Bullet Points: Lethal

With today being Woman Crush Wednesday in social media circles it seemed like a great day to post my review of Lethal. Why you may ask? Because it didn’t take long for me to develop a crush on the star of the movie, Heather Marie Marsden.

Let me go on record by saying that Lethal is in no way a good movie. But I still managed to enjoy it and a great deal of the credit goes to Marsden.  I was actually surprised given her performance that she didn’t have more action movies on her resume.

• The Premise: Marsden plays Samantha Stewart, the daughter of a long time FBI Agent, she dropped out of Quantico just weeks before her graduation, after the FBI used her father as a scapegoat for a failed mission. Now she finds herself taking care of her sister (their father passed away shortly after his FBI fiasco) and working as a mercenary to pay the bills. She finds herself working with the FBI, including her former boyfriend Tom Maddox (Mark Mortimer) and a former protege of her father, Ethan Marshall (Frank Zagarino) trying to prevent the Russian mob from obtaining a disc with military secrets on it.

• Questionable Casting: The producers of this movie thought it would be wise to cast Lorenzo Lamas as a former KGB agent turned lieutenant in the Russian mob, Anatoly Federov. As this movie progressed, I really got the feeling even Lorenzo realized how ridiculous it was for him to play a Russian. His attempt at a Russian accent falls into the “so bad it is good” variety and honestly that is really the vibe this movie takes very early on.
• Believability: While I did not buy Lamas as a Russian, I did fully invest in Samantha Stewart being a kick ass mercenary. She has some great hand to hand combat scenes, including one at a strip club, where she actually uses the strippers and the stripper pole to her advantage. And she also knows how to handle a gun… a great trait for any mercenary to have male or female.

• Staples?: At one point in the movie in order to gain a bargaining advantage over Samantha, Federov abducts Samantha’s sister Heather. Heather, her boyfriend and two other friends had ditched school, but Federov managed to get the jump on them as they were coming out of a Staples… yes 4 teenagers ditched high school so they could go hang out a Staples. Now Federov has something Samantha wants and Samantha has something he wants. I did find it troubling that after Federov guns down Heather’s friends outside the Staples and then goes after Heather who went back inside the Staples to escape this crazy “Russian”, that nobody felt the police needed to be notified, there was no screams or people in a panic. In fact, Federov walks by a woman as he is basically dragging Heather with him and it is like business as usual at Staples… if that’s the case I’m never going inside a Staples again! Although there was a fair chance I was never going inside a Staples again anyway.

Again I’ll say it, this is not a good movie. But it is one of those movies that seems to realize it, so everyone goes out there and has some fun. This is an action movie after all, nobody expects it to solve world hunger.

But if you are hungry for some more Lethal Bullet Points, I’m happy to oblige…

• First Impressions: We are introduced to the Samantha character while she is in her bra & panties.
• Best Death: Yuri’s death is by far the best death in the entire movie and another example of this movie not taking itself so seriously.
• A Lethal Money Saving Tip: If you are making an action film and you need an unlimited supply of goons, have your goons wear masks. Then you can have them killed off in one scene but appear later in the movie as a different nameless goon since you never see their faces.