with Braun’s daughter Alissa, who I think might be played by someone who once was one of Zack Morris’s girlfriends on one episode of Saved by the Bell.

Just a guess, but there were probably two reasons why they cast this girl…and one of them was not her acting talent.

There are many clumsy action sequences where Lee fights the Russians…who are sometimes Germans…living in Cuba….in the Dominican Republic….in Aftrica. I really don’t understand where this movie is supposed to be taking place or what exactly is going on. But Borgnine does punch a guy at some point, and the girl attempts to look sexy throughout the movie (but usually ends up looking tired or nauseous .

There are two villains of note (both of whom you will see in the preview below). One guy is easily the WORST marksmen in movie history, and the second is literally the indestructible man. This guy gets shot, blown up, and hit by the car before being pushed through a brick wall…and still may not be dead.

 “I tell you Vigo the Carpathian was less durable than this guy.”

Thank you Dennis.

Then there is the music…oh the music. The main theme song is called Mercenary Man, written and sung by David Knopfler of the Dire Straits.

Oh! The guy who wrote the Princess Bride theme. I love that song.

No, actually that is Mark Knopfler, David’s brother.

Mark, who wrote one of the greatest movie songs of my generation, is far more talented than David who wrote…well crap.

Little refresher.


 
Mark

David


 
 
Mark


 
David.

Got it? And I hope you like that song by David because you will hear it…a lot…at the most random times.

Laser Mission is cheesy, stupid, ridiculous and annoying…everything I look for in a movie, plus it has a HI-Larious twist ending. Check it out.


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