Primary Target

My review was written in August 1990 after watching the film on MGM/UA Home Video cassette.

Filmmaker Clark Henderson takes a much too tongue-in-cheek approach to the R-rated war movie "Primary Target" and the result is a subpar direct-to-video release.

This 1988 production shot in the Philippines for Roger Corman's Concorde/New Horizons banner and originally titled "The Golden Triangle" is set in 1977 Thailand. John Ericson's wife is kidnapped and taken to Laos. He organizes a "Dirty Dozen" group of mercenaries led by muscular John Calvin to go in and rescue her or face jail terms. They're aided by feisty Asian woman Miki Kim, but she turns out to be truer to her own people than to the Yanks.

Although there are several okay plot twists, pic founders in nondescript action scenes and a thoroughly inappropriate use of jaunty music whenever people are being mowed down.

Henderson's dumbest gambit is a nod to John Sayles' gimmick for scripting "The Howling": all the main actors have film directors' names for their characters. Roll call of John Cromwell, Phil Karlson, Jack Sturges, Joe Lewis and "Nyby" (no first name for "The Thing" director) is random, and in-joke of Italian-American grunt Joey Aresco as "Frank Rosi" (re: "Christ Stopped at Eboli" helmer Francesco Rosi) is strained indeed.