In a small Arizona town, 15 year old Zeke Robinson (Rodney Eastman) is a target of casual abuse from educators, bullies, and his abusive stepfather who often escapes into fantasies of being an extraterrestrial waiting for the mothership to return. Near the river, Zeke finds a crate that has gone missing from a U. S. Army transport and inside is a special backpack worn laser pistol that he takes home. After his stepfather flies into a drunken rage and kills Zeke's dog, Zeke in turn kills his stepfather and he embarks aimlessly around town intimidating those who bullied him as the military closes in seeking retrieval of the weapon.
Deadly Weapon is a 1989 direct-to-video sci-fi film from producer Charles Band and written and directed by Michael Miner. Band had initially intended to make a sequel to the 1978 film Laserblast, but when the budget requirements proved unfeasible the idea was reworked into a standalone film. Miner wanted to make a more psychological film taking inspiration from Terrence Malick's Badlands in terms of thematic content with the aesthetic approach of WarGames. While Deadly Weapon doesn't iron out all the kinks of its premise, it's a much more successful execution of the concept that Laserblast tried and failed to do ten years prior.
With Deadly Weapon, the film has two strong assets at play in that it has a much more structured script and a much more appropriately cast actor. While Laserblast was often very confusing in its establishment of characters with Billy Duncan not really projecting the "outsider pushed too far" the filmmakers tried and failed to do, Rodney Eastman feels like much more appropriate casting and coupled with his voiceover narration and the vivid fantasy sequences he has of "the mothership" it makes him much more of an unreliable narrator and makes us question as to whether any of this is actually playing out as we're seeing or if it's just a vivid delusion of someone whose finally snapped. In many ways you can see Deadly Weapon is attempting something that's as multilayer and satirical as RoboCop, and while it doesn't quite reach that point it has more effort than you typically associate with this kind of production.
Deadly Weapon is honestly a pretty decent film considering it originated as a sequel to the not very good Laserblast. If you can find a convenient way of watching it's well worth checking out.
