By Made for a budget under a million dollars, Miguel Llansó’s cheap as chips spoof spy thriller is something that is very hard to describe. It’s a melting pot of tropes and cliches from both 80’s cinema and cheap exploitation movies of the 70’s, and as a result makes reviewing it a difficult task. This is quite possibly unlike anything you’ve seen before, which is something worth celebrating. But there is of course an issue with ladling on the weird for weird’s sake.
The film, set during the Cold War, follows CIA agent Gagano (Daniel Tadesse) who is tasked, along with his partner Agent Palmer (Agustin Mateo), to track down an evil computer virus known as ‘Soviet Union’ inside a VR system. Travelling into the VR world, Gagano soon discovers that the mission is a trap, and has to find a way out of his VR imprisonment before his mind is lost forever.
There’s a number of different styles and approaches to be found in Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway. There’s kung fu fight scenes with Street Fighter-inspired voice-overs. There’s a stop-motion VR world where character’s avatars are represented by cardboard masks of famous figures of the 1980’s. And then there’s an Irish Stalin. Oh, and a corrupt Presidential candidate called Batfro who dresses up like Adam West’s Batman with a pixelated Bat-symbol, all set to a Jazz/Synth hybrid soundtrack. It throws in everything and the kitchen sink, just as long as it’s cheap.
Full review at VultureHound, originally published June 22nd 2020.
Andrew Gaudion 