Laserhawk
(1997)
Director: Jean
Pellerin
Cast: Jason James Richter, Melissa Galianos, Mark Hamill
You know a movie is in trouble when the opening
narration makes absolutely
no sense at all. And you know a movie is in trouble when the story
always
remains at a constant level of confusion as it progresses. But the
biggest
sign for me that Laserhawk was doomed was in a
throwaway
shot of a movie theater, where the marquee proclaims the double bill of
the movies Cyberjack (a.k.a. Virtual Assassin)
and Xtro 2. Both those movies were produced by John A.
Curtis,
and these movies weren't exactly great entertainment - in fact, they
sucked!
Curtis also produced Laserhawk, and it continues his
not-so-great
tradition of non-entertainment.
Don't be fooled by the fact that Mark Hamill's name is
prominently displayed
on the front of the video box; he only appears for about 20 minutes in
the movie, and a large chunk of that footage is when the central
characters
are watching a videotape with him in it. Hamill's face looks puffy, and
is covered with pimples and five o'clock shadow. He has rings around
his
eyes, and talks very tiredly, in slurry tones. Though he has given some
good performances in the past (like in Slipstream),
here he looks and acts so badly, it's tough to watch his scenes. To
make
matters worse, his role is extremely inconsequential; aside from the
videotape
scene, his character really isn't needed at all. It seems the
screenwriter
realized this, and at the end of those twenty minutes, wrote Hamill's
character
out of the screenplay. This is an example of what makes Laserhawk's
screenplay one of the worst screenplays I've encountered for
quite
some time.
For starters, the story; after having seen the entire
movie, and rereading
my notes several times, I still can't figure out many of the key
elements
of the plot. The prologue - some mess about battling alien factions -
jumps
from 250 million years to fifteen years from the present, without
properly
establishing who is who, and why they did what they did. As a result, I
didn't understand subsequently what was so important about some alien
spacecraft
that crashes on earth, who the beings piloting it were, or why
Bethlehem
stars came out of their bodies, flying into the heavens. I'll put all
of
that aside for now, and concentrate on the present story: Apparently,
maverick
teenager Zack (Richler) has faked some U.F.O. footage as a prank, and
to
impress the coolest girl in school - apparently, because all of this is
shown so quickly and incompletely, I had to stop the movie there to
give
myself time to fill in the missing details. Even though this movie runs
101 minutes, there seems to be a lot of scenes missing in this
movie.
I suppose this movie could have had some problems in its production
that
forced the producers to edit something together resembling a movie. Or
maybe, as I stated before, Laserhawk's screenplay was
just
ineptly written.
I'll now try to get back to explaining the story. The
footage is soon
revealed to be a hoax, and Zach is pretty much an outcast. Weird events
start happening in the area - Zack sees strange lights coming from the
sky at night, and a bus that was filled with teenagers is found
abandoned,
with the teens missing. The investigating cops - who are so stupid,
they
don't find an important video camera in the bus, or see that the bus
made
an impression from being dropped from the sky - still don't see
anything
wrong, nor do they seem concerned about all these missing teenager for
some reason (who trained these idiots?) By now, Josh has teamed up with
outcast teen Kara (Galianos), and after an expedition to that bus, they
return to town to find that everyone in town has.....vanished.
At this point, it seems the movie, though remaining as
stupid as ever,
will at least be comprehensible. But almost as soon as we think us, the
movie pulls another switch on us, and the movies grows more and more
stupid.
Some examples: Kara soon pulls out an alien artifact from nowhere, with
no explanation of her possession of it here or elsewhere in the
movie....the
two teens later barge into a mansion past the butler, who does nothing
to stop them.....the owner of the mansion is first seen asleep, then in
the next scene he is suddenly seen chatting to the teens like they are
old friends.....the mansion owner is a millionaire after writing and
drawing
just two comic books....his mansion is right next to an abandoned
warehouse
district (so things can be blown up)....a totally unnecessary and out
of
context scene of a frog getting run over by a car....Kara suddenly
knowing
things about an important find that no one could possibly have known or
guessed....and a climax that not only rips off The Last
Starfighter,
but Independence Day and Return of the Jedi.
