Picasso Trigger

Let's just cut to the chase straight away here and say upfront that the only sane reason to watch an Andy Sidaris film is to see beautiful playmates get naked and shoot guns. What other reason is there? This one has a convoluted plot-line that I quite honestly can't be bothered to describe. What I will say is that the story is not exactly its strong point. Needless to say, as per Sidaris other films, there are a lot of explosions and a lot of feeble gadgets. But the action scenes are so lacklustre that you will be hard pressed to care. Honestly, when you consider the awesome bevy of beautiful babes that Sidaris improbably had at his disposal, you can't help but wish the films had a little more imagination or life about them.

This one is neither one of his best, nor is it one of his worst but it's pretty much essentially the same as all of them. The only true differentiating factor that I can ever discern is which ladies do we have and is there a lot of nudity? All other aspects merge into one as far as his filmography is concerned. This one's chief selling point is Dona Speir, who is very nice indeed. And, yes, she strips off a few times, along with several of her other female co-stars. So, consequently, the film does have some entertainment value. Other than that, it has quite a good title.

This film essentially begins with an international crime lord known as "Picasso Trigger" (John Aprea) being assassinated in Paris by a colleague named "Miguel Ortiz" (Rodrigo Obregon) who wants to take over his underworld empire. Not only that, but Miguel is equally determined to kill everyone who anything to do with the death of his brother some time before. To that extent, one of his first attempts is against both "Donna" (Dona Speir) and "Taryn" (Hope Marie Carlton) were vacationing on a boat just off the coast of Maui. Fortunately, as luck would have it, the two of them had just gone snorkeling just minutes before a remote-controlled airplane bomb slams into their boat and blowing it up. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, a colleague of Miguel by the name of "Mr. Schiavo" (Nicholas Georgiade) has also targeted several agents who have been investigating his white-slavery racket as well. To that effect, with so many of his agents being either killed or narrowly escaping assassination attempts, the man in charge of these agents by the name of "L. G. Abilene" (Guich Koock) decides to turn the tables and go after Miguel Ortiz. What he doesn't know, however, is that there is more to these assassination attempts than he realizes and there is one person within his agency that has a secret agenda of their own. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this sequel to "Hard Ticket to Hawaii" was, in my opinion, a little bit better than its predecessor as both the acting and the script showed a slight improvement. Likewise, the presence of several attractive actresses like Cynthia Bremhall (as "Edy"), Roberta Vasquez ("Pantera"), Kym Malin ("Kym") and the aforementioned Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton certainly didn't hurt either. On the other hand, much like the previous picture, the plot lacked depth and needed a lot more suspense or intrigue as the numerous action scenes were simply not sufficient to maintain interest for an extended period of time. At least, I didn't think so. Be that as it may, while this wasn't a bad action film by any means, it had its faults and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

It's not his best work, but I still don't feel like I wasted my rental.

It drags on in some parts, and most of the hand to hand fight scenes are really unconvincing.

On the plus side, it has some tricks and twists that an audience member really wouldn't see coming.

No Julie Strain, but Donna Spier and Roberta Velasquez look really good in most of their shots. :)

Still, the nudity, while gratuitous, isn't very common in occurrence. The scenes where the characters are in swimsuits are nice, I guess. I have to admit they look pretty good.

It really didn't flow very well, and it had some scenes that were just plain boring.

Overall, I still like Sidaris' work, because it's the best you'll ever get in this kind of film work, I think, but he's done better.

Just watching the credits for Sidaris' flicks reveals where he gets his cast. Everyone is from Playboy, Penthouse, or Playgirl. What the heck, everyone wants a chance to act. At least none of these folks gave Sidaris any headaches about doing nude scenes!

The movies are popcorn, not meant to be taken to seriously. Just sit back and watch a bunch of occassionally naked women and guys kill some nefarious bad guys.

Dona Speir confessed in an interview (DVD bonus) she didn't understand the movie after reading the script and she figured it out only after she watched the final product 4 times. She isn't the only one, I suppose. I blame this confusion on the villain who keeps hidden most of the time so you wonder who's actually fighting whom and why. The killers' messages are quite poetic: "The ones with the flower have been scattered this hour", one writes to notify the others that his job his done. "I've got a black belt in shotgun", another lady says after she shot a kung fu fighter. The Dutch DVD I've got uses the tagline "Moorden is een vorm van kunst" ("Killing is an art form", I think it translates) - and these cynical tidbits just to demonstrate "Picasso Trigger" is somewhat more violent (and with less nudity) than other movies of the Lethal Ladies series. I loved the exploding boomerang as a weapon or when 1 of the heroes fires about 20 times at 1 bad guy and misses him every time. Playboy's Roberta Vasquez in her first appearance for Andy Sidaris slips into a pair of ripped jeans, showing beautiful legs, beautiful dark eyes, beautiful... everything! Note: this is the 3rd out of my 12 reviews for the works of Andy Sidaris, in chronological order.