It’s a scientific fact that when you’re hungover, your body craves trash food. The specific flavor varies from person to person, but the concept remains the same. Too much high-brow cinema can be a bad thing, and when you get burnt out on getting your heart broken by one too many classics, you need a greasy burger to ease the pain of your art-hangover. ‘Laser Mission’ is the cinematic equivalent of that cheapo burger; it’s a poor imitation of something much better, but it makes you feel better when you’re not feeling up to snuff.

‘Laser Mission’ is a 1989 action-adventure movie directed by Beau Davis, whose repertoire is mostly stunt coordination. The premise follows CIA mercenary Michael Gold, portrayed by Brandon Lee as he attempts to rescue a kidnapped physicist, Professor Braun, portrayed by character actor Ernest Borgnine. Along for the ride is Debi A. Monahan as Braun’s femme fatale daughter, Alissa, and rounding out the main cast is Graham Clarke as the movie’s primary protagonist, KGB Colonel Kalishnakov.

Before going on with this review, set this newspaper down, go to YouTube, and search for the song ‘Mercenary Man’ by David Knopfler. I’ll wait.

Have you finished? I hope you’ve enjoyed this hit because it plays on repeat throughout the entire movie. I would advise against taking a drink with your friends every time this song started playing, as every last one of you would succumb to alcohol poisoning. You’ve been warned.

Another good way to poison yourself via watching this movie would be to take a drink every time Lee’s character tries to deliver a snazzy one-liner. It’s practically every line of his dialogue, and it’s bad. An early example of this would be the scene in which we are introduced to our smarmy protagonist; while exchanging dialogue with a customs agent he’s given the cliched question of “business or pleasure”, to which Lee’s character smugly responds, “a little bit of both”. When asked what exactly CIA operative Gold does, he answers “people management and conduct behavior modification”. His delivery throughout the whole movie is smug, usually with an obnoxious smirk on his face. Several times throughout my viewing I expected him to turn to the camera and say “Amiright?”.

Tonally, ‘Laser Mission’ is all over the place. At times it can be deathly serious, with acts of terrorism, violence, murder, and suspense, and at other times it feels like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. One scene in particular is delightfully cartoonish: Lee’s character parachutes into an enemy camp disguised as a high ranking officer and proceeds to continually slap a comic-relief henchman in the face while demanding various supplies. The whole scenario is so delightfully absurd, it’s like a joke that’s so bad that it becomes funny.

Speaking of jokes that aren’t that funny, I would be remiss in my duties if I did not mention the two comic relief characters, Manuel and Roberta. These two might honestly be the most interesting characters in the movie, or at the very least, they come the closest to having a character arc. When we are introduced to Manuel and Roberta, they are random Soviet soldiers, henchmen for Colonel Kalishnakov. Manuel, portrayed by Pierre Knoesen, is a bumbling private -the aforementioned character that gets slapped around for supplies- while Roberta, portrayed by Maureen Lahoud, is his sergeant. The joke/defining characteristic of

Manuel is that he’s dumb, while Roberta is tough. This plays out “comedically” when during an “exciting” car chase they drive off a dock and into the ocean. When they come out of the water, Roberta’s military top is suddenly gone, and her white undershirt is soaked through. Manuel observes this and exclaims, “You’re a woman?” She scolds him, stating that she’s always been a woman. Get it? It’s funny because he’s dumb! Almost as dumb as the movie’s sexist writers. For the rest of the movie, every time we see these two, Roberta is usually in the process of saving Manuel, while Manuel chides her for being unlady-like. This sort of humor might have been funny to the middle-aged dudes who wrote this 35 years ago, but in viewing it now, it just comes off as groan-worthy.

The first and third acts are both pretty exciting, with plenty of punching, shooting, and exploding to go around, but the middle act is a bit of a slog. The movie uses the mid-section to attempt to flesh out Lee and Monahan’s characters, but the movie itself is so dumb that it just ends up slowing down the story. It doesn’t help that during this bout of attempted character development our protagonists are literally wandering around a desert -a staple of cheap movies. Are you making an action or horror movie on the cheap, but you didn’t write enough script to make it to feature length? Just have your characters wander around the wilderness, that’ll pad the run-time!

Even worse, during this time we literally get to see the writers (there’s two of them, by the way) run out of ideas. As our would-be heroes are wandering through the desert, Colonel Kalishnakov hires a band of mercenaries to track them down. This is a pretty common staple in these kinds of movies, wherein a group of highly skilled and uniquely specialized rogues will threaten our heroes. The adversaries are usually confined to the rules of their gimmicks, and often-times are disposed of in fun, ironic ways. Not so in ‘Laser Mission’, though! Our first mercenary, whom I shall dub Bow and Arrow Guy, is dispatched via getting shot with a gun. The second mercenary, whom I shall dub Horseback Guy, is dispatched via getting shot with a gun. Because good jokes play out in three parts -and because the writers apparently ran out of gimmicks- the third mercenary is just a guy with a shotgun that follows Lee and Monahan on foot. I shall dub him Shotgun Guy. How then, do you suppose they get rid of Shotgun Guy? I guess you’ll just have to watch the movie to find out.

Overall, ‘Laser Mission’ isn’t a good movie by any means. It’s cheaply shot, lazily written, and poorly acted. However, it’s the perfect combination of lazy, dumb, and cheap that makes for a fun watch, especially with friends (and booze). If you’re in need of the cinematic equivalent of hangover food, look no further than ‘Laser Mission’.

By the way, it’s been a while since you’ve heard that sweet, sweet theme music, hasn’t it? Why don’t you go ahead and go back to YouTube, give it another listen. I’ll wait.

‘Laser Mission’ is available to stream for free on both Tubi and PLEX and is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video. Do you have thoughts on ‘Laser Mission’? Or do you have hangover food recommendations? Email them to david@omahadailyrecord.com.