Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 7-January-07
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Gotcha! (1985)

I'm becoming fascinated with how '80s cinema seemed to delight in white, upper class teens and their hijinks. (The more so because I was a teen in the '80s and not exactly upper class.) What a telling mark of the Reagan era that Ferris Bueller and his kind were movie heroes, privileged kids who needed to find a little trouble to have fun. Sometimes they stumbled into it ("War Games") and sometimes they went looking ("Dirty Dancing"), but in the end they were older, wiser, and probably disencumbered of their virginity. That they came from "good" homes helped to keep the tone light, but it also meant something more. In their ability to break rules and get away with it, these guys lived the ultimate '80s dream.

This notion presents itself powerfully during "Gotcha!", an almost-classic in which college freshman Jonathan Moore (Anthony Edwards) gets caught up in sexy espionage. Vacationing in Paris while Dad foots the bill, Jonathan is picked up by an older grad student/part-time courier who calls herself Sasha (Linda Fiorentino) and claims to crave inexperienced boys. She teaches him European style and the ways of love and also introduces him to the wild side, specifically the east side of Berlin where she's scheduled to make a pickup. (Remember, East Berlin pushed the buttons of Cold War mystery in 1985.) Of course things don't go as planned, and Jonathan ends up fleeing with killer Russians on his tail and a suspicious strudel in his rucksack. After making his way back to the States, he learns that the Russians have followed him, the CIA has taken an interest in his affairs, and Sasha may not be who she said she was. He then draws upon his skills as a paintball aficionado to extricate himself from danger.

Exotic travel, lots of sex, and the freedom to shoot people with nonlethal guns: "Gotcha!" has got what dreams are made of, especially for an audience disposed to root for wealthy kids who might otherwise appear sheltered and boring. It's almost laughable how Jonathan's coolness cred is established through his friendship with a Hispanic gang-member-turned-campus-Romeo (Nick Corri), who rounds up his brothers from the hood for the final showdown. (This young man pretends to be a terrorist to pick up girls; my, how the buttons have changed.) Also watching Jonathan's back are dimwitted parents who adore him but don't trust him, assuming he's on drugs and wishing he would just say No. The movie assures us that they'll be there to bail him out if his luck or ingenuity ever runs dry. And this feels good as he walks off into the sunset with manhood and prospects intact. Having his strudel and eating it too: that's the quintessential happy ending of his time.

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.