Breakaway Reviews

Not many action movies feature a hero named Myra in a frilly blouse. BREAKAWAY does, but don't expect it to become a trend, because there's nothing here you're likely to remember half an hour after the end credits have rolled. Tired of doing deliveries for Los Angeles mobster Anton (Ray Dash), Myra (Teri Thompson) steals $300,000 of his money. Before she and her boyfriend, Carter (Chris DeRose), can leave town, Anton gets wise and sends his nephew, Nicky (Michael Garganese), to kill her. On the run, Myra ducks into the art gallery where mild-mannered anthropology professor Dan (Tony Noakes) is waiting to meet a blind date. Myra decides to use Dan as a cover and pretends to be his date. They lose Nicky and end up at a local motel. Anton calls in a professional hitman, Grey (Joe Estevez), to help the incompetent Nicky. But when Grey kills Nicky for getting in his way once too often, Anton orders his men to kill Grey as well as Myra. Myra and Dan meet up with Carter at a secluded cabin in the woods, where Myra eventually tells Dan the truth. What she doesn't know is that Carter is two-timing her with Gina (Tonya Harding), the manager of the restaurant where he has hidden the money. Dan comes to Myra's aid when Carter reveals his true colors and helps her fight off Anton's forces. They are the only survivors of a climactic battle in which the money is presumed destroyed, although it actually has been found by Gina, who uses it to move to Fiji. BREAKAWAY's trump card, aside from the inevitable exposure of its heroine's cosmetically-amplified bosom, is the casting of scandal-ridden professional skater Tonya Harding. (Had Andy Warhol been a little more prescient, he would have predicted a future in which everyone was famous for 90 minutes, the standard length of a made-for-video film.) Harding isn't on screen long enough to have much impact, though in a fight scene she handles herself well enough to suggest that she may have potential as an action heroine. (It's not like the job description generally calls for any thespian abilities.) There's nothing in particular to recommend BREAKAWAY to potential viewers: the performers are bland, the sex perfunctory and the action scenes wholly without panache. (Joe Estevez' portrayal of a superhuman killing machine is strictly an exercise in wishful thinking.) Still, the script doles out its abundance of plot elements so regularly that it at least holds one's attention: one doesn't realize precisely how dull it is until it's over. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.)