User Reviews

Quite possibly the most hilarious action movie ever made, but more likely the most homo-erotic action film ever made.

Perpetuates the stereotypes of action films made after 1994 beautifully. Apparently, militias in parts of the world contain only mustached/bearded sweaty men in camouflage wife-beaters, with additionally hilarious ponytails.

I'm fairly certain that I saw one of the uniforms in the film contain the word "Military" on a patch, which would be akin to a police officer wearing a badge that said "Cop" or "Police Office", as if it weren't obvious enough.

I especially enjoy the scene where the helicopters come over the horizon and begin firing on everything in sight - including horses, tents, vehicles, plants, etc. The only thing that doesn't explode in a giant fireball are the horses...everything else goes up in flames, particularly, the empty tents.

I sort of feel bad for the actors in this film because all of their IMDb profiles have this film listed...but...they did agree to be in the film, so this film is their punishment I guess.

CIA agent Mark Graver narrowly escapes with his life when former agent turned international terrorist Ralph Straker stages a raid on a Company warehouse & steals a nuclear missile actuator module capable of managing an entire nuclear arsenal. The CIA's director believes that Straker cannot steal the module's chip, but that item is stolen from another warehouse by a rival terrorist named Franz Kluge. Graver decides to contact his former lover, the former terrorist Alexa, who is living in a rural town with her young daughter. Alexa, meanwhile, foils a robbery by shooting one of the robbers but is arrested by the cops by mistake. Being an unlawful citizen, she is threatened with deportation or prison time but Graver manages to hold it off on the condition that Alexa help him recover the stolen module & chip. Heading into Kluge's hideout on her own, Alexa tricks her way into staying there so that she can steal the chip. This she does but Straker, learning of the chip's location, stages a raid on Kluge's base. Alexa escapes but is captured by Straker. Kluge decides to make a deal with the CIA & Agent Graver to recover the equipment for his freedom. Together they head into Straker's base at the same time Alexa breaks out of her confines & takes on Straker for the chip.

In the very early 1990s, producers Richard Pepin & Joseph Merhi had a surprise minor hit on their hands when they made C.I.A. – Codename: Alexa, a cheap action film that became a cult hit on cable TV when one of its stars, O.J. Simpson, was put on trial for the murder of his wife & her lover shortly after the film premiered. The unexpected success of what was essentially a very cheap & crudely put-together action thriller, made PM Entertainment's name & resulted in the studio becoming a major player in the 1990s' DTV action film market. A year later, Pepin & Merhi got Lorenzo Lamas, the star of the film, to make a sequel with his co-star & wife Kathleen Kinmont, only with Lamas directing as well this time with Kinmont writing the story for it.

I never particularly liked the original C.I.A. film but this sequel is an improvement over it in almost every aspect, even if the overall improvement is not by much. Lamas does a fair job of staging moderately exciting action set pieces (although the budget for the film was not substantially better than that of the original). The opening raid on the CIA warehouse is filled with some of the trademark PM shootout style where key characters stand in the open & avoid getting hit by bullets while everyone else in the vicinity are massacred with little effort (during this scene, somebody fires an RPG with no actual warhead but a blank charge, making me laugh my head off). The subsequent action scenes are okay by cheap action film standards but nothing too exciting.

The film has a pretty good cast of action film troopers. Lorenzo Lamas & Kathleen Kinmont make a good team & conduct their relationship with some conviction. John Savage is a hoot as semi-villain Kluge, making the most of his role as the conniving & one-step-ahead-of-everybody-else terrorist who gets more than he initially bargained for when rival terrorist John Ryan takes his own loot from him, only to play a major hand in getting it back. In all, the film might not be much than a cheap action film, but it does have some value in making an average actioner for late night TV & cheap DVD trash trawlers.

Since the last "CIA" film, Alexa (Kinmont) has given up working for the government and now relaxes in a small town, content to raise her daughter on a horse ranch. She thought she put her former life behind her, but Graver (Lamas) comes back into the picture. He asks her to infiltrate yet another criminal organization, to get yet another microchip, which would control yet more nuclear weapons. This time around, the main baddie is Franz Kluge (Savage), and his henchmen are Straker (Ryan) and Lana (Fetrick). Will Graver and Alexa be able to work together again to defeat the bad guys? And who can you really trust? Lorenzo Lamas must really care about the CIA franchise (such as it was at the time) and the character of Graver, because he stepped into the director's chair for this one. Sure, this movie didn't really need to be made, as it covers very similar ground to the first film while not being as good - but this movie is a lot funnier than the first one. The dialogue is sillier than ever before and some of the situations are pretty ridiculous. But it all has the backing of the classic PM stuntwork and blow-ups behind it.

Alexa's daughter has a horse named Fred the Horse, Lamas continues on with his tank top/black hat combos for his wardrobe, and his hair is much funnier and more feminine this time around. It's truly "dueling ponytails" for both him and Kinmont. John Ryan was last seen as the baddie from American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993), and his name in the film, Straker, is one we've seen before (last seen being used by Richard Norton in Raiders of the Sun, 1992). John Savage plays a toned-down, but very similar character to the one he played in Red Scorpion 2 (1994), and he even has some dialogue involving scorpions. Weird, eh? Plus his international criminal organization seems like a boy scout camp, and his minions even dress that way.

Lori Fetrick is mainly known to American Gladiators fans as Ice, and her presence here shows this film as pure 90's. She looks like Jenna Jameson but with much more ripped arms. I wonder why OJ Simpson didn't return for this sequel? While not strictly one of the better PM's, this does have comedy, chemistry between Lamas and Kinmont, and does have the Lamas you want to see, all told. It has another noteworthy Louis Febre score, plenty of blow-ups and shooting, and is still of a good quality all around.

While it can be confusing trying to determine the difference between "Code Name Alexa" and "Target Alexa", if you must see only one, go with the first (Code Name). But this one isn't bad at all, it's still worth watching. It's just a little bit unnecessary.

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