Pushed to the Limit (1992)

I was looking to get some more Mimi Lesseos on the site, and Tubi kept suggesting this one to me, so I figured why not make it happen. In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and David Wain at The Schlock Pit have covered this too.

Pushed to the Limit stars Lesseos (who also wrote and produced) as Magnificent Mimi, a star wrestler whose brother (Greg Ostrin) is killed and husband (Michael M. Foley) is seriously wounded by gangster Harry Lee (Eidan Hanzei). To get revenge, she has her husband's sensei Vern (Verrel Reed) train her to fight in Lee's Kumite--that's right, we got a Kumite baby! Only this is more of an evergreen, nightly Kumite, as opposed to a yearly tournament, at least as far as I can tell. Anyway, Lee's champion fighter, Inga, after a successful career as a dancer in Russell Mulcahy-directed 80s music videos, is having trouble finding work in the 90s, so she's changed careers and is now breaking ladies' backs and necks in the ring--though she's kept her make-up from those old videos. Will Mimi defeat Inga and Lee, and bring down Lee's criminal empire?

This definitely borders on what the guys at Comeuppance would call a "That Movie," and by that they mean a Samurai Cop or a Miami Connection. A lot of bad dialog, scenes that don't seem to fit, and an opening credit sequence that looks like The Pod People on MST3K. The difference I think though is Lesseos is a great lead, which keeps the schlock, low-budget elements fun, but also elevates this slightly above those other "That Movies." Another element the guys at Comeuppance always talk about is the Punchfighter, and this Kumite has all of those elements, only in addition to people holding wads of cash, we also have these elderly extended reach claw-like devices that they used to give and take money from the upper levels of the fighting arena. How they kept track of who bet on who is beyond me, I just liked the idea of those devices for myself so I wouldn't need to get on a chair to reach the upper shelves of my cabinets. There are elements of the movie that don't work though. It takes us about a half-hour until we even get mention of a Kumite, and before that, we get introduced to a bunch of Mimi's family members who play no role in the film and only serve to confuse us. Some of the darker sequences are hard to follow, and some of the fights were kind of all over the place and hard to get a consistent look at, which could be headache inducing if you're watching this on a tablet like I was. When the fights were shot well though, they were a fun mix of traditional martial arts with professional wrestling moves, and Lesseos really carried off the fights she was in. Also, I loved the Kumite set, it was like something out of a Fred Olen Ray sci-fi exploitation flick, and the juxtaposition of that kind of T n' A with the fighters here in hot Lycra spandex, but kicking ass and taking names, turned that exploitation on its ear. I think for most of the people reading this, you're going to have a fun time, especially if you're streaming for free, or if you find it cheap in the wild on VHS.

"She's a woman on the 90s." She certainly is, and the movie does a great job of positioning Lesseo's character as a modern woman trying to carve out her own career, versus Inga, an 80s throwback with her hair and make-up, trying to fight the calendar. This is the first of four films Lesseos made between 1992 and 1995, the third of which, Streets of Rage, we've also covered on the site, and while I didn't like this one as much as that one, Lesseos has a great presence and is enjoyable to watch. It made me wonder why she only did these four, and in looking at The Schlock Pit review, David Wain mentioned that she tried to make her movies on her own, which might explain it. For funding on this one, it said she had a $600,000 outside investment, and then funded the rest herself, in part through extreme wrestling matches she did in Japan. She said when she tried to go the more traditional route, filmmakers just wanted her fighting in her bikini, which I get would be annoying for her--only now we see with her new cover for this film, she's in a bikini. It's a shame though, because Lesseos should've had like 20 movies from the early 90s to the early 2000s, just a bunch of films like this where she's beating the crap out of people with the occasional scene interspersed with her training or out at a fancy dinner. I get a shady producer wanting to see her in a bikini, and I also get why she would've said no to that, but we as an audience are the ones who missed out.

We've seen our share of Kumites here at the DTVC. There were the Bloodsport sequels, where we had "The Next Kumite" in part 2, what I'd call "the Reboot Kumite" run by John Rhys-Davies in part 3, and then our first look at a "Dark Kumite," run by Ben Franklin in a prison in part 4. We also had a "Lady Kumite" with Lady Bloodfight, starring Amy Johnston. And then recently, on episode 202 of the DTVC Podcast, Ty and I looked at The Last Kumite, which I took "last" to be not so much "final," but rather "the most recent," because I feel like as long as there are action movies, we'll always have Kumites. This independent Kumite run by the baddie is a mix of the "Lady Kumite"--even though there are men's fights too, so it's like there's a men's and women's division--and the "Dark Kumite," because it is pretty dark. It's also a "Nightly Kumite," which is something we haven't seen yet, usually Kumites are yearly affairs. In my Bloodsport 3 post I suggested a Bloodsport 5 be a Colombian Kumite, where the hero has to fight King from Tekken. I was trying to think of others. What about a "Christmas Kumite"? Like it's a mix between a Hallmark Christmas movie and a Kumite? We could even use Amy Johnston as a young woman who left her hometown, made it big in the city, then returned home for Christmas, only to get roped into the local Kumite, plus find out she really loves her old high school boyfriend, played by any number of lantern-jawed Canadian actors. We could have Wincott hosting it for the full Canadian effect. I think you're picking up what I'm putting down.

You may (or may not) have noticed a new tag, "Chinatown." I decided to start tagging them, after we saw the LA one again. We only have 7 tagged, and of those 7, LA has come up a few times. Other Chinatowns include New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, Australia, and Manila in the Philippines. Hopefully we'll see more--plus I may have more that I haven't reviews found, I only did a search for the term "Chinatown" on my blog. We also had another McDonald's, now 13. I believe we've seen this one before too, it's the one on the Vegas Strip, which Lesseos passes while getting a ride in a limo to a dance gig she has there. I recently had McDonald's while I was at Union Station in DC waiting for my train back to Philly. I told myself I wasn't going to do it, but I couldn't help myself as I passed by, and needed to get a couple double cheeseburgers. It is interesting to think, with 13 posts, that almost 1% of all the films I've reviewed on the site have had a McDonald's in them.

Finally, look at how our baddie is holding his glass of champagne. What are you doing? You're making it warm holding it like that! Do you like warm champagne? He should be holding it by the stem of the glass, instead of the bowl, because the warmth of our hands warms the champagne if we old it like that. What's the point of even keeping it on ice in that bucket, if he's just going to warm it in his hand? I'm getting sick at the thought of warm champagne just looking at that. If you've seen this film before, you might be reading this rant and thinking "Matt, you're upset at how the baddie is holding his champagne, but you're okay with the completely out of nowhere way he suggested he and Lesseos go out to dinner in the previous scene?" That is a great point, in the scene before this, Lesseos finds out her friend is fighting Inga in Lee's Kumite, so she pleads with Lee to cancel the bout, only to have Lee say "let's discuss this over dinner." Wait what? Why? But I guess we needed this scene to establish just how bad our baddie is--I mean, it doesn't get more villainous than enjoying warm champagne!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi and Plex here in the States. Lesseos delivers another fun 90s actions. It's rough in spots, and very low-budget, but it'll get you where you need to go, which I think is worth the stream.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110918 

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!