An effort to satirize the CIA, BLOWBACK is an adolescent feature, too silly to take seriously and too awkward to be enjoyable, in which as much care seems to have been taken with photographing nubile go-go dancers as with the script.
"Blowback" is a spy term that refers to the unexpected and uncontrollable results of a clandestine operation--in this case, the virtual explosion of domestic drug dealing, fueled, in part, by CIA-sponsored narcotics trade in Central America. CIA agent Owen Monroe (Bruce McCarty), a robot-like
patriot who mouths platitudes, is sent to Miami to ensure nothing is learned of his employer's illicit activities.
In Miami, the scene centers on a shabby club patronized by the likes of drug-dealer Emilio De Leon (Eddie Figueroa), onetime employee of the CIA and the mad Dr. Krack (Craig Smith), who had concocted bizarre schemes for the agency. Krack resembles a combination of Dr. Strangelove and Davos, the
creator of the dreaded Daleks from the BBC's "Dr. Who" TV series, since he sits in a motorized vat of yogurt as salve for some failed experiment. Most of the deranged scientist's activities revolve around keeping his work secret from potential informers like Emilio and inventing an orgasmic
O-Bomb. Emilio is injected with some odd combination of drugs and ends up in an addiction center where Nancy Jones (Jane Hamper) is a counselor.
Nancy's father is a veteran CIA operative and introduces Monroe to her. Emilio has befriended Nancy, as the only sympathetic person at the drug rehabilitation center, and has begun to tell her in incoherent terms about "blowback" operations. Monroe doesn't reveal his CIA connection to Nancy and
their brief love affair inadvertently helps Dr. Krack complete his O-Bomb. Eventually realizing the threat from Monroe, Nancy and Emilio trick him and also detonate the O-Bomb, which appears to convert the CIA agent from his primitive patriotism.
Though there are some decently burlesqued elements--Dr. Krack, a skull and bones ceremony and the drug treatment center--BLOWBACK is infinitely less than the sum of its uneven parts. One reason is that director, writer and producer Mark Levin is at the mercy of his contradictory arguments, since
drug taking is defended as a civil right, yet Levin also condemns CIA drug smuggling. The filmmakers seem to have forgotten that either the spies' aims or their methods must be taken seriously to heighten the humorous aspect of the other. The blatant hypocrisy of the CIA is a funny target, but
BLOWBACK too is a practitioner of this sin, since it uses the imagery of sex, not only for the O-Bomb, but for gratuitous scene-filling as well. (Profanity, nudity.) leave a comment
