indie filmmaker marcus van bavel may not have a knack for catchy titles , but he certainly has a flair for spoofing the big-budget spy genre on what must have been a low six-figure budget . redboy 13 pays homage to dr . strangelove , full metal jacket , dirty harry , mission : impossible , rambo , and , most importantly , the james bond films . hell , if it wasn't for austin powers , redboy 13 would be the first real spy spoof to come along in a while . especially considering its humble origins in the backwoods of texas , it's a damn good one . er . . . a * gosh darn * good one , as colonel calcan ( logan ) would say . set in the waning days of the cold war , redboy 13 is the story of a 13-year old boy ( roy-brown ) who is trained to be a top agent for a splinter group of the u . s . government called the c . y . a . under the supervision of calcan , redboy is sent to central america to overthrow a military regime . . . when he returns , he'll be " the biggest hero since ollie north . " there's even a big bondian opening credits sequence with silhouettes , grandiose vocalizing , etc . redboy 13 plays it straight all the way , with the exception of van bavel's appearance ( s ) in the film as three supporting characters , a la peter sellers in strangelove ( one of the characters is even a wheelchair-bound mad scientist whose allegiance is with nazi germany ) . in fact , if van bavel didn't look so frighteningly like shock filmmaker john waters , one might be tempted to take redboy at face value . tempted , but impossible . a darling of the festival circuit , redboy 13 is shot in 35mm cinemascope , has dozens of computer-generated effects ( they look kinda cheesy , but hey , this is an indie pic ) , and only really suffers during some hammy acting that wanders into leslie nielsen territory a few times . but in the end , van bavel's assured technical direction and clever photography make redboy imminently watchable . 
