Sam (Heather Marie Marsden) is a sexy and badass mercenary who tags along on an assignment with her boss/mentor (John Colton). When the deal goes sour, he is kidnapped and tortured by a sleazy Russian arms dealer named Federov (Lorenzo Lamas) who is looking for a mysterious “package”. Sam then teams up with a beefy Fed (Frank Zagarino) to save her boss and bring down Federov. The stakes are raised when Federov also kidnaps Sam’s sister (Jennifer MacIsaac).
Lethal gets off to a promising start. Marsden makes one heck of an entrance wearing nothing but skimpy underthings before opening up her closet. You think it’s going to contain her wardrobe, but… surprise! It’s where she keeps her arsenal of weapons. She then gets a strong fight scene in a strip club where she takes center stage and Kung Fus a bunch of goons. Once the plot (and by “plot”, I mean, “a bunch of action movie cliches”) kicks in, things start going downhill as the movie begins to get bogged down with a lot of exposition and shit.
Marsden makes for a likeable leading lady though. She looks great in her leather coat and crop top T-shirt while kicking ass. She has a considerable amount of charisma too. It’s a shame she never became an action star because based on the evidence here, she had the chops.
I watched Lethal hoping for a great Lorenzo Lamas performance, and I have to admit, he’s pretty good. He doesn’t go overboard with the Russian accent, but he comes awfully close. It might not be his finest hour, but it’s fun seeing him chew the scenery a bit in a rare villainous role. Zagarino, on the other hand, is stuck playing a bland federal agent, and it’s a role he ultimately can’t do a whole lot with since it’s so thinly written.
Director Dustin (Easy Rider 2: The Ride Back) Rikert handles the various shootouts and fistfights in a competent manner. He also tosses in some dime store versions of John Woo slow motion and Michael Bay whirl-a-rounds in there for good measure. By the time Marsden does her little Matrix move in the third act, you get a sense that no one was really taking any of this seriously… and I mean that as a compliment. Too bad he couldn’t bring some of that same kind of fun to the dialogue scenes, which are mostly dull.
Lethal isn’t going to be labeled a classic by anyone, but I had some fun with it. The cheeky action scenes alone give the film personality, which is at the very least something you can hang your hat on. I’ll remember it longer than dozens of other cookie cutter DTV actioners, that’s for sure. (But not much longer.)
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