Fatal Mission

'Fatal Mission' aka 'Enemy' is a low budget Vietnam flick, the 4:3 fullscreen format suggests it went straight to TV or video tape. Peter Fonda plays an American assassin who kills a North Vietnamese general in the first scene. He wants to escape afterwards by helicopter, but the machine is blown up by a Chinese agent (Tia Carrere). He shoots a bullet into her shoulder, because he really wanted that helicopter. Stranded in hostile territory, the two have only one option left: to work together and find an escape route.

Well, this is mostly very cheap (two characters running through the jungle, actually on the Philippines) with ridiculous extras dropping like flies. Beginning with a very simple story line - enemies become partners in crime -, it has little character development and remains poor in every respect.

"Fatal Mission" or "Enemy" is a well-made Vietnam drama. Peter Fonda plays a special ops soldier who assassinates a Vietnam leader. He escapes into the jungle and meets Mai (Tia Carrere). She is a spy. At first they are enemies, but they figure out they need to stay together to survive.

The only problem in the movie is the ending. It's a little abrupt. There's a hint of a conspiracy in the plot, but it doesn't get mentioned until the last half of the movie.

Besides that, it's worth watching for the performances and action sequences.

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My review was written in July 1990 after watching the movie on Media Home Entertainment video cassette.

A few more rewrites might have saved "Fatal Mission", an interesting two-character war film that self-destructs in the final reel.

Six scripters are credited already on this 1988 Filipino-located production originally titled "Enemy". Protagonists are Peter Fonda, a CIA hireling in Vietnam in the '60s who assassinates a North Vietnamese general, and Tia Carrere, a beautiful agent from China on a similar mission who captures Fonda.

Like dozens of similar films, notably the Peter Strauss-Candice Bergen trekker "Soldier Blue", pic revolves around the love-hate relationship of the duo. They traipse southward and begin to treat each other as equals since both must kill various enemies to survive. Climax is very disappointing, as Fonda escapes in a stolen plane with Carrere written out of the script.

Up until that stinko fadeout, hemer George Rowe does a decent job whipping up atmosphere. It's still tough to accept "Easy Rider" Fond as a gung-ho war hero, but the romantic chemistry between him and the too-pretty Carrere (she looks more like a Miss Philippines finalist than secret agent in black pajamas) works. Name talent like Mako and Jim Mitchum have only brief roles.

As is often the case in these pictures, Filipino thesps in supporting roles do not look convincing as Vietnamese.

So-so reflection on the Vietnamese war, from a script probably written in the 1970s and unrevised; indicating that more thought should have gone into this project. The clothing Fonda wears is anachronistic, very much an 80s outfit, and their are plenty of details that vets and history buffs will rip on. Tia Carerra seems to want to give it her best, but is lost - the director clearly doesn't know what to do with her. Also, she doesn't look or act or sound Chinese in the least. That's a big drawback: her character really has to be as representative of her culture as Fonda's is of his.

Which brings us to the one good thing about the film: This is only later Fonda performance - other than "Limey", where he pretty much plays himself, except in the crisis scenes at the end - that shows what a good actor Fonda could have been; there's still the spark that flamed so brightly and so briefly in "Easy Rider" here. It is really a pity he did't get the roles worthy of his talent.

Other than that, the action scenes are okay, the production values are pretty poor, and the plot is a bit confused; but the film does have something to say about war in general; if only it had been better put together.