Alien Agent (2007)

Alien Agent (2007)

Starring: Mark Dacascos, Amelia Cooke, Emma Lahana, William McDonald, Kim Coates, Billy Zane, Darren Shahlavi
Director: Jesse V. Johnson
Action Director: Kirk Caouette, Luke LaFontaine

 

There was once a running joke among us Mark Dacascos fans at one of the message boards I post at where every Mark Dacascos review contained the phrase: “Mark Dacascos, who’s playing [insert ethnicity here] this week…” I’ve honestly never seen an actor get cast as so many different ethnicities during his career, even ones with whom he shares few, if any, physical traits. In American Samurai, he plays a Japanese fighter. In Cradle 2 the Grave, Drive, and China Strike Force, he plays a Chinese person. In Nomad, I believe he plays a Mongol. Then there’s the cult hit Brotherhood of the Wolf, in which he plays an Iroquois Indian…and the list goes on. This time around, Mark Dacascos plays an alien. A kung-fu kicking alien, mind you, but an alien nonetheless.

The film is pretty easy to follow. There’s an alien body snatcher named Rykker (Dacascos), who, despite the description, is a GOOD alien body snatcher, since he got his body from a dying thug, instead of an innocent bystander of sorts. Rykker is on the tail of a bunch of fellow alien body snatchers led by Isis (Amelia Cooke of Species III), a hot, chain-whip swinging, alien body snatcher. Isis and her team are stealing electronics and high-powered weapons and storing them in an abandoned power plant. Her goal: build a portal that the members of her species can pass through so that they can save their race and enslave the earth. She’s working under the orders of Sayton (Billy Zane of The Phantom fame, who was apparently on set for less than hour and probably just got a free lunch out for his troubles), an evil alien body snatcher rebel.

When we meet, Rykker, he’s engaging in a medium-speed car chase with Isis and her minions. After trading lots of bullets, Rykker engages in personal combat with one of them, who’s played by Darren Shahlavi (Tai Chi 2 and Ip Man 2). Rykker dispatches his opponent with the quickest of ease, perhaps giving substance to the characters’ remarks that he’s one of his planet’s greatest “guild warriors.” Unfortunately that doesn’t quite pan out, since most of the other fights that don’t involve human mercenaries (i.e. when he faces alien opponents) show him getting his butt kicked, after which he wins by a lucky shot. His showdowns with human opponents aren’t very interesting, either. He usually just whaps them with his ridge hand techniques and throws a few kicks that, honestly, any brown belt could perform adequately. Okay, got that off my chest.

So yeah, Rykker picks up a human companion in the form of Julie (Emma Lahana of Power Ranges: Dino Thunder), a blonde teenager (or young adult) whose aunt and uncle (owners of the local diner) are slaughtered by Isis and one of her cohorts for almost no reason. I mean, I can see why Isis would want to kill the people outside of the diner when she arrives to steal a truck full of electronics. But is it really necessary for her order her man to storm into the establishment and mow everybody down with an automatic weapon? Whatever. Anyway, Rykker, who’s posing as an FBI agent, ends up taking Julie along with him. The two make a habit of stealing other peoples’ cars, much like the Albert Pyun Captain America.

Julie slowly starts falling for Rykker and even tries to seduce him near the end, using the whole excuse of, “We’re both going to die and I don’t want to die a virgin.” Considering that the script doesn’t leave it very clear as to how old she is, it’s probably a small favor that we’re spared a sex scene between Dacascos and a minor (although Miss Lahana was 23 when she made this movie). She eventually gets captured and Dacascos has to storm the abandoned power plant, kill off the evil mercenaries without breaking a sweat, almost get beaten to death by Amelia, and then win via a lucky shot. The movie ends with Dacascos tracking down a couple of more criminals from his home planet and beating them up on a rooftop in Los Angeles or something.

If I could describe this movie with one word, it would be “lifeless” (“cheap” would come a close second). Dacascos is obviously uninterested in doing anything more than the necessary needed to earn a paycheck. Billy Zane registers as such a non-entity that I wonder why the filmmakers spent the extra money hiring him. Kirk Caouette’s fight choreography is generally visible, but lacking in energy and rhythm. It’s the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from cheap American martial arts films. I shouldn’t be too mad; this is the guy who choreographed Catwoman after all. The first fight scene against Darren Shahlavi shows a bit a promise. There’s nothing flashy, but both him and Dacascos are veteran screen fighters with some solid Hong Kong experience on their résumés and they perform their moves with the appropriate amount of energy. 

Things go downhill after that, although the brief moments of partial nudity from Amelia Cooke and Meghan Flather (who’s other film credit appears to be War, where she provided Jet Li and the audience with some full frontal nudity, if my memory doesn’t fail me), do threaten to make the film interesting again. The occasional fights also threaten to make the film interesting. Heck, the fact that Isis fights with a friggin’ chain whip, of all the Earth weapons she could have chosen, threatens to make the film interesting.

In the end, all of that amounts to very little and it makes me wish I were watching Drive, Only the Strong, or even Cradle 2 the Grave instead. How’s that on the tree of woe?