C.I.A. Code Name: Alexa Reviews

This is a highly charged, but highly derivative action picture about Alexa, a terrorist recruited by the CIA. Mark Graver (Lorenzo Lamas), a CIA operative in Los Angeles, kills a terrorist during a prison break, not knowing that the man's body contains a microchip with nuclear weapons information. To retrieve the chip, Mahler (Alex Cord), a foreign diplomat, sends his own squad of terrorists to abduct the corpse from the funeral; but during the melee one of the terrorists, Alexa (Kathleen Kinmont), is captured and taken to a nearby police station by two detectives, Murphy (O.J. Simpson) and Benedetti (Michael Bailey Smith). Graver intervenes, however, and takes Alexa to CIA headquarters, where she is convinced to turn informer. Alexa consents to work for the CIA against Mahler, her former lover and mentor, after Graver offers her immunity and the chance to be reunited with her young daughter, Tanya. Meanwhile, the detectives follow Alexa and order an autopsy of the dead terrorist; but Mahler's thugs kill Benedetti and steal the corpse from the hospital. Alexa and the Federal agents execute a break-in to Mahler's mansion, just as Mahler's surgeon has removed the microchip from the corpse. Alexa then kills most of Mahler's men in an ambush on his house, and steals the chip back. Mahler retaliates by kidnapping Tanya and holding her hostage in exchange for the chip. At LA airport, Alexa and Mark plan the exchange, but Tanya escapes from Mahler's henchmen, and the two sides engage in a struggle that leaves both Murphy and Mahler dead. Mark then leaves the agency to join Alexa and Tanya, despite a commendation from his superior. The addition of Lorenzo Lamas and Kathleen Kinmont to the PM Entertainment star roster illustrates the perfect "marriage" of B movie actors to a B movie company. Married in real life, Lamas and Kinmont have been the stars of the syndicated television series, "Renegade," since September 1992, and their first PM Entertainment production, FINAL IMPACT (also in 1992), was successful enough to warrant this follow-up vehicle, which is actually the more engrossing film of the two. With a plot stolen from the hit French action picture, LA FEMME NIKITA (1992), remade in the US as POINT OF NO RETURN (1993), CIA--CODE NAME ALEXA, switches the acting team's customary emphasis on Lamas, the son of Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl, to Kinmont, who plays the nominal lead (she's even billed above her husband). Kinmont, as the initially ruthless enemy agent, is also given a more developed role than usual (on RENEGADE and in FINAL IMPACT, she portrays little more than the girlfriend-in-waiting). Gradually and predictably, the narrative forces Alexa to show her "soft" maternal side, and her romance with Mark further lightens the violent nature of her character, who is said to have helped in both an overthrow of the Angolan government in 1988 and a revolt in Cambodia in 1989. The reconstituted American family portrait at the conclusion seems almost absurd in the context of what has come before (another major flaw of the screenplay is making Alexa care about her daughter's safety only after the girl is introduced to the storyline). Still, action-adventure fans will enjoy the many fights, explosions, and bodies going through plate-glass windows. The pace of the film is crisp enough, even with pauses for a gratuitous but obligatory kick-boxing match, one (mostly concealed) love-making scene, and an extended climax in the labyrinthine LA airport fueling center. The death of the detective characters is less predictable for the genre, however, and O.J. Simpson's turn as Murphy provides some needed comic relief, particularly at the moment he quotes his role as a Hertz Rent-A-Car commercial spokesperson in the airport. CIA--CODE NAME ALEXA is shot throughout in a hazy blue light in order to obscure the meagre production values, but fans of this sort of B action film may actually relish the low-budget stylization. (Violence, profanity, sexual situations.)