DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY begins with a gratuitous "teaser," an apparent murder attempt on a scuba diver. It's all in good fun, as it turns out, though novices should note that tearing away a buddy's regulator is not recommended for underwater amusement.
After scuba-diving at the beach with her father, hardened Vietnam vet and US Marine instructor Cole Hickel (Bruce Boxleitner), lovely Ellen (Sharon L. Kase) deserts him for a date with Klaus Hermann (Tom Breznahan), a Paraguayan national of aristocratic, presumably Nazi, German descent. Hickel,
who has no other family, disapproves of his daughter's clean-cut but shady boyfriend, and he's tragically right: Klaus soon kills Ellen. The police capture Klaus for trial but, as one bureaucrat advises, "There are limits to what a nation can do." "Well sometimes a man can do more," asserts
Hickel. The vengeful leatherneck purchases new identity papers and sets off for Paraguay to deal his own brand of justice.
What made Theodore Taylor's novel The Stalker so riveting was the plausibility of Cole Hickel's vendetta. Using one of the most basic, worn-out plots in thriller fiction, Taylor takes the reader step-by-step through a mostly believable international death hunt. The book openly scorned exaggerated
RAMBO-esque avengers of pulp cinema, turning Hickel into a three-dimensional hero who often questions the morality of his revenge. DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY, on the other hand, gives the premise right back to the cliches. Boxleitner may crack a smile occasionally and string more than three words
together to form a sentence, but he's the standard Hollywood one-man-army. Fists don't faze him, bullets barely graze by, and legions of pursuers drop like clay pigeons from the Marine's unerring bursts of ammo. And he doesn't even have to be bilingual.
It's all been done before, frequently worse than this. Action specialist Peter Maris directs DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY at a swift pace, and the supporting cast is solid. Cadaverous Billy Drago, heir apparent to the late Lee Van Cleef, has a stock but effective role as Cowboy, a Yankee arms trader who
becomes Hickel's Paraguay ally (of course, the character's fate is telegraphed every time he repeats his imminent idyllic retirement plans). Breznahan's handsome boyishness sharpens his villainy--it turns out he murdered Ellen to photograph her battered body for his sado-masochistic paintings.
(What did the Marine's kid see in this guy?) The underrated Meg Foster (A DIFFERENT STORY, THE EMERALD STORY) makes the most of her brief scenes as Klaus's slinky, dragon-lady mom, and an incestuous triangle between the two and their bodyguard (Christopher Neame) is succinctly sketched.
In the novel the ship-building Hermanns dwell in West Germany, creating a savory portrayal of German industrial strength jackboot-deep in the fascist past. DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY hedges by relocating to Paraguay (looking like a backlot barrio) and switching the family business to munitions. The film
does provide a more satisfying ending than the book did. What's disappointing is the overall diminished aspirations. (Violence, profanity, sexual situations, nudity.) leave a comment