Released directly to home video in the US, this cloak 'n' dagger travelogue reprises the amusing dogface character created by B-movie auteur Wayne Crawford in his 1991 Hong Kong fracas CRIME LORDS.
En route to a Greek vacation, lowly American cop Elmo LaGrange (Wayne Crawford) learns to regret his plane's stopover in Moscow. First ragamuffin Nickolai (Nickolai Nedovodin) steals Elmo's passport to guarantee his unofficial guardianship. Then Elmo is mistaken for a CIA ace by the Russian mob.
He befriends Gina (Ashley Laurence), a gal claiming to be an American doctoral candidate abroad; Elmo doesn't realize that she's a double agent duping a transplanted Mafia chief, Franco (Daniel Quinn), whose latest order is for her to terminate Elmo. Warned by Nickolai, Elmo flees without deducing
that Gina simply wants to use LaGrange's mistaken identity to cover her own lawful mission. Nickolai's sister Katerina (Olga Vodin), who hides young street crooks under a hockey stadium, talks fugitive Elmo into flying to St. Petersburg for a passport, but Franco's missiles force them to parachute
down to a village. Captured Elmo is set free by Gina, but she seals her doom by confessing CIA affiliation in a bugged automobile. A Franco henchman takes the street urchins hostage, forcing Elmo to join a rescue effort led by local partisans. The proletarian guerillas bust up the Russian-American
crime confederation and save the children, while Elmo gets to duel against Franco, outdrawing the villain with a bazooka. His passport returned by Nickolai, Elmo heads home but vows to lock lips with Katerina in the future.
Confront AMERICAN COP with expectations lowered, and one won't be turned off by its amateurish acting, impenetrable accents, offhand screenwriting, and one-take direction. This low-budget action retread tickles its audience with an air of bonhomie, an agreeably scruffy leading man, and the kick
of watching American gangster cliches spelled out in Cyrillic. Unconventionally sexy (and middle-aged) hero-by-default LaGrange is the glue holding all the happenstance together. Without his mutt act, the assembly-line sadism scattered throughout the standard secret agent storyline might be
curdling experience. All modest escapism needs to accomplish is invite viewers to the mayhem party, spin the punchy protagonist around a few times, and then let him remove his blindfold in time to pin the tail on a few shooters. The plot details can be stale as long as the cast behaves as if the
violent circumstances are news to them. Sensibly treating the international carnage as a lark, AMERICAN COP parcels out thrills, disguises its redundancies, and ensures goodwill by calling attention to the out-of-shape hero's limitations. Although buffs could have written this script in one
sitting, the pointedly non-serious flick lets viewers derive some pleasure from a droll stroll through familiar setups. (Graphic violence, profanity.) leave a comment