Gotcha!: Uma Arma do Barulho

Anthony Edwards played an 18 year old college student from Los Angeles, California where he goes to Paris, France on vacation. He meets Sasha, a Czech woman played well by Linda Fiorentino. The film begins with a silly game called Gotcha! I thought the film would be more funny than expected. It has some serious moments. Linda Fiorentino and Anthony Edwards' characters have chemistry onscreen. The adventure abroad in Europe during the last days of the cold war in the eighties were interesting. Alex Rocca and Marla Adams were cast as Jonathan's parents. The film is enjoyable and entertaining. I didn't think it was such as serious film with the title so I was pleasantly surprised. Both stars were getting their career started with films like these. The plot and mystery isn't as predictable to the audience.

This movie is a real 80,s movie but in a positive way. It also brings back those memories of the cold war that used to be. Especially in East-Berlin the movie becomes tense. Besides tense the movie is also quite funny.Anthony Edwards is well-cast as the young man being whirled into the wicked world of espionage behind the Iron Curtain, and I can´t help falling in love with Linda Fiorentino..That woman is so seductive and sexy in a strange mysterious way. She, and the border-tension of East Berlin, is my main reason for really liking this movie...They don´t make´em like this any more....Its Spy Game of the 80,s...

Quite an appealing and quirky, if dated (with its politics) mid-eighties teen romantic comedy-thriller set mainly in Europe and starring a young Anthony Edwards as a college sophomore who's simply an ace at a campus assassination game known as Gotcha, although he can't seem to score with the girls. He hopes that this would change when he travels to Europe for a summer vacation and things do turn out for him when he meets a young lady Sasha. Everything is going well, until they travel to East Berlin where he learns she is not all that she seems. She disappears and he finds himself on the run from some Russian spies who believe he has something they want. "Gotcha!" starts off like your typical simple minded teen comedy, before slowly setting the situation up (dangerous spy games) and then having the novelty (our hero being a pro with a paint gun) ending in an ironically smart manner. Director Jeff Kanew (who was behind "Revenge of the Nerds") does a workable job blending its romantic shades (which familiarly plays out its message) with the lethal action in some amusingly funny exchanges (like those scenes involving the worried parents; "You had to let him go to Europe"!) and thrilling on-the-run scenarios. The script is sharply penned with its dialogues. A likable Edwards is perfectly cast in lead role as the naïve hero who actually becomes a target for real and Linda Fiorentino is ravishingly mysterious as the lady who he falls for. Gotta love the title song too… it has a catchy hook and also showing up in the cast is Alex Rocco.

"It's just a game."

In my book, Gotcha! is another good movie in Anthony Edward's catalog of 80s movies. Edwards is Jonathan, a somewhat wimpy looking college student who's afternoon frat boy fun of tagging his rival classmates with a dart gun as he chases them around campus, is about to come a reality in an arena of gritty international espionage. And Jonathan oughta know, these guys don't f**k around.

Jonathan and his buddy, Manolo (Jsu Garcia) take a trip to Europe during semester vacation. For Jonathan, he'd like to spend times soaking up the local culture with beautiful girls, but he's just too quiet for all of that, unlike Manolo, who's so brazen that his pick up lines are thinly disguised stories about him being a spy and needing an escort to help distract those who are following him. So, of course Manolo gets the girl.

But Jonathan soon get's lucky, too, meeting an elegant, but secretive Russian woman named Sasha (Linda Florentino) who gives him some story about being an exchange student and all of that. He even ditches his friend, Manolo (they were supposed to go to Spain) to go with his girlfriend to Germany, which is not an ideal vacation destination in 1985. But Jonathan, smitten with his new girlfriend, finds out there is more going on, and soon enough, his little games of pretending to be a spy are going to help him get out a real jam, or else he's going to wind up dead. It is actually a really enjoyable movie, seeing this quirky guy stuck in a real life game of cat and mouse.

What can I say, but this is one of those "eighties movies" featuring Anthony Edwards before he was "Goose" and Linda Fiorentino before she was that chick in M.I.B.

Plot Summary: A paintball enthusiast utilizes his finely tuned skill at hiding behind things when he gets involved with a CIA courier working behind the Iron Curtain. East Germany meets West L.A. with some really funny stereo-types that weren't all that tired when this movie came out in '85.

This film is primarily aimed at entertaining young men with a 007 lust. Still, there are so many one-liners and funny bits that my sister and I still make references to this movie when joking around, e.g. "I thought he was KGB from Russia." ~ "He's a CPA from Encino! Are you outta your mind?"

The utilization of various on-location landmarks make it fun and almost like a travelogue movie. There's a German fortress, the Louvre (pre-pyramid entrance), the eiffel tower, the UCLA campus, Olvera Street in Downtown L.A., and the Bonnaventure Hotel.

I also love this movie for introducing me to Pernod, and the scene in which it is introduced is so funny I can still remember it line for line!! I love this movie!!