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.

Cold Harvest (1999)

Welcome to the double-apocalypse post-apocalypse. First, a comet collided with Earth hiding the sun away behind eternal clouds that just happen to make a film shot in the studio much more believable (in theory). Then, a mysterious virus with symptoms so mysterious the film never shows them or tells us about them rolled around to mop up the rest of humanity. In the end, it’s all darkness, people dressed in your typical post-apocalyptic rags (extra cheap edition) and something called “The Safe Zone”, whatever it may be.

Roland Chaney (Gary Daniels) roams decidedly not safe zones as a bounty hunter, for the world seems to have returned to some kind of frontier law. Being our action movie hero, Roland is of course haunted by a dark past. Things do not get lighter when hilariously sadist evildoer and Chaney childhood playmate Little Ray (Bryan Genesse) ambushes a government convoy in the hopes of picking up some goodies. Instead, he kills a bunch of civilians, as well as Roland’s twin Oliver (guess). Only Oliver’s wife Christine (Barbara Crampton) escapes.

Turns out Little Ray’s murder spree was an even worse idea than your typical murder spree, for the civilians in the convoy were the only surviving carriers of a gene that could make the virus a thing of the past. Thanks to a tracking device with extremely vague operational parameters, Ray follows Christine in the hopes of selling her on to the government; possibly after having had his way with her.

Too bad for him Christine and Roland meet and team up, and Roland’s the kind of bounty-hunting ass-kicker you really don’t want protecting your dedicated victim. Much violence, kidnappings, and a few explosions ensue.

I don’t think Cold Harvest is the biggest milestone in director Isaac Florentine’s decades-long crusade to make US direct-to-video action and martial arts films that are actually worth watching, carry a consciousness of genre history, and handle genre tropes knowingly yet lovingly. That doesn’t mean this isn’t a fun movie. In fact, it’s rather a lot of fun, but it does have a couple of problems.

For one, the post-apocalyptic world the NuImage budget provides is the usual mix of abandoned industrial buildings, and grotty sets, just with no lights in the sky (yet still an abundance of working light sources) and as such not exactly a delight to look at – it’s more than just a bit drab, and there’s very little to actually gawk at. Secondly – and I’m sorry, Gary Daniels fans – dear Gary Daniels only barely manages to get through the moments when the film actually needs him to act (and the script does take care not to put that much of a strain on him), even in scenes where saintly Barbara Crampton puts in rather a lot of effort to make him look good.

Which of course already leads us to some of Cold Harvest’s strong points, namely, Barbara Crampton who’d lighten up a shitty film and surely doesn’t do less to a really fun one like this, Gary Daniels when he’s not acting but hitting, kicking, shooting and pitchfork-ening people, and Isaac Florentine, esquire.

I’m not even sure it’s still necessary for me to praise Florentine’s action direction, but I’ll do it just to be sure: as usual, Florentine’s action scenes are incredibly energetic – it’s difficult not to use the old cliché of them exploding off the screen – yet never feel the need to go for the “cool” cop out shot that makes it more difficult to see what stunt actors and actors are actually doing. The basis of Florentine’s approach to action is based on the idea that the stuff his performers actually do is as cool as things can get, and it is his job to emphasise what they can do instead of hiding what they can’t. This time around, the style feels particularly Hong Kong to me, with 80s and 90s martial arts scenes and gun fu with a Western genre influence being the centre of Florentine’s attention. There’s a lot of action going around too, of course, but, as always, Florentine’s putting creativity and thought into the bits where nobody dies too.

Sure, the emotional parts are consciously cheesy (just look at the hilarious bit where Crampton washes her back while Daniels polishes his gun and watches her in a mirror and oh so many ever so slightly sexually loaded gestures are made) but then, that’s the only emotional content that fits a film like this.

Other joys are Genesse’s awesome and strange performance as Little Ray, a main henchman who is into noses (don’t ask him why), and a whole lot of overdubbed whoosh and swish noises. Turns out Gary Daniels can’t turn his head without the air around him going “woosh” in sheer excitement. And who could blame it?

