Being from NZ there's always a fascination in seeing your home country on screen. At first a decidedly B movie script plays out. Judd Pierson (Cliff Robertson) and his best friend's son Casey Lane (Leif Garrett) find themselves doing car jumping shows in small towns in NZ for chump change after a promising NASCAR career was cut short by a fatal accident in the pits. Enter Dr Christine Ruben (Lisa Harrow) who works at a top secret army biological weapons research lab (housed weirdly under Larnach Castle in Dunedin). Her colleague is a CIA asset and persuades her to smuggle out a vial of dangerous formulae to his CIA handlers in Queenstown. Having seen Judd's skills at the wheel of his modified Pontiac Transam, she hires Judd to drive her at top speed to her rendezvous. What ensues is a most spectacular chase across the beautiful scenery of NZ from Dunedin to Queenstown to the port of Picton, across Cook Strait, around Wellington to a most extraordinary and dramatic final ending! The highly implausible plot is subsumed by the drama of the elongated chase and the great scenery.
The fact that the NZ Army doesn't do that kind of research, never had grey space suit like uniforms, never had a fleet of shadowy black vehicles to chase people or sinister spy type officers who direct operations from a helicopter in a suit would be lost on most audiences. Being unable to seal off roads out of Wellington (a city built on hilly terrain with few access points) is incompetence also lost on non kiwi audiences.
Ironically Cliff Robertson and Leif Garrett play characters down on their luck that mirrored their careers in the early 1980's. This period was a low point on Roberson's career and for Leif Garrett, the child actor who became a global teen heartthrob singer in the late '70's, was trying to resurrect his former acting career having lost his adolescent golden locks and baby face good looks after years of hard partying and drug abuse. Roberson was able to get better roles as he aged but Garrett, despite being a halfway decent actor, could not and spent years in a drug addicted hole. Of final note was the nostalgic look at life in NZ in the early 80's, the cars, the Shona Lang gig in the pub and the laid back lifestyle. A B grade movie well worth seeing
The fact that the NZ Army doesn't do that kind of research, never had grey space suit like uniforms, never had a fleet of shadowy black vehicles to chase people or sinister spy type officers who direct operations from a helicopter in a suit would be lost on most audiences. Being unable to seal off roads out of Wellington (a city built on hilly terrain with few access points) is incompetence also lost on non kiwi audiences.
Ironically Cliff Robertson and Leif Garrett play characters down on their luck that mirrored their careers in the early 1980's. This period was a low point on Roberson's career and for Leif Garrett, the child actor who became a global teen heartthrob singer in the late '70's, was trying to resurrect his former acting career having lost his adolescent golden locks and baby face good looks after years of hard partying and drug abuse. Roberson was able to get better roles as he aged but Garrett, despite being a halfway decent actor, could not and spent years in a drug addicted hole. Of final note was the nostalgic look at life in NZ in the early 80's, the cars, the Shona Lang gig in the pub and the laid back lifestyle. A B grade movie well worth seeing