Intent to Kill (1993)

Simply A Masterpiece

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Vickie Stewart (Lords) is a beautiful female cop on the edge in this PM outing. When a drug deal goes wrong (you mean they can go wrong?), Colombian thug Salvador (Tiffe) must get millions of dollars worth of drugs to his ruthless boss, The Mooch (Curto), or Salvador will meet a gruesome end. So Salvador is going all over the seedy sides of L.A. trying to collect all he can. The only thing stopping him is Vickie, who is determined to bring down the Colombian drug empire. To do this, she must go pretty rogue, but not all the way rogue. Meanwhile, she must deal with her philandering boyfriend Al (Patterson), a fellow cop, as well as her boss Captain Jackson (Kotto)., who is always on her case.It was nice to see Traci Lords as a tough cop on the edge. She even teaches classes to other women in street self-defense. The sleaze factor comes in with some of the seamier sides of Hollywood with hookers and such (Vickie must go undercover as a hooker at one point). Vickie is a cool character and it would have been nice to see that developed more, maybe in a follow-up movie, or a movie that doesn't fluctuate so much...What we mean by that is, Intent to Kill goes back and forth between decent and very dumb, and there seems to be a lot of padding and plot elements that aren't related and/or make no sense. But luckily there are car chases with rockin' guitar solos behind them, blow-ups, shooting, funny moments and lots of clichés. And of course Traci Lords getting into all sorts of dangerous situations (keep in mind it must have been in her post-porn industry contract that she do no nudity or sex scenes to try to distance herself from her past...just a theory)...and Yaphet Kotto pops up as the BYC with, and we quote, "one month left 'til retirement" ! It is a shame that he's retiring, as every day, generic newspaper headlines appear such as "Drugs Rule Streets".And as far as her love interest is concerned, Officer Tom Martin, he's a kickboxing man that's some sort of cross between Gary Daniels and Richard Norton, but not anywhere near as likable or interesting as those two. This Gary Norton (or Richard Daniels) guy is Michael Foley, and he was actually in Karate Cop, so there you go.Intent to Kill was released on the budget-priced EP speed tape released by Video Treasures/MNTEX, and the quality is not good. We're guessing this was a posthumous release because it's not included in some reference guides. Why this didn't come out on PM's own label, we do not know. It even has a shot from another movie on the cover (we believe it was taken from a Gary Daniels film). The director of this movie, Charles Kanganis, should have complained. After all, the previous year he directed Traci in A Time To Die (1991), and the packaging was much better, it even had a red plastic VHS.Featuring the inspirational tune "Stand Tall" by Lost Art, Intent to Kill is reasonably entertaining, but not a premier PM.For more action insanity, please visit: www.comeuppancereviews.com

Intent To Kill is another entertaining B action film from producers Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi of PM Entertainment. I'll simply describe a scene and let you decide if the film is worth viewing based on the following.Hardboiled police detective Traci Lords has kicked her unfaithful dog of a boyfriend to the curb, and is immediately invited out by a macho detective in her department. They head for the restaurant, but not before Lords is dragged to the gym so as to witness her date strut his martial arts moves by pounding some poor white belt shmoe in the ring. She appears slightly impressed so he earns points there. He then gains her favor with witty conversation during dinner, and again gains points with the lovely lady detective. Unfortunately all of his romantic efforts go down the drain when 3 gun toting thugs enter the restaurant, pistol-whip the owners and shoot a customer. Lady Lords' smooth talking karate kicking date decides to use this moment to stay in his seat and do nothing. Lords is then targeted by the vicious trio. Holding out her purse which has a pistol concealed inside she pleads "Don't shoot me, here take all of my money", to which the thugs shout "we don't want your money, we want your life!". Tough cop Traci replies, get this, "It's not on the menu" and KA-BLAAMM!! fires a round into each of the three punks before her dumbfounded date can say another word. "Thanks for the help!" she screams at him with contempt, something she seems to have plenty of practice doing as every other male in the film seems to lack the spine and grit she has in spades. Of course the damsel detective is not above having a good cry, something she does after blasting bad guys, sobbing as she feels her feminine tenderness slowly eroding from all the violence.If the above doesn't convince you this is a film worth seeing, thats fine, more cheesy entertainment for the rest of us B film fans.

Despite the endless violence, I nearly fell asleep.Traci does her best playing a feminist hero here. And to be fair, the whole cast gave their all. But the director REALLY goofed.Piling car chase after fistfight after senseless killing on top of each other will not guarantee a thriller. It seemed that they just decided to kill several cops when they couldn't think of anything better to film.Angelo Tiffe made a great villain here. You did want to see him die. But early, so you wouldn't have to watch this heap of celluloid.And whose idea was it to put classical music on the sound track? It did not help.Violent and boring. Bad combo people.

Story line - very poorActing - mediocre to poorCharacter Development - very littleViolence - heavySex & Nudity - NONETough cop Traci takes on a very bad drug dude, and in the end, she's the last cop still standing, mostly because it's her arrogance and stupidity that got the others killed. The best comedy moment (not intended to be funny) is when she seriously wonders what it was that she did wrong.I expected the overall quality of the flick to be poor, and so wasn't disappointed in that regard. However, I was expecting a certain amount of eye candy, and the best this movie provided was a girl on a bicycle wearing a thong bikini. Doesn't Traci realize that nudity is the only reason her fans put up with the other inadequacies?Traci is actually not a bad actress, but if she really wants to go mainstream and keep her clothes on, she needs to start hanging out with a better class of writers and directors. Continuing to be in forgettable flicks like this is what she's doing wrong.