Bloodmoon (1997)

A rather talkative serial killing martial artist (Darren Shahlavi in a performance that becomes increasingly silly in all the right action movie villain ways the longer the film goes on) goes around murdering champions of random martial arts in surprise duels, mocking the police with his superior powers of 90s action movie computer hacking. Chuck Baker (Chuck Jeffreys) the martial artist leader – and seemingly only member – of the local police force’s serial murder beat is clueless as to the how and why and who, perhaps because he’s an idiot, or just because he’s too distracted performing magic tricks next to dead bodies.

Baker’s supremely shouty boss (Frank Gorshin) has just about had enough of the guy’s shit, so he attempts to rope in retired former serial killer department boss and profiler Ken O’Hara (Gary Daniels – yes, that’s Gary “what’s line delivery?” Daniels as a profiler) to do the job. As an aside, Baker – you know, the leader of the one man serial murder department – doesn’t seem to know what a profiler is and does (or the name of his predecessor, for that matter); but then, the movie isn’t much clearer about that point either.

Anyway, O’Hara at first doesn’t want to help – because Baker’s an obnoxious ass, and the darkness in serial killer heads (mate) has ruined his marriage – yet changes his tune once the next victim of the killer turns out to be his former martial arts sensei. Now the cops only need to get over their differences, find the killer – with the help of the sensei’s adoptive – and of course also martial artist - daughter (Brandie Sylfae) – and beat the crap out of him. Alas, the bad guy might always be one step in front of them (and babbling).

When Hong Kong talent went to Hollywood it weren’t of course only the John Woos and Tsui Harks of this world but also rather lower profile guys like Bloodmoon’s director (whose main achievements rather seem to be in the realm of action choreography) Tony Leung Siu-hung, or its main baddie Darren Shahlavi. Watching Bloodmoon, I couldn’t help but conclude the rather more low budget world reserved for people like Leung to be more amenable to the actual talents they developed working in Hong Kong, what with their experience at making spectacular action with little money, and working with actors and screen fighters whose talents went from “brilliant” to “wooden manikin”, making them all look competent.

At least, this works out pretty fine for Bloodmoon, a film chock-full of cheap yet awesomely choreographed diverse martial arts fights and stunts (sure helped along by the fact that Daniels, Jeffreys and Shahlavi are all very fine screen fighters, as are the guys playing Shahlavi’s victims), stupid yet funny dialogue, and much glowering in the direction of the camera. It is, of course, pretty easy to make fun of the plot but it is a perfect structure to hang the film’s fast and furious action on while adding the always popular profiler mythology beloved by everyone and their daughters.

Additionally, Leung and/or screenwriter Keith W. Strandberg put in quite a bit of the random nonsense of the sort that just seems to accrue in low budget action films, particularly those made in the USA, things that make no sense but open up so many interesting questions. Like, why does our serial killer dress up like the Phantom of the Opera (and why isn’t the abominable soundtrack at least quoting Andrew Lloyd Webber?)? Is Baker’s obnoxious magic trick crap really only in the film to set up the hilariously awful ending? Do computers really work that way? Or the police, for that matter? Does really everyone in the US know martial arts apart from strip joint visitors, for with the direction the film was going in, I was only waiting for Frank Gorshin to pull some fancy moves too? And so forth, and so on, until no brain stays dry. Which, of course, is absolutely how I like it.

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In short: Misfire (2014)

Sure, nomen est omen and all that, but apart from ambitions on being honest, I can’t imagine how a film like this really comes into existence. It seems, at least to my eyes, very clear nobody involved here actually wants to have anything to do with it: the actors are sleepwalking, even poor old Gary Daniels doing the “former DEA agent finding things getting personal” bit seems as bored as the film deserves. R. Ellis Frazier’s direction seems about as absent as possible in something that’s supposed to be a finished movie.

I’d talk about the plot, but that would suggest there is any beyond the most perfunctory gestures, or at least that there actually was anything happening, when the only things the film provides are random bits of genre clichés without showing any wish to connect them in any way. In this case, it would even have been an improvement if the whole thing were just a series of mildly craftily connected clichés because that would suggest anyone involved actual cared. Instead, Misfire breathes a heavy air of disinterest and lack of spirit, with the idea of excitement so far beyond it, I found myself drifting away thinking about more interesting things, like tax brackets, while watching it.

