Anthony Edwards must have either had a really great agent or been really good on auditions to have simply survived, let alone thrived as an actor after this plodding, superficial and stereotypical 80s movie.
Jonathan Moore (Anthony Edwards) is a college student who is absolutely great at a game called Gotcha! He and a bunch of other players hunt each other around campus and shoot each other with paintball guns. After the audience gets a display of Jonathan's skill, he and his friend and roommate Manolo (Jsu Garcia) are off to Europe for Spring Break. While in France, with their collars turns up as required by the federal Bad Cinema Fashion Act of 1980, Jonathan meets a mysterious woman named Sasha (Linda Fiorentino) and ditches his friend to go with her to Berlin. It turns out Sasha is a courier trying to sneak some film out of East Berlin. She ends up hiding the film in Jonathan's back pack and he ends up running for his life from the KGB.
Now, you'd think that this point in the story is where Jonathan's skills as a paintball warrior would come into play and he'd use the talents at hunting and hiding he displayed in the first 5 minutes of the movie to win a cat-and-mouse game with the KGB agents. You'd think that but you'd be wrong. Instead we get this incredibly ponderous and shallow series of scenes where Jonathan behaves more like a kid bumming his way across Europe on 5 dollars a day than someone caught up in international espionage.
Eventually Jonathan makes it back home, where he puts on a pair of sunglasses for no reason as also mandated by the federal Bad Cinema Fashion Act of 1980 and the film stops even trying to make sense. The KGB follows him back to America but Jonathan doesn't trust the CIA so he enlists the help of an LA street gang and ugh. It's just all so stupid.
Anthony Edwards turns in a nondescript performance as one of those 80s movie rebels who are really about as unconventional and provocative as Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties. Linda Fiorentino rolls out an Czechoslovakian accent that makes her sound like Natasha from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The film's soundtrack lets you hear about 10 seconds of "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and then buries you under a landslide of the worst 80s synthesizer rock you'll ever hear. Most of the characters in this film seem to have come straight out of the best selling book "How to Write a Bad Sitcom".
Basically, Gotcha! was produced when someone entered the words "paintball" and "spy" into the same bad movie generator that belched out dozens of other generically unfunny and unentertaining films during the Reagan era. If you want to see Edwards with a luxurious mane of hair or get a glimpse of Fiorentino's boobs, you can find it her. Otherwise, just go rent Teen Wolf again or something.
Jonathan Moore (Anthony Edwards) is a college student who is absolutely great at a game called Gotcha! He and a bunch of other players hunt each other around campus and shoot each other with paintball guns. After the audience gets a display of Jonathan's skill, he and his friend and roommate Manolo (Jsu Garcia) are off to Europe for Spring Break. While in France, with their collars turns up as required by the federal Bad Cinema Fashion Act of 1980, Jonathan meets a mysterious woman named Sasha (Linda Fiorentino) and ditches his friend to go with her to Berlin. It turns out Sasha is a courier trying to sneak some film out of East Berlin. She ends up hiding the film in Jonathan's back pack and he ends up running for his life from the KGB.
Now, you'd think that this point in the story is where Jonathan's skills as a paintball warrior would come into play and he'd use the talents at hunting and hiding he displayed in the first 5 minutes of the movie to win a cat-and-mouse game with the KGB agents. You'd think that but you'd be wrong. Instead we get this incredibly ponderous and shallow series of scenes where Jonathan behaves more like a kid bumming his way across Europe on 5 dollars a day than someone caught up in international espionage.
Eventually Jonathan makes it back home, where he puts on a pair of sunglasses for no reason as also mandated by the federal Bad Cinema Fashion Act of 1980 and the film stops even trying to make sense. The KGB follows him back to America but Jonathan doesn't trust the CIA so he enlists the help of an LA street gang and ugh. It's just all so stupid.
Anthony Edwards turns in a nondescript performance as one of those 80s movie rebels who are really about as unconventional and provocative as Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties. Linda Fiorentino rolls out an Czechoslovakian accent that makes her sound like Natasha from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The film's soundtrack lets you hear about 10 seconds of "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and then buries you under a landslide of the worst 80s synthesizer rock you'll ever hear. Most of the characters in this film seem to have come straight out of the best selling book "How to Write a Bad Sitcom".
Basically, Gotcha! was produced when someone entered the words "paintball" and "spy" into the same bad movie generator that belched out dozens of other generically unfunny and unentertaining films during the Reagan era. If you want to see Edwards with a luxurious mane of hair or get a glimpse of Fiorentino's boobs, you can find it her. Otherwise, just go rent Teen Wolf again or something.