Release Year: 1989
Country: United States
Starring: Brandon Lee, Debi Monahan, Ernest Borgnine, Graham Clarke, Werner Pochath, Pierre Knoessen, Maureen Lahoud.
Writer: David A. Frank, Phillip Gutteridge
Director: BJ Davis
Cinematographer: Hans Kuhle Jr.
Producer: Hans Kuhle Sr.
Alternate Titles: Soldier of Fortune
Availability: Buy it from Amazon

The title Laser Mission got this movie included in the Sci-Fi Classics box set, even though the movie is neither science fiction nor a classic. But that’s OK, because there’s also no lasers in the movie, though they do talk about lasers. I suppose Talking About Lasers Mission is an ungainly title, though. What it does have is Brandon Lee and trucks knocking over fruit carts in third world countries.

The people who are familiar with this movie are familiar with it for basically one of two reasons: either because they are Ernest Borgnine completists, or because it’s the second starring role for Bruce Lee’s son, Brandon (his first starring role was in the Hong Kong actioner, Legacy of Rage, which is worth seeing if you get the chance). Now, I’m not saying I’m not an Ernest Borgnine completist; the man did turn William Shatner into a goat-man, after all and ruled the Depression-era railways with an iron fist and hook. But Brandon Lee was indeed the main attraction for me. And yeah, he’s pretty much the only reason this movie is remembered by anyone. Of course, it probably could have starred pretty much any stiff and still eventually found its way into at least one of those 50 movie packs.

For the few of you who don’t know, Brandon Lee seemed to be on the fast track to some degree of mainstream success (though I personally doubt it would have stuck — we’d be seeing him in Sci-Fi channel movies there days if he was still around) thanks to a modest hit (Rapid Fire) and a runaway blockbuster (The Crow). Unfortunately, he wasn’t around to reap the benefits of The Crow’s success, as he was killed in a freakish on-set accident in which a real bullet instead of a blank found its way into a gun. The bizarre nature of the accident (why would there even be real bullets lying about?) fed immediately into the conspiracy theory mill that already surrounded the death of his famous father. Bruce Lee’s death has been theorized to be any number of shady plots, most of them involving some combination of jealous lovers, irate directors, and Hong Kong gangsters.

While the conspiracies are entertaining to bandy about, Bruce’s death probably really does boil down to “brain aneurysm suffered while eating hash brownies with Betty Ting Pei.” Brandon Lee being accidentally shot and killed on a movie set, however, did much to revive the “curse of Bruce Lee” talk, and perhaps part of the reason The Crow was such a success was on account of the morbid curiosity surrounding the tragedy. As part of the “celebrity death” exploitation machine that inevitably kicks into gear when such things happen, someone decided to dust off crappy ol’ Laser Mission, slap a big picture of Brandon Lee on the cover, and rake in whatever dollars they could.

Really, this is a pretty innocuous and harmless slice of generic 80s direct-to-video action, which means Brandon quips, a hot blonde gets involves in the mix, and some stuff blows up. Lee plays a secret agent hired by the CIA to return a missing scientist (Borgnine), whose knowledge of lasers could be coupled wit a sought-after giant diamond in order to create a space-based laser that could wipe out anything the width of a laser beam. Naturally, the Russians want it, and the Americans want to stop them from getting it. Along for the ride is a mysterious blonde agent who might be more than she appears.

The mission takes Lee to a made-up African country that is basically the Cold War playground Angola, where Brandon Lee fails pretty miserably to obtain the at-large scientist. He end sup in a tastefully decorated African prison, escapes, gets his own theme music (the less-than-smash hit “Mercenary Man”), and resumes his mission after getting dressed down by some stuffy bureaucrats. For this attempt, though, he has the company of Alissa (Debi Monahan), the scientist’s daughter — or so she claims. One assumes that her primary role is to wear skimpy cleavage-augmenting dresses (which she does), engage in inane verbal tete-a-tetes with Brandon Lee (which she does), and eventually betray — or seem to betray — the hero (which she also does). But BJ Davis, perhasp because he was himself a stuntman, doesn’t let his sassy female co-star become background dressing to eventually be rescued by the hero. No, he actually puts a gun in her hand and lets her tear around the desert in chase scenes, blowing stuff up and generally wreaking a good deal of havoc, all while wearing fancy evening wear.

It’s obvious that while director Davis is a director of limited skill, he knows exactly how to make a low-budget 80′s action movie. Every single thing you need in the movie is present, and if it’s not expertly realized, it’s usually at least delivered in a competently incompetent manner — a statement that will make perfect sense to anyone who watches a lot of these movies. A movie like Laser Mission can really only disappoint me by not delivering on the predictable formula to which it cleaves. That happens a lot with low-budget action movies, but not with Laser Mission. It may not deliver on the promised lasers of the title, but it delivers exactly what you’d want from a cheap, goofy 80s action movie.

So if you took part of the plot of Diamonds are Forever, mixed it with a little The Living Daylights, then shot the whole thing on a shoestring budget, you’d come up with something like Laser Mission. It’s full of cornball dialogue and witty retorts that might have been witty to a twelve-year-old. Brandon Lee has charisma, to be sure, but he can barely act at this point in his career. The plot is scatterbrained and needlessly convoluted in an attempt to pad out the running time. And the end result is a movie that i thought was… well, not quite a bit of fun, but at least fun.

Part of this has to do with the fact that Laser Mission may coast along like James Bond Lite, but it knows when to blow stuff up and let Brandon Lee kick someone in the face — and that is often. The finale is a fifteen minute orgy of exploding sets and extras doing the “riddled by machine gun fire” dance. Plus, the movie trots the globe (it was co-produced by a South African company), or at least pretends to, giving it a feel that is both cheap and wordly, sort of like Black Eagle, but without Shane and Kane Kosugi (a plus).

Plus, there’s Cuban revolutionaries, evil Soviets, a guy with a human head collection that it looks like he recently purchased from a mannequin store, lots of jeeps flipping over, Brandon Lee traipsing abut in a fake mustache, and Ernest Borgnine faking a German accent. Yep, it may not be sci-fi, and there may not be any lasers in, put I was perfectly happy with Laser Mission.