Throughout the movie, one is also underwhelmed by the poor level of
acting,
direction, lighting, set design, cinematography, and imagination in
just
about every scene. The seeming lack of enthusiasm about making this
film
also creeps into the energy level; nowhere in the movie is there any
feeling,
whether it be tension, mystery, fear, or excitement.
In short, there's very little positive to say about what
Laserhawk has
to offer. There are a few acceptable special effects, like when beams
of
light beam down from the alien spacecrafts. The computer-generated
effects
in the climax actually look quite lavish, especially considering how
the
rest of the movie looks. And I was impressed with the audacity the
movie
had, with removing and killing (off screen) the kind of characters you
usually don't see get that fate in genre movies like this. (I don't
understand,
however, why the movie took the time to develop some personality for
two
such characters before suddenly bumping them off.) But as you probably
know already, a few asides and some pretty dressing do not develop
stories
that are comprehensible and interesting.
A message to producer John A. Curtis: With this film,
you are now alongside
North American Releasing (Act of War)
on my "three strikes and you're out" list.
UPDATE: I received the following letter
from someone who actually worked on this movie! At the person's
request,
they shall remain anonymous:
"Hey dude, can you believe it, I was surfing off of
the Internet
Movie Database Links when I found your page devoted to ... Laserhawk.
I read your review all the way through and had to chuckle. Your
comments
about the terrible script, the retreat concept and the confusing
direction
were bang on. In fact, these comments already occurred to me as I suffered
through the post production of my one and only special
effects gig. That's right, I was part of the team that put together all
of the computer graphics, which was about the only thing you liked
about Laserhawk.
We spent nearly a year on the effects if you can believe it and it was
80% agony.
"We were all pretty young but eager to launch into an
honest to goodness
science fiction film. We had people draw concept art, we were allowed
to
build models from scratch and come up with a lot of the sequences
ourselves.
But our enthusiasm was quickly lost when we realized that there wasn't
much of a script, that our FX was going to be shoe-horned in without
rhyme
or reason, and that the people above us weren't very interested in
making
a good film. This is not to say that Laserhawk was ever meant
to
be more than B material, but there were a lot of good ideas and sound
FX
concepts that failed to make it out of our group because our producers
were more interested in showing they were big enough to put out a
computer
graphics show.
"You mention the name John Curtis a lot. He was
certainly responsible
for the script, but by the time it reached post-production he was out
of
the picture and we had to deal with a different set of idiots
altogether.
Our producers did a lot of muscle flexing, liked to show off their
'Hollywood'
connections and liked to act like they were experts - which they were
not.
We would have weeks of work thrown out in one day because certain
people
wanted to show investors and their friends that they were big studio
pricks
and could make snap decisions. One fellow in particular was a big name
dropper. He had worked with "John Dykstra", was pals with "Doug
Trumbull",
etc. etc. but somehow ended up working on a great film like Laserhawk.
Most of the time he'd walk in, dis your work, and dream up a cheesy
shot
that had been done a hundred times in Battlestar Galactica. The
rest of the time he'd be off spending company money schmoozing
'clients'. That part of film production I hope
never to see again.
"All in all, it's incredible we got it out at all. We
were weeks
late, over budget, and minus half our team who had either left in
relief
or were fired when they got on the wrong side of management (including
our lead who was an Emmy Award winner for his work in CG). I survived
until
I had finished my part and quit soon after, never believing I'd see Laserhawk
in the theatres, much less on TV.
"As for Mark Hamill - never got to meet him. That
would have been
a consolation."
UPDATE 2: Daniel Séguin revealed to me more
information on the movie's troubled production:
"I also can't believe that there is any reviews on
this so called "movie" Laserhawk. I also worked on the film as
one of the composers. There were 2 versions of the film made; the first
one had the very long intro with the spaceship flying slowly for a long
time (over 6 minutes, I think it was!!) I worked on the "B" version
(the one with the 2 ships chasing each other). I ended up writing the
music for that intro (2:20 seconds, to be exact!) and it was hell!! On
top of it all, I never got paid in full and I received part of the
balance a year after I delivered the music!! The company that took over
the film, Motion Works, folded right after the film was complete. Yes,
they were a bunch of bozos and total losers!! I laugh about it now but
I hope I won't have to go through that again!"
Check
for availability on Amazon (DVD)
See also: Invader, Star Kid, The High Crusade
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