Laser Mission (aka Soldier of Fortune) is one of the films Brandon Lee made that are not The Crow. And it's awful. Truly, sublimely, terrible. Whether it be Lee's complete inability to deliver a line; the incongruous cold war plot line for a film made in the year the Berlin Wall fell; the insane motivations and actions of the villains; the presence of a massive desert and safari lodge in what is meant to be Cuba; or the tuneful-but-utterly-unfitting soundtrack, this film delivers gloriously entertaining ineptitude on every trashtastic front.
It's also totally not a science fiction film, let alone a"Sci Fi Classic", unless one stretches the definition of science fiction until it is meaningless. There's a some waffle about using lasers and a stolen diamond to make a bomb, but everything else is low-rent James Bond all the way. Lee plays Michael Gold, a secret agent sent to rescue a scientist named Dr Braun (Ernest Borgnine, in his post-Airwolf "may as well appear in any old rubbish" phase) from the KGB. Along the way, he teams up with Braun's daughter, whose principal qualification for spy shenanigans appears to be "has a lot of cleavage".
This is a bad, bad film ... but I found it to be bad in a delightful way. If the idea of a bombastically stupid 80s spy movie appeals to you, you should check it out.
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