6 posts tagged “martial arts”
Three cute Asian women kicking ass? What's not to like?
So the story, as if there needs to be more than cute Asian women kicking ass is that two of them are sisters who are high tech assassins. One does the killing in dramatic and exciting martial arts ways and the other monitors everything by hacking into the computer systems and monitoring everything. The third woman is the cop who is trying to arrest them. Would you be surprised if it the assassins have hearts of gold and all three of them end up working together? Well if not, the be prepared to be surprised because even though the assassins do have hearts of gold only one of them teams up with the cop. No cliches here!
The action is pretty good. There is some good kung fu action especially by the older sister and the cop. When the younger sister has to take over it is obvious that the actress isn't as athletic as the other two and there is some wire-fu that doesn't work within the world of the movie. There's also a pretty entertaining car chase where one sister has to use satellite imagery to guide the car while also taking out some bad guys attacking her house.
five thumbs up
Love the kick ass chicks
ok, I just like kicking
pretty girls help too
I missed the first 10 minutes of this but I don't think I missed out on all that much. Basically, this is an attempt to do a Kung-Fu version of Spinal Tap. I say attempt because it fails at that and ends up being way to corny has way too many lame puns and cheese. Just to give you a hint of the lameness of the names in the film, the main character is named Buford Lee. Buford is, as the title suggests, a Bruce Lee-ish character but rather than be successful, Buford is a grade C martial arts actor and one of his fans decides to make a documentary of Buford as he attempts to make 18 Fingers of Death, the sequel to 17 Fingers of Death, which was the sequel to 16 fingers and so on and so on...
As part of the documentary we meet the actors that Buford has worked with including stars such as, Jackie Chong, Quincy Tarantula, Steven Seefood, Antonio Bandana (as played by Lorenzo Lamas), and Don "The Dragon" Wilson (Yes, Don plays himself!).
We also get to see some clips from Buford's films which parody other films such as The Legend of Drunken Bastard, and a title I can't remember but is a take off on El Mariachi. There are a lot of fart jokes. Well, actually it is more accurate to say that there are a lot of farts. There aren't actually any jokes involving the farts. For example, there is some "joke" about eating a lot of Mexican food before filming the El Mariachi ripoff which means that everyone in the fight scene farts. Ha! How funny!
It is kind of a shame that this film doesn't work any better. Doing a bit of research online it looks like the film was written and directed by its star, James Lew. Looking at his filmography it looks like he has been typecast as generic martial arts/Asian guy so this might have been his attempt at making an Asian-American Hollywood Shuffle. Unfortunately, as I said, it just doesn't work.
two thumbs down
Silly wacky names
and farts are not really jokes
it needs more knock knock
I'm not sure how someone who had never read the comic would feel about this movie as it is really really steeped in the culture of Edo period of Japan and Japanese Buddhism. Both First Comics and Dark Horse Comics included glossaries and explanations in their individual issues and this dvd also includes 28 screens of background information to explain what is going on.
All this background info is needed because not only is this a sword fighting extravaganza with tons of squirting blood which would go on to be seen in Kill Bill but it is also a political drama about honor, betrayal, and revenge.
You see, the Lone Wolf, aka Ogami Ittō,was the Shogun's executioner. When people were honor-bound to kill themselves, Ogami was the one who would cut their heads off with his sword so that they wouldn't actually have to go through with the suicide but could still retain their honor. Ogami is a badass. According to one translation the name of his sword was, "pierces thick torsos."
A rival clan wanted his position so they killed his wife and while he was cradling her dying body, they snuck into his personal temple for honoring all of the people he had executed and placed the name of the shogun (or it might just be the symbol of the shogunate, I'm not sure) into the shrine. Then the police arrive with an apparent suicide not from the men who killed his wife claiming that Ogami was unhonorable. The police go into the shrine and see the name of the shogun indicating that Ogami wished the shogun would die. (see what I mean about this being about betrayal and steeped in the culture and traditions of the time period?)
So Ogami gives his infant son a choice, join his mother in the afterlife or join his father in the search for revenge. The child of course chooses the path of revenge which is why the series is called Lone Wolf and Cub and not just Lone Wolf.
Ogami shames the rival clan into allowing him to leave by doing some more stuff that involves the code of honor from the time. He gets the rival clan to agree that as long as he stays away from Tokyo they won't try to kill him. So Ogami goes on the road as a killer for hire. And all of this is the setup for the actual storyline.
The actual story of the film involves Ogami being hired to kill some guys at a bath in an isolated rural town. There is lots of bad ass killery and honor and flashbacks to explain the backstory. And then more kicking ass. Basically, every story involves Ogami being smarter and more honorable than the people he goes against and the rival clan clandestinely sending people to try to kill him. Did I mention it kicks ass? Well it does and it is also very faithful to the original comic.
six thumbs up
Ogami kicks ass
even though he has a kid
he still has honor
On the off chance that you are reading this and you don't know the awesomeness of Don "The Dragon" Wilson, let me just add one more name: Billy Blanks. That's right, the creator of Tae Bo.
Now before you run off to watch get it be warned that Billy Blanks only has a couple lines and a few fights. He doesn't really star in it even though they make sure to feature him prominently in the trailer (and even in the trailer for Bloodfist 2 which doesn't have him at all).
In Bloodfist, Don is a retired kickboxer whose brother is killed after a fight in Manila. He gets a call telling him that he has to go there and identify the body so he takes off and heads there. Now with a phone call telling him that he has to identify the body, you would think that when he got to Manila that when he got there he would be asked to identify the body. However, that is what you get for trying to outguess a Don "The Dragon" Wilson film. You see when he gets there his brother's body has already been cremated and no one seems to mind that they could have just as easily mailed him the remains of his brother instead of making him fly half way around the world.
Lucky for us they did make him fly to Manila because in order to find out who killed his brother (because apparently all the police in Manila do is pull their guns on you and then tell you to move along when they see a crime since that is what happens to The Dragon when he sees a guy wearing his brother's hat.) he is forced to fight. Since he is retired the only way he will fight is if they force him. So force him they do. They force him to fight.
Apparently the main plot of the film is taken from Bloodsport but since I've never seen it I wouldn't know. Basically, he befriends some guy who then gets hospitalized by some Bolo-wanna-be. And there's some blond stripper that The Dragon gets hooked up with.
The main draw of the film is that most of the people in it are actual martial artists. Now you would think that this would make the fight scenes really really good. However, remember what I said about trying to outguess a Don "The Dragon" Wilson film? Keep that in mind because while the main appeal may be the actual martial artists the fights are filmed like crap so that you can tell that they aren't really kitting one another and there isn't any excitement. They pulled the old Chinatown scam on us...
However, there is somewhat of a twist in it and so that is entertaining. However, there really isn't any foreshadowing of the twist so that kind of stinks.
two thumbs up
The Dragon enters
don't force Don to kick your ass
or encourage him
Although, as I said, I haven't seen the fist Cyber-Tracker, I still got the gist of what was going on. Wilson is a cop and there are some robocops, called "Trackers" but when we first see him looks exactly like Robocop. It turns out that they can make a "tracker" that looks like anyone. So, of course, for reasons that we never really learn, the bad guys create a duplicate of Don's wife who then goes on to kill the mayor.
But before this we get this whole deal with the holographic home assistant and the neighbor kid who uses Don's virtual reality helmet to practice martial arts. In reality this just gives the people who made the movie the opportunity to show off about 30 seconds of "state of the art" of 1980 computer generated animation. Of course since this movie didn't come out until 1995 the graphics pretty well suck.
Then the movie goes straight into Terminator 1 and 2 rip off mode. There are so many scenes and plot elements that are direct ripoffs of the first two Terminator movies it is almost funny. There's the scene where they go get some guns from T2, there's the scene where the Terminator -- errr I mean "tracker" who looks like The Dragon -- walks down the hallway killing people. They even take a drive through the LA River except the bad guy drives a delivery truck instead of a semi and they couldn't afford to have it dive off of a bridge. There's a guy who is left behind holding a bomb as the bad guys come into the room. And in the end the tracker of his wife is frozen with liquid nitrogen and then hit so that she shatters into a bunch of pieces.
Now I know what you are thinking, and yes, this movie is pretty damn awesome. In fact, it is so awesome that there is a scene where they shoot some guy who falls back except that they forgot to replace the blue screen behind him and when he falls back you can see the mat he lands on. How can a movie with such production values go wrong? (Actually there are a TON of explosions in this thing. I'm just about convinced that they used the explosions in another movie because it is really surprising that they could afford that much pyro.)
four thumbs up
Don the Dragon rules
And he has such awesome hair
And it's a helmet
The film starts off when one of the masters gets his arms cut off for betraying the evil bad guy. It is hear that we learn a little known fact: you bleed very little when your arms are cut off. In fact, right after he is recovered enough to go to a restaurant and try to get some food. Little known fact 2: The Chinese love to mock and ridicule handicapped people. After getting made fun of he goes off into the wilderness.
Then, in the cruelest of twists, the guy who has only been filmed from the waist up and was the one who actually cut off the other guy's arms pisses off the evil bad guy. As his punishment the evil bad guy burns his legs with acid. Little known fact: acid will burn your pants and muscles but not your skin. This leaves the guy with withered useless legs. I don't know what this guy's medical condition is but his legs basically look like they have no muscles in them. It is just bones with skin on them.
So this guy wanders around in the woods and guess who he runs into? That's right, the guy whose arms he cut off! They have a really cool fight and guess who they run into? That's right, a kung fu master who teaches them kung fu and take revenge on the evil bad guy!
Now, the only real reason to watch this is to see the handicapped guys do kung fu. And they kick ass. The guy who has no arms does have what he calls a flipper. It is basically like a finger coming out of his shoulder. Remarkably, he can swing a staff around with it. They also have a lot of scenes where he smacks people in the face with it and holds people's arms or legs against his body with it. The guy with withered legs is really good with is arms and likes to hit people with his butt. Even though you feel bad, it is pretty awesome.
four thumbs up
Handi-capable
These guys can really kick ass
I feel so unclean
