Spitfire

MOVIE #2,396 • SCORE 9/10 • 03.13.25
SERIES: ALBERT & AKERMAN

Keeping with the growing Pyunian trend towards the lude, hard-R, a woman takes her top off in the opening shot. She proceeds to throw an impromptu molotov cocktail at a villainess and reveals to Lance Henderson that he has a teen daughter he didn't know about…before immediately dying in a shootout. Oh, and then Lance escapes on a jetpack before the most budget 007 ripoff opening credits featuring a bunch of models in lingerie holding guns. That's a pretty perfect opening ten minutes if you ask me…


We then cut to said daughter at a gymnastics competition in Rome. She's also a badass karate champ but she doesn't yet know her mom has been killed. She links up with Tim Thomerson playing against type as an eccentric, drunk reporter with an Andy Warhol hairdo (he’s great). She wins the competition in dramatic (almost comically so?) fashion. All this movie wants to do is have fun…


Then Lance shows up out of the blue to tell her that mom passed away yesterday (and that she has to believe him because he's wearing a tuxedo?). He's immediately forced into a car at gunpoint by the lady who attacked him yesterday.

Of course this plot is unnecessarily dense with far too many characters. It’s totally B-movie coded with bad acting (the lead, Kristie Phillips, was a real-life star gymnast who never acted again) and rampant ADR. But it wears all these ‘flaws’ on its sleeve like a badge of honor. The violence is cartoonish and constant, and every other line is a quotable quip.

The continent-jumping plot (we visit Rome, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Athens) makes it feel like the biggest film Pyun has ever made but the narrative moves like an avalanche in what are clearly guerilla shoots, rendering everything a blur. He's at his best, though, working with this rollercoaster pace and it doesn't really matter that the audience has no clue what's going on (that honestly feels like it might be the point?). His comic riff on Bond simply works, either transcending or embracing the elements that would — under the helm of a lesser director — cause the film to fall apart.

One very subtle but telling moment that says so much about Pyun as an artist is when a fly briefly lands on Lance's face. Instead of using another take (there probably wasn't one) or ignoring it (what 99.9% of filmmakers would do), Pyun leans into this blink-and-you’d-miss-it moment by pumping in buzzing sounds. Who does this? Nobody but Pyun…


She saves the day (by throwing the key into the sewer — don't worry about it — and backflipping over a bullet) AND gets to Greece in time for the gymnastics championship. In one final twist, her Ukrainian rival tries to poison her with an “untraceable toxin” but Thomerson alerts her and she ends up poisoning the entire Ukraine team (lol). She goes on to kill it in every event and easily wins the gold. The movie ends with a visit to her mom's tombstone as she notices a yodeling Lance walking away in the distance. What more could you possibly ask for?

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #2,395 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #2,397 ⫸

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A sultry assassin is the target of two separate operatives in this globe-trotting action flick shot on location in the Bahamas, Athens, Rome and Hong Kong. It was released on January 24, 1995.