REMEMBERING GOTCHA!

Orr

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

The man being Theodore Roosevelt, the plan was to get ships to avoid having to go all the way down around Cape Horn to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific or vice versa, the rest is pretty self explanatory. For my money, it is the only palindrome that is worth a shit, the rest don't even make sense. It isn't the longest palindrome by any stretch but it really is the only reason to even know of the word palindrome. There is one longer palindrome that I have witnessed, and it is a movie called Gotcha!. Yeah, that is an exclamation point period to end my sentence. When you review movies like Gotcha!, ya get to type an exclamation point period combo or maybe the exclamation comma meal deal I just exercised right back there. That felt good. Every good palindrome starts with a word, so lets start at the beginning.

I saw this movie first in 1985 and for years after I always wondered why no one I knew liked or even knew of Gotcha!. I was honestly immersed in the intrigue, the romance, the paintball guns. I thought it was at least as good as Empire Strikes Back. But now I see that my review was tainted, tainted like a witness coerced by police or a confession forced under duress. You see, on my way to the Laurel Theatre (R.I.P) to see Gotcha! with my friend T.J., a Joel Noobie shaped bully jumped out of a bush to harry me. And whats more, this Joel Noobie had a cigarette and an Iron Maiden Powerslave T-Shirt on. Not just any Iron Maiden Power Slave shirt but one with the three quarter sleeve cut, basically the scariest T-Shirt ever made.

I know I would have still been rattled had he had an Iron Maiden Killers shirt on, but c'mon were talking the Powerslave with the 3/4 sleeve. I thought I was going to be destroyed. I forget what happened next, maybe Joel had low blood sugar and was a little lethargic, maybe he was still high from killing a cat, but either way, we escaped his clutches. Gotcha! was my first meal at home after spending thirty years in jail. I had a second lease on life, I was not destroyed, and Gotcha! just happened to be the beneficiary of my now admittedly distorted world view. Birds were singing to me, butterflies were landing on my shoulder, I was going to live life to the fullest cuz you never know when you might be destroyed. Gotcha! had my heart.

Every palindrome that I personally have seen has always had a last word, so in an effort to bookend my review lets get to me, present day, renting Gotcha! to revisit my childhood and pay homage to the day I cheated death. It started strongly enough if not a little eerie in the light of recent events on college campuses. Boom! Montage scene, no holds barred. Start strong is what I always say, skip that flinging each other around the ring, forehead to the turnbuckle nonsense. Immediately climb to the top rope and Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka flying headbutt that motherfucker. A wonderful beginning, perfectly, wordlessly capturing all we need to know of our protagonist. Gotcha! is about a kid (Jonathan), who in addition to tackling the immense academic load of the UC system also leads an on campus life as some sort of roguish paintball gun assassin. We the viewer don't really get any sense of the nuts and bolts of this paintball death hunt game itself, but we definitely get the sense that the lead actor is pretty good at shooting his fellow classmates. We also learn that our lead is perfectly willing to imitate the handicapped and hide in garbage to complete his "hits".

A man committed to his craft to be sure. We get a little foreshadowing and animal abuse in the opening minutes nicely setting the stage for what is sure to be a powerful climax. Eventually there are words being said, and it is in these blossoming moments we learn that our lead and his roommate have a date with destiny. And that date starts in Paris  as they are going to tour Europe together on a vacation to remember. Jonathan wants to score with the ladies, eventually hitting the mark, falling in love with an eastern block beauty, and naturally finding himself entangled in an international conspiracy that has Octogenarian Russian killers hot on his trail. Jonathan while still crazy about this woman who popped his cherry, has to high tail it back to Los Angeles after there is an attempt on his life.

Lo and behold the CIA, and the Ruskies are now after his ass and a piece of streudel in his backpack. Jonathan completes the circle by luring these fools back onto his home turf of college campus and proceeds to outwit, outmaneuver and out shoot those old fucks using the very dart gun that was used to abuse that poor tiger in the animal cruelty scene. End. Now watch that thing in reverse and it is pretty much the same movie.