Code Name: Chaos Reviews

Facetiously dedicated to spies everywhere, CODE NAME: CHAOS deals with that most fun-loving bunch of cut-ups: CIA agents. It's this puerile comedy's contention that self-serving, renegade spies could set up shop in a storybook country and reap financial benefits by manufacturing fake global conflicts. Unfortunately for these slick sell-outs in picturesque Moressa, the US government sends agent Jim (Brian Kerwin), who's more loyal to his country than to his bank account. Finding it necessary for business to smoke out a Russian defector, head spy Mac (Robert Loggia), trustworthy aide-de-camp Alice (Diane Ladd), demolition expert Rob (William Allen Young) and British ally Cleague (David Warner) all endeavor to make the Soviet Filator (Freddie Jones) come in from the cold. While squeaky clean Jim dodges bomb-bursts and quickly sizes up the deadly intentions of his fellow Americans, the CIA financial wizards sieze Filator and launch a bogus Russian threat to world security. Aided by Isabelle (Alice Krige), a beautiful loyalist to the tiny principality of Patria, Jim escapes a freighter explosion and staunches the flow of damage at CIA headquarters in Moressa. While the CIA cutthroats gamble on a falling world economy, Jim and Isabelle risk their lives gathering info about a fabricated Russian star wars crisis. After Mac and Cleague crash their helicpoter in pursuit of the good guys, Alice shifts all their investments around. What she doesn't realize is that battered but unbowed Jim is tired of the spy games; rather than return to America with proof of the CIA plot, he's decided to remain in Patria with Isabelle. While Alice can content herself with romance with Filator, the others will be less pleased to know their biggest financial hoax yet has proven a big bust. Witless and frenetic, CODE NAME: CHAOS doesn't have the directorial control, clever dialogue or visual grace to instill any of its mean-spirited assassination attempts and treacheries with a sense of humor. The actors screech at each other like children at a shouting match; the confusing plotline trips over itself; only the scenic photography delights. Was this screenplay shoved in a trunk and forgotten and then taken out after Glasnost? Why produce it now that its cold-war shenanigans have lost their satiric point? The plot contortions strangle the film's forward momentum and the high-decibel acting wears away at any residual affection viewers may have for the cast. Combining murder plots with banal romantic vignettes is like crossing THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE with A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. While Krige and Kerwin emote as if they were in a serious romantic thriller, the other cast members are gesticulating and grimacing like marionettes struggling to come to life and form their own comedy club. Only Ladd (WILD AT HEART, RAMBLING ROSE) salvages her reputation by underplaying. But what is one to make of the usually reliable Warner and Loggia? Seeing the forceful Loggia mug his way through this dismal comedy is as upsetting as catching Brando doing a guest spot on "Hee Haw." Dated and ill-conceived, CODE NAME: CHAOS is a mind-numbing, caper comedy with a paucity of thrills and laughter approaching the level of our national debt.