“I just dropped in to say… bon appetite!”

Justin’s rating: Lasers make everything 33% cooler! It’s too bad this movie doesn’t have any.

Justin’s review: I vividly remember how when 1994’s The Crow came out, so many people jumped up to say how big of a fan they were of Brandon Lee. Which is fine, except that their knowledge of Lee pretty much began and ended with that single movie, and seeing as how he met a very unfortunate end during The Crow’s filming, there wouldn’t be anything more added to his filmography. I severely doubt, for example, that any of them could name another movie he’d been in or that any had poured over his thespian mastery in 1989’s Laser Mission.

In any case, let’s set your expectations properly for this film: Despite the title, there are no lasers in Laser Mission. Rather, what you’re getting here is a James Bond flea market knock-off that’s made very enthusiastically but not very skillfully. For Brandon Lee, I imagine that this was the college film project that he made to get all of his embarrassing cinematic moments out of the way. It’s really nothing to be proud of.

But it is entertaining. Oh Mylanta, it’s entertaining.

Lee plays Michael, a mercenary who’s hired by the US government to find Ernest Borgnine. I’m not being goofy here, Ernest Borgnine actually plays some sort of nuclear scientist that all these countries want (but I guess not want that much, since the United States is contracting this one out). Borgnine gets kidnapped, and Michael picks up his daughter Alissa (Debi Monahan) to be the resident Bond Babe of the day.

So on one hand we have Michael, who dons the most unconvincing disguises/accents and only excels when he stumbles into action scenes. On the other hand, Alissa is a zookeeper who can shoot with uncanny accuracy, drive like a maniac, and chew out Michael every chance she gets. With such artificial tension, you know they are bound to fall into movie love by act three. Gosh, I cannot wait. Actually, I could wait, because these are two pretty unlikable main characters.

These two trek through either Cuba or north Africa — the movie never makes this clear — looking for the scientist and a gigantic diamond that’s going to be used for lasers we’ll never see. I’m convinced that the filmmakers had a hodge-podge of acting nationalities, various costumes, and random military props — and then decided to put them all together with the hopes of it making sense to an unquestioning audience. There’s the KGB in one scene, then some Libyan soldiers, and then a pair of Cuban soldiers who provide a lot of unnecessary slapstick. Also, one of the Cubian soldiers doesn’t realize that the other one is a woman for some reason until she gets her shirt wet, which started my desk-headbanging early in this viewing.

Does any of this make sense? No, of course not, but it does give our heroes something to fight and/or run away from. And the action is the kind of over-the-top silliness that you might find in a parody movie like Hot Shots, except that it’s presented as serious here. When you watch a VW bus casually saunter through an enemy camp while literally anything the heroes in it do make everything blow up around them, you will understand that nothing is impossible in this film.

By the time Laser Mission ambles into its final act, it’s quite clear that the director lost the script and was winging a conclusion with a main villain who kept coming back to life despite being shot multiple times, falling off a cliff, and being blown up. Also, there’s Ernest Borgnine wandering around in apparent confusion, looking like he just woke up from a nap to have a prop guy give him a weapon and the director to shout “ACTION!”

If you like schlock cinema and an excuse to laugh at the sheer ineptitude of film editors, then Laser Mission isn’t a half-bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. It ain’t a half-good way to do that, mind you, but your time is your own.