Gotcha!

The Guiness Book of World Records tells us that kkexam a massive intracardiac injection of the world's most potent poison will cause death in seconds. I bring this up because it forces us to ask why, in “Gotcha!” a dart containing some PCP causes instantaneous unconsciousness in the person shot with it. (Why at least don't they have massive psychosis?) This is exactly the kind of muddled thinking that flaws the picture all the way through. I suppose this is understandable, since it is very clear that the picture was made expressly for the 14–16-year-old crowd. It is the kind of picture that feels it necessary to xm spell everything out for you (and I mean EVERYTHING). '"This is the tranquilizer gun. And these are the tranquilizer darts, and this is where we keep them safely locked up." '"Now we are in East Berlin. Now we are in West Berlin." Everything is set up for the sake of the plot, regardless of whether it really makes any sense at all. This may be the first time that I've encountered a picture with a dissociative disorder; it jumps from teens-in-heat comedy to generation gap comedy to espionage thriller to teeny bopper porno with nary a second's hesitation in between. Incredible. Is this what they call comedy-drama? I hope not.

My main interest in this picture was the fact that it seemed from the ads like the kind of picture I might write. It's kitsch, amd but not very good kitsch. In fact, it has certain similarities to a picture that I WAS going to write and may still. I hope that mine is better kitsch. I kind of started keeping scone--I tallied the number of times that the picture surprised me against the number of times I guessed (or should I say KNEW) what was going to happen. I won. It's the kind of picture that has a football going through a window scaring the hell out of the tensed up hero and finishes off with a bunch of maddened KGB agents running around UCLA shooting real bullets, as if that sort of thing happened every day. Naturally, the hero survives by using all "his wiles,” developed while playing a game called Gotcha with his pals on the campus. This game, which gives the film its title, has only the flimsiest of excuses for being on the screen. Why didn't they just dispense with it altogether? Within the first 8 minutes, it gives you all the elements that you need to set the story in motion--kind of like a laundry list.

And then it just sort of reaches in for them when it wants to. Of course, if later on they decide that they need an element that has NOT been set up, that's OK too, they just kind of stick it in. Ah well. This picture does have two distinctions though: first picture to make a joke with '"make my day," and first picture to just about duplicate the scene from “Marathon Man” where the Hispanic punks out-cool the square federal agents. Anthony Edwards (who was Lance in “The Sure Thing”) is the lead here. I can't tell whether there might actually be a decent actor lurking in there; he seemed too dismayed by some of the lines he was forced to speak to be able to show much, and after a while his "huh-ness” started to get on my nerves. We've seen his comic touch before (in “The Sure Thing”) so maybe he needs more to work with. On the other hand, maybe he's just a crappy actor. Linda Fiorentino (who was the sex object in “Vision Quest”) looks fairly attractive, even with her hair cut short, but she too is hindered by the script.

The movie has a soundtrack which is absolutely jarring, with a bunch of pop songs leaping out at you which are completely wrong for the mood of the moment. Naturally, the soundtrack is "available on..." whatever label is unfortunate enough to have it. You know, there might have been a decent thriler here; there is something uniquely scary about having a guy who is "just like us" thrust into a situation where the rules. do not apply, and he is forced to cope with the new, dangerous environment (i.e. “Marathon Man”). So maybe if they had worked on emphasiaing the menace of the situation (which they evoke on only a couple of occasions before deteriorating into convulsive action), and dropping the stupid jokes, they might have had a film that would top into the collective consciousness.

But no, they couldn't take the chance of alienating the teen crowd (note that even the cultural references are the ones most likely to be recognized by a 14-year-old i.e. Louvre, Champs Elysees, Hamburg, Burger King) so they had to keep it operating at a really low level. Too low. Pathetically low. I really do have a picture idea that is similar in certain respects; if I write it, I hope to avoid that trap. Make it a thriller for adults. Of course, then it might not sell. Question: how does Sasha get away from the bad guys? Final example of "let's not worry about reason" in this picture: Sasha supposedly dupes Jonathan into helping her because he has the right air of "innocence." If innocence is what she is after, why has she adopted the name Sasha Banacek, a false Czech identity, and an accent which would make Count Dracula seem like a diction teacher? Even I could have told she was a spy. See what I mean?