Lorenzo Lamas's turgid action sequel to last year's video hit CIA--CODE NAME: ALEXA finds CIA agent Mark Graver (Lorenzo Lamas) sleuthing out his estranged lover and karate cohort Alexa (Kathleen Kinmont), who, with her young daughter Tanya (Sandee Van Dyke), is now in a witness protection
program following her terrorist-busting exploits in the first film.
International terrorist Ralph Straker (John Ryan) has stolen the US top secret "nuclear guidance actuator module" with the help of Wilson (Daryl Roach), a mole in the CIA. However, in a separate operation, mercenary soldier Franz Kluge (John Savage) and his second-in-command, warrior woman Lana
(Lori Fetrick), steal the computer chip needed to activate the module. Aided by Graver, and against the advice of his CIA mentor Robin (Pamela Dixon), Alexa infiltrates the mercenary training camp of Kluge, who is also her former lover and the father of Tanya. Lana is soon revealed as a traitor,
and Alexa fights and kills her. As Graver leads a CIA attack on Kluge's forces, Alexa escapes with Kluge and joins Straker, who plans to sell the soon-to-be-completed module to the North Korean Colonel Trang (Michael Chong). The final battle has Graver and Kluge briefly joining forces to defeat
Straker; as the CIA team closes in, Alexa saves the module and chip, while Kluge escapes for further mayhem. Graver and Alexa, in love once again, are reunited.
Lamas (son of Arlene Dahl and Fernando Lamas) and his wife, B-movie actress Kinmont, parlayed their success on TV's syndicated series "Renegade" into one of 1993's brighter straight-to-video action films, CIA--CODE NAME: ALEXA. Reportedly, their marriage went sour, and so, on the evidence of
this sequel, has this potentially robust film series. Perhaps to capitalize on the success of the first film, C.I.A. II was rushed into production; the script, by Michael January (TO BE THE BEST), is strictly bare-bones, with a slight plot that strains to provide its repeating characters with new
shenanigans. Lamas's decision to take the director's reins---his first time out--failed to help matters. C.I.A. II is slow-moving, contrived, and patently unbelievable, with a surfeit of bland villains, lame action sequences, and barely tolerable acting. John Savage, once a respected mainstream
actor, is amateurish, and Lamas's brand of bare-chested machismo has already worn painfully thin. Shot in Los Angeles and Rancho Palos Verdes, and released direct-to-video and cable, the movie is the most lackluster PM release in quite a while. (Violence, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment
