The Dangerous (1995)

A Japanese brother and sister duo (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Saemi Nakamura) with some unexplained ninjutsu expertise murder their way through the coke dealing underworld of New Orleans. Because the cops, not even the randomly named Random (Michael Paré), can’t really cope with this sort of thing, the corrupt powers that be manage to draw retired man of violence Davalos (Robert Davi) back in with one of those offers one can’t refuse.

For also unexplained reasons, Davalos isn’t just hot shit when it comes to killing people – as he proves early on in a shoot-out in a graveyard that mainly consists of everyone involved running backwards while shooting – he is also an expert in the made-up version of Japanese culture the film trades in. So teaming him up with Random makes perfect sense, and random doesn’t seem too phased by having to team up with a random (see what I did there?) thug.

On the negative side, Davalos also happens to be an old enemy of New Orleans coke kingpin Tito (Juan Fernández). Tito for his part believes his underlings are being killed by the cops – who always walk around with swords in this parallel universe New Orleans, one assumes – and hires a knife-wielding duo of killers going by Emile (John Savage) and Henri (Jim Youngs) Lautrec. I assume their brother Toulouse is out and about painting somewhere.

Various amateurishly staged action sequences occur.

If all of this sounds like a hot, overcomplicated mess, that is exactly what Rod Hewitt’s and David Winters’s The Dangerous is. A tale of crossed revenges shouldn’t be as complicated as this turns out to be, but Hewitt’s script somehow manages that feat by never explaining the things that need explaining, overexplaining what you never wanted to know, and dipping everything in a fat sauce of badly digested clichés about honour and revenge. Which somehow never leaves time for the film to actually find a way to gracefully go from one scene to the next. More often than not, this feels as if parts of the script where written after scenes had been shot, made to fit any which way.

While this does not lead to a tense, suspenseful action movie, it does provide the film with many opportunities to charm with bizarre moments. So there’s the mandatory one scene Elliott Gould cameo (this time around he’s a junkie slash projectionist and gets his cheeks grabbed by Davi in a truly awkward moment – so at least he’s working for his mortgage, or whatever else Gould needed to pay off at the time); an unhoused informant with a radar sense very useful when he’s stashed in a car trunk; the complete nonsensical “Japanese” “philosophy” generally accompanied by painful attempts of the score to “sound Japanese”; Fernández cackling maniacally and looking rather aroused when he lets the Lautrecs murder one of his underlings as a test; and so on and so forth.

All of this is enjoyable enough when you are of the disposition to find joy in the little things, and I’d even call The Dangerous a minor cheap shot action gem for this, if not for the sad fact that action direction and choreography are absolutely terrible. To add insult to injury, the action is badly edited and amateurishly filmed in a “what’s the worst angle to shoot any given moment from” kind of way, so much so that even old pros at looking interesting in shitty action sequences like most of the cast members are can’t do anything against it. Even worse, the locations – a cinema, that New Orleans graveyard including a jazz funeral, a high rise rooftop and so on – would be perfect for doing something clever and exciting with them. The filmmakers just don’t seem to be able to.

But at least, we will always have the merry ring of absurdities the non-action parts of The Dangerous churn out.

White Tiger (1996)

Australian Mike Ryan (Gary Daniels) and his best buddy Josh (John Kirkconnell) are part of a raid on triad-connected drug kingpin Tang. Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong, for instead of raiding a major drug deal, the DEA step right into a minor drug war. A guy called Victor Chow (the inevitable Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) is hard at work at a bit of a revolution in the triad drug biz, you see. He has developed some sort of super drug the triad elders aren’t too fond of and is planning to murder his way to selling it, and the DEA raid and his ambush on (dressed up as a deal with) Tang are happening right at the same time. Oh, and Chow’s pretty crazy.

In the ensuing chaos – and certainly also thanks to Mike’s unwillingness to wait for backup – Chow kills Josh and escapes. Since the whole operation has to be written off as a fiasco, his boss wants to send Mike back to Australia, but our hero does of course no such thing as going home. Instead he tries to infiltrate the triad underworld of the local Chinatown. Which is to say, he goes into nightclubs and asks around for Chow, perhaps in the hopes he’ll attract unwilling attention, or perhaps because he’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

Be that as it may, soon enough, Mike annoys the very short-fused Chow enough he is willing to sacrifice his pet corrupt cops in a murder attempt that quickly turns into a frame-up job on Mike when our hero turns out to be a bit more resilient than expected. Now, Mike is hunted by the police as well as by Chow’s people. His only help is the mysterious Jade (Julia Nickson) who may or may not have connections to Chow.

I have to admit, I am not the biggest fan of Australia’s very own Gary Daniels. He’s a bit wooden an actor even by low budget martial arts movie standards for my tastes, I don’t think he’s terribly charismatic, and while he’s certainly a more competent screen fighter than Joe Normal could ever be, there are dozen guys on his level, some of whom are somewhat better actors, somewhat more charismatic, or just luckier when it comes to their choice of films. This doesn’t mean I hate the guy – he’s not Steven Seagal after all – but it doesn’t exactly make me jump for joy when I read his name on a DVD cover.

Fortunately, Richard Martin’s White Tiger is one of the better Daniels vehicles I’ve seen, clearly attempting to orient itself on Hong Kong’s heroic bloodshed films. It’s rather good at that too, trying to add a bit more background to most characters than typical in US low budget action movies, and certainly having learned different lessons from the way Hong Kong action looks than “just add slow motion and pigeons”. It’s a bit of a shame that Daniels’s Mike is the big exception in the added background department, but then, he’s no Chow Yun-Fat, and the film might just be keeping with what he can do. Certainly, Daniels can do what the film asks of him well enough, throwing himself in all the right poses, usually making the appropriate faces, and looking good kicking ass. While I’m criticizing, I also would have wished the film had told us about the shared past between Jade and Chow earlier, had made clear exactly how crazy Chow is earlier, and had done more with the whole “cop has to ally himself with the triads angle”. Basically, what an actual heroic bloodshed movie would have done.

The action’s fun though: directed with an eye on readability, well – if not incredibly well – choreographed and providing a lot of variety too. The latter is more important for an action movie than quite a few directors in the genre seem to realize, for it is all well and good if you can show us two guys kicking each other in the face, but unless you put these guys in different environments, or even use other kinds of violence, even the best choreographed face kicking gets old when it is repeated too often.

While it’s certainly easy to imagine what White Tiger could have done better – or in this case, really done more or done deeper – there’s also no denying this is a very fun little flick, showing Daniels and everyone involved from their best sides and providing more than just the mandatory amount of fisticuffs, face-kicking, gunplay and explosions.

In short: Bridge of Dragons (1999)

In some sort of geographically and temporally unsound place and time that enables the good people of NuImage to wildly throw various costumes and props they found squirreled away somewhere together without any care for coherence or unity of mood and theme. Evil warlord General Ruechang (the inevitable Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) has been reigning over an unnamed kingdom for years now, just waiting for Princess Halo (Valerie “Rachel Shane” Chow) to get old enough for him to marry her.

Of course, Ruechang is responsible for the “accident” that killed Halo’s parents, and of course, she only learns about this shortly before her marriage. Not that she wanted to marry the crazy military dictator before, but now she’s so pissed she rides off on her wedding day. Ruechang sends Warchild (Dolph Lundgren), his best man, after Halo. Yet, while retrieving Halo and rescuing the kidnapping-prone woman from rapists and kidnappers, Warchild finds himself soon with divided loyalties, for he and the princess fall in love.

For a film directed by the saintly champion of awesome low budget action Isaac Florentine, and starring the paragon of Dolphness, Dolph Lundgren, Bridge of Dragons (I have, by the way, not the faintest idea why the film’s called this, nor is the film telling) is a rather mild pleasure.

It’s neither the fault of Florentine’s handling of the action, which is impressive as always, nor of Dolph, who had a rather good month when shooting this and has seldom looked more mobile in his fight scenes. The problem lies with a script that really doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing nor what it wants to do, slowly shuffling Warchild and Halo (and seriously, what’s with the names?) to one place only to take them back to a different place one or two scenes later, with little that’s a proper or useful set-up for the action sequences. For most of the film’s running time, the script is dithering, introducing a lame rebel army only to slaughter it in a minor assault five minutes later, introducing Halo as a secret stick fighting badass only to find her kidnapped four to six – depending on your count – times, and always making one step forward and one step back, presenting itself as utterly unable to give Florentine a frame on which to hang the things he does best.

I would like to blame Dolph and Chow for the tepid and anti-septic air of their Great Romantic Love but again, the script doesn’t provide much – if anything – for them to work with; but what do I expect of a movie that doesn’t even properly use Tagawa’s well-known scenery-chewing abilities as it should?

Usually, I’d argue that an action movie doesn’t need that deep a script, particularly not when the action is in the right hands. Bridge of Dragons, however, truly suffers from the failings of its writing, with hardly a scene going by where something potentially awesome isn’t wasted through an improper set-up or through feet-dragging of a kind I’ve seen in no other Florentine film. I don’t care much that the film is dumb, but I care a lot about the fact it seems to sabotage everything that could be fun in it, never deciding on a tone or a theme it isn’t going to ignore at least two scenes later completely.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,isaac florentine,dolph lundgren,action,cary-hiroyuki tagawa,valerie chow,gary hudson

Ninja Apocalypse (2014)

It’s years after another end of the world. The part of post-apocalyptica we are concerned with is populated by various multi-racial clans of magical ninjas. Grandmaster Fumitaka (the inevitable – not that I’m complaining, mind you - Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) calls the leaders of all clans to his underground bunker to unite them as one against a threat we will never hear from again.

Alas, Fumitaka is shurikened to death right during the public cheer for his big reunification speech. Various freakish witnesses quickly pin the blame on Cage (Christian Oliver), the leader of the Lost Clan, who, as our designated hero, is of course totally innocent. He, his brother Surge (Les Brandt), and clan members Sky (Isaac C. Singleton Jr.), Mar (Tara Macken) and Trillion (Kaiwi Lyman), will have to fight their way back to the surface, conquering regular ninjas, animalistic dragon admiring ninjas, fire-throwing ninjas, sex ninjas, and some rather unexpected zombies in the process. Perhaps they’ll even find out who really killed Fumitaka (apart from the budget’s inability to hire Tagawa for very long).

Oh, come on, internets, of course post-apocalyptic super-powered ninjas are a silly idea, but you of all people should be able to appreciate the fact they are also an awesome idea, even before they meet the zombies. Director Lloyd Lee Barnett clearly doesn’t care if his film’s set-up makes sense but he does just as clearly care about making the resulting film as fun as possible, leading his cast of unknowns and stunt workers through fights enhanced by some very neat effects. Barnett’s copious experience on the visual effects field is a clear plus for these effects, resulting in a lot of convincing looking and simply yet cool designed energy explosions and many a blue glowing sword.

The whole ninja magic part of the film is highly video game influenced, with people talking about how much energy they still have left for the day, though the Barnett fortunately eschews trying to imitate game-y camera styles. For my tastes, the camera often frames the action slightly too close, but Barnett still seems more interested in letting his audience see the neat stunt work his actors do than obfuscating any failings. These failings are more in the non-physical parts of the acting anyway, though there’s really little that’s horrible or too annoying – everyone still does a decent job, and I at least don’t go into this kind of martial arts bonanza expecting The Method.

What Ninja Apocalypse is first and foremost is a very fun series of fight scenes that for once uses contemporary low budget cinema’s beloved grey, cramped corridors with a degree of creativity, squeezing a surprising amount of diverse action scenes out of the surroundings, which is all I ask of a film of its type, really. That the film also has a few scenes in rather breathtaking looking natural locations is an added bonus, leaving little to be desired in this regard.

Adding to the fun is the film’s continuous flow of mildly idiotic yet excellent ideas, from the playmate style poison sex ninjas (it’s tradition in Japan too, without the playmate part) to the unexplained zombies, or the just as unexplained fact that the moon in the film’s post-apocalyptica is quite a bit closer to Earth, looks rather ragged, and has lost parts that now seem to be hanging in their own close orbit (which also happens to be a rather impressive looking effect). It’s quite impossible for me to argue with a film that puts these things on screen with this much enthusiasm and competence, and it’s just as impossible for me not to recommend it highly to everyone with a taste for the kind of low budget action/martial arts cinema that isn’t afraid to be silly without feeling the need to be ironic, and that puts so many fun ideas on screen it’s impossible to not be entertained.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,lloyd lee barnett,christian oliver,les brandt,cary-hiroyuki tagawa,ernie reyes jr.,isaac c. singleton jr.,tara macken,action,post-apocalypse. martial arts,zombies