Given that this is a direct-to-DVD action movie, one might at least hope for some decent action scenes, but again, nobody involved seems willing or able to provide even the veneer of enthusiasm, and what action theoretically happens stays indeed very theoretical.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,action,r. ellis frazier,gary daniels

In short: Fist of the North Star (1995)

If there is something to suggest director Tony Randel’s adaptation of ultra-violent fight manga (and sometimes anime) Fist of the North Star is faithful to the original, then it is the fact it has left me with the same impression of utter confusion the anime left me with when I watched that ages ago.

So, plot-wise, I can tell you that the world has ended, and that evil martial artists master Shin (Costas Mandylor) is trying to unite those few parts of the rest of humanity he and his men aren’t killing, while his arch enemy Kenshiro (Gary Daniels) of an opposing school that is never supposed to fight with his first needs the repeated visits of the ghost of his dead dad Ryuken (Malcolm McDowell) – in form of Mal Mc, of a zombie, and of a levitating little boy, respectively – to be properly motivated for doing good. There’s also some business about Shin having taken Kenny’s girlfriend Julia (Isako Washio). Otherwise, people explode because they were hit, Chris Penn is evil and has a head only held together with leather straps after Kenny hit him with some of his kung fu, and Clint Howard’s character seems to be named Stalin. Yeah.

So yes, obviously, Randel’s film is a pretty fucking bizarre thing, where all people with Asian names are played by Caucasians, while Julia is Japanese, where our hero’s ultra-death attack looks lamer than anything else he does in his fights – which says something because Randel seems so clueless about how to film a martial arts fight attractively that even a dependable screen fighter like Gary Daniels looks lame – and where random minor characters we would probably know from the manga do stuff that makes little sense and has trouble even reaching the definition of “a series of events”, let’s not even use the word plot.

On the plus side, everything here is so random and so needlessly bizarre I found it difficult to look away from the screen, in fear of missing another shot of Mandylor tossing his luscious luscious hair, random gore, Malcolm McDowell’s voice speaking out of a levitating kid or the low-rent sets that are supposed to be post-apocalyptica. It’s certainly something, though I’m not at all sure what exactly that may be.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,post-apocalypse,martial arts,tony randel,gary daniels,malcolm mcdowell,isako washio,costas mandylor

In short: Hunt To Kill (2010)

In theory, border patrol beefcake Jim Rhodes (Steve Austin) has plans to use the winter break of his daughter Kim (Marie Avgeropoulos) - action movie hero daughters are all called Kim for contractual reasons - for some quality bonding time. There will in fact be bonding time for the two of them but of a rather more violent manner, for the gang of raving lunatics - among them good old Gary Daniels - of a certain Banks (Gil Bellows) has come to the mountains of Montana to hunt down their former boss (Michael Hogan) who absconded with a lot of money and tried to blow them up.

When their paths accidentally cross, the bad guys kidnap Rhodes and Kim because they need a wilderness guide to find their intended target. Whatever happened to paying a shady alcoholic for these things? Of course, seeing as this is a direct-to-DVD action film, violence ensues soon enough.

Ah, the horrors of basic competence. No single element of (direct-to-DVD, but you already knew that) Hunt to Kill is remarkable in any way or form: Keoni Waxman's direction is serviceable if you're not afraid of films on whose frame composition has not been spent a single thought beyond "are the actors in the frame?". The acting is okay in a very okay manner with Bellows doing his best to be a scenery chewing psychopath but unable to ever not come across as a basically nice guy playing a psychopath, Austin glowering a lot (surprise), and everyone else being kinda there. Eric Roberts pops in to die in the pre-credit sequence, for an international superstar of his calibre is clearly too pricey for the film at hand. The script is clichéd and kinda dumb yet not so dumb the film gets ridiculous or interesting, and there's no visible effort to bend any cliché even in the slightest; the only black character is not only the rapey one but also dies first, for Cthulhu's sake. The action is barely okay, with some decent poky-stick-based gore once Austin's character channels his inner serial killer, and hot rock-climbing and ATV racing action as supposed highpoints, but never a moment to actually wow anyone.

These aren't the elements of a film that's horrible in any way, shape, or form, but of a film completely lacking in actual personality, the cheap burger of action movie-dom. At least I learned from Hunt to Kill that to best way for a father and daughter to bond is for her to realize that Daddy is the kind of guy who kills people he has already rendered helpless.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,keoni waxman,steve austin,gary daniels,eric roberts,gil bellows,marie avgeropoulos,action