DIRECT HIT is essentially a routine gangland tragedy dressed up with space-age, spy-fi paranoia and played out on cheesy MAN FROM UNCLE sets.
John Hatch (William Forsythe) is a career CIA operative, working in "personnel displacement." After a daredevil mob assassination leaves his rookie understudy dead, he announces his retirement, effective immediately. He plans to take his hard-won pension and build a mountain cabin where he and
his widower father can retire. CIA Director James Tronson (George Segal) is at first incredulous, but then combines threats and leverage to finagle one last contract hit. It seems that charismatic Senate candidate Terry Daniels (John Aprea), himself a former head of the CIA, is being blackmailed
over long-ago compromising photos, and he wishes to retire all parties privy to the transaction. Through his agency contacts, he demands the best the company has to offer; Tronson manages to extort the favor by threatening Hatch's father.
Hatch soon learns that his intended victim is not one of the blackmailers, but rather the woman in the photos, Savannah (Jo Champa), a single mother who was unwittingly hoodwinked into this extortion set-up as a naive youngster. This breaks Hatch's cardinal rule--no women, no children. When his
protestations go unheeded, he breaks into Savannah's apartment and spirits her away as her consort and protector. Hatch fights off legions of CIA assassins, including his co-worker Rogers (Richard Norton), an Aussie hitman now charged with terminating Savannah. Even so, he is unable to save his
father, who is murdered in retribution. Hatch vanquishes Rogers during a showdown at a construction site. Then a helicopter lands bearing Tronson, who awards Hatch his hard-won amnesty. As news of Daniels's chicanery becomes public knowledge, torpedoing his electoral bid, the consummate loner
Hatch now prepares to make a new life with Savannah and her daughter.
Yet another attempt to pass off the hitman as ethical bellwether, DIRECT HIT substitutes tight-lipped encomiums for psychic profundity. On the whole, it's not bad for a generic action picture with moralistic underpinnings, even if the angst starts to congeal in places where it's spread on a
little thick. Meanwhile, Forsythe's hoarsely-whispered Dirty Harry delivery lets arch-enemies and audience alike know they'd better not giggle. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, substance abuse, profanity.) leave a comment
