Tragedy struck on the set of 1994’s The Crow when actor Brandon Lee was shot with a bullet that was
meant to be a blank. He died from the
injury and the movie was forced to move forward both with and without him. Through the use of body doubles and distance
shots, the movie was completed. It came
out and has since become a classic in some circles. I myself cannot remember a time when I
actually sat down and watched the movie.
Aside from the completed version of The Crow coming from the untimely death of the lead actor, the
Brandon Lee tragedy also helped to unearth some older action films that he had
been a part of. These films, many of
them from the 1980s, were not the greatest action films of their time. Brandon Lee was no Arnold Schwarzenegger or
Sylvester Stallone when it came to being an action star. Yet his death triggered a desire in a lot of
people to go back and watch these movies.
The major wave of new home video releases for these movies was the sort
of exploitation that had happened in the wake of his father’s death. Brucesploitation had been a thing and
following Brandon Lee’s death, Brandsploitation, as I’ll call it, became a
thing. Studios marketed older movies
starring the actor to try and make a quick buck off of his death.
One of the movies that was brought back into the public
consciousness was Laser Mission, a
1989 action film that had originally been titled Soldier of Fortune. Despite
the cooler new title, Laser Mission
did not actually have a whole lot of lasers in it. That was a little disappointing for me, since
I knew so little about the movie that I thought the name was the movie. The story that really unfolds follows Michael
Gold (Brandon Lee), a mercenary with a mission to stop the KGB from using Dr.
Braun (Ernest Borgnine) to create a nuclear weapon. It’s your basic Cold War action story.
Laser Mission
looks like a 1980s shot on video movie, with some semi-professional
backing. The cinematography of the movie
makes it look a much lower quality than it actually is. I’m not saying that the movie is of a high
quality, but it’s not as bad as it might look.
The entire movie looks as though someone was holding a video camera and
following the actors around. The edges
around everything are slightly faded and the coloring looks sterile. Laser
Mission is visually unstimulating in that way.
There are still moments in the movie with good visuals
though. The cinematography might be
subpar, but the action throughout the movie is solid. Having grown up in a family known for martial
arts, Brandon Lee inherited that talent.
He was able to use his martial arts capabilities in the hand to hand
combat moments in the movie. Every kick
and punch feels real, mostly because he knows what he’s doing. That level of realism can improve a movie in
a way that seeing people attempt action they can’t do will bring down a
movie. It is always more entertaining to
see someone actually doing the stunts and doing them well.
Also nice to see are other stunts that are well done. The chase scenes with cars used real cars
with real flips and real explosions.
Sometimes in order to make things happen, and sometimes to help with
safety, modern films use computer graphics to do car stunts. Laser
Mission is old enough to be practical with their car stunts. The practicality makes it feel like the stunt
is actually happening which can invest a viewer into a movie more than
noticeable computer graphics can. One
thing that Laser Mission does right
is make the effects realistic through practical means.
The final positive thing I want to point out is the music in
Laser Mission. The music was composed by David Knopfler, one
of the founding members of the band Dire Straits. And the music that plays throughout the movie
feels like it could have been Dire Straits music. I quite enjoyed that, since I enjoy listening
to the music that the band made. One
particular song in the movie was Mercenary Man, which played repeatedly. That didn’t matter to me, however, since I
liked the song. Whenever it played in
the movie, I liked the movie a little more.
So the music was good enough to warrant my watching of the movie.
If there’s one problem outside of the look of the movie that
would cause people to dislike it, it would be the story. There a lot of action going on while little
story is told. Michael Gold has to save
the guy with the help of the guy’s daughter (Debi Monahan). That’s about it. The whole movie is him trying to get the guy
back while the guy’s captors try to stop him.
Add in some less than stellar acting and you’ve got a concoction for a
bad movie.
I would be willing to rewatch Laser Mission at some point with friends if we were having a bad
movie night. It’s not so terrible that
it is completely unwatchable, such as The
Time Machine (I Found at a Yard Sale).
It is a perfectly fine movie, though it slides into the negative side of
the quality scale. It would still be a
fun watch with other people around.
Seeing Brandon Lee kick butt is alright.
I do wonder, though, what merit this movie had in being rereleased,
outside of money. The fact that they
used it to cash in on Brandon Lee’s death seems rather cruel and
insensitive. “A guy died? Let’s make money off of that.” Sorry, I don’t really care for how you choose
to make money. And I don’t care to write
any more for this post.
I lied. I’m going to
give you some notes. But then I’m done
for the week:
- I mentioned The TimeMachine (I Found at a Yard Sale) so I thought I’d link to it.
- For a brief moment, I wrote about Brucesploitation. One actor in that craze was Bruce Le, who was in Infra-Man.
- There was also a mention of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was in Hercules in New York and Batman & Robin.
- Have you seen Laser Mission? Have you seen any other 80s action Brandon Lee movies? What did you think of them? There’s a comment section below to discuss the movie or my terrible writing.
- The comments section can also be used for suggestions. If you want me to watch a specific movie for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, suggest it in the comments. I also have a Twitter where you can reach me, or an email: sundaybadmovies@gmail.com
- Next week, I will be covering the two 1990s Mortal Kombat movies. That’s going to be a fun one. I’ll see you next week while you all have the theme song stuck in your head.
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