L'arme suprême

A cheap but workable B-movie thriller with Traci Lords playing a renegade cop on the trail of a drug kingpin wreaking havoc in the city. This one is packed full of violent shoot-outs and assorted mayhem, so it breezes past, and if you don't mind your films low budget then you'll find yourself enjoying it a fair bit like I did. Watch out for Yaphet Kotto's cameo and a bad guy impersonating Tony Montana.

What I see is someone who is trying to buildup a reputation in the industry as legit, after coming from an industry where the mainstream population is going shun you. You have to start somewhere and I'm sure it's not going to be at the top, so for starters I'd expect to see some of the "low budget" type films. I'd say she is still young enough to make the jump to mainstream files but I'd also have to say give her 15 to 20 years to make that jump without the stigma of the past hanging on. Take a look at her biography and see the time frame where she was in the porn industry and when she got out, adding that 20 years to that date brings us pretty close to the current time. So I really think she's got a chance at this and if she makes it, it will indeed be a rarity. Who knows she could be in the next blockbuster, these days you never know. But then that's just me, I'm one of those kooks that hang around to read the credits.

Traci Lords fits pretty well into the action genre - her pouting expression shows believable contempt for her enemies - but she is better suited to "bad girl" rather than heroine parts, IMO. In two mid-90s PM Entertainment productions, she played a cop in "Intent To Kill" and a professional thief in "Ice", and "Ice" was the better vehicle for her. But not only because of her role - she also got to kick much more ass in that one, while the script of "Intent To Kill" is poorly written. It has all sorts of separate threads that never really come together, and although the film opens with a bang (car chase, shootout, multiple explosions), then it slows to a crawl as we spent too much time with Traci's relationship problems with her unfaithful long-time (also cop) boyfriend. The result is a film that doesn't seem sure of itself and of the story it wants to tell. Another problem is the mediocre supporting cast, with the obvious exception of Yaphet Kotto as Traci's boss. *1/2 out of 4.

This is a 1993 straight-to-video stereotypical female-cop-has-to-show-her-stuff-to make-it-to-the-top movie. The action is written into the script AND it is executed...kind of. Traci Lords isn't my idea of an action star. Yes, she has done plenty of action parts, and even does a decent job as Anna in Len Wiseman's Underworld and also contributes a fair performance as Chameleon in Black Mask 2, but I never could wholly buy her as an action star. She doesn't fit the bill, and for me, her presence lessened what enjoyment there COULD be had in this endeavor. Not her performance; that is as good as she gets, but her presence.

But this is typical of the 90's. It is overdone, the performances are over the top dramatically, the dialog is trite and contrived, and the action is choreographed so that no one actually touches ANYone in the hand-to-hand scenes.

The mafia, gang, and cop stereotypical elements are too prolific to enumerate and really drag down the story, such as the story was.

There IS some enjoyment to be had, if you're into late 80's, early 90's M4TV or Str82Video Movies. Directed by Chameleon, whose last "real" movie was...wait. Oops. I can't say he has made anything worth mention. But if you like this, he also directed A Time To Die (1991), also starring Traci Lords, and not any better than this one.

This one rates a 5.6/10 on the TV/Video Scale from...

the Fiend :.

I don't want to go into the plot at all because it's the generic "tough cop, but with feelings getting a hard time from the commissioner, shooting and driving like crazy with a lot of broken glass and explosions" kind of a movie. But I like the aesthetics. The saxophon/synthesizer music, especially during a nighttime LA, the looks of the cast, the not alltoo cheesy dialogue. Tracy Lords was a perfect cast for this direct-to-video flick. And sometimes you like something for no reason than the above mentioned. So no, I don't care that the plot is thin and the movie just ends somehow. Best watched on a CRT on VHS.