When the Bullet Hits the Bone (1996)

This just sounds awesome, right? DTVC favorite Jeff Wincott in a flick titled When the Bullet Hits the Bone? How can you go wrong, right? But if there's anything we've learned in our 4-plus years of posting reviews at the DTVC, what sounds awesome can just as easily be not.

When the Bullet Hits the Bone has nothing to do with the Golden Earring song "Twilight Zone", but rather has Wincott as a trauma surgeon who has had it, and the vegan straw that finally breaks the carnivore's back comes when he's almost killed after witnessing some drug dealer business gone bad. He decides he's had enough of drug problems and all the work they send him in the ER, so he takes things into his own hands, hoping to save a woman he saw at the scene when he was almost killed, and take down the kingpin she works for.



This is another of the Noir-ish Wincott dramas, and though it wasn't as poorly made or as convoluted as Fatal Combat, it still was a little off. Fingers were cut off, surgical blades were stuck under fingernails, old men were forced to do push-ups before murdered-- it was just kind of weird. Not to mention, Wincott doesn't do any martial arts, which makes it a step down from Fatal Combat. The thing is, the Film Noir is genre isn't as easy to pull off well as people think, and maybe because I've seen a lot of it and seen it done well, I'm harder on stuff like this than others who watch more action flicks and think "hey, cool, Wincott's trying something different." Both this and Fatal Combat miss a lot of the style that makes Noir Noir: the steamy plots, the intrigue, the mystery. A few cute camera angles, a voice over, and a few severed limbs does not Noir make. What we're left with then is a substandard drama with very little action or solid substance.

Thinking about it though, of all the great 90s DTV action leads, Wincott might have been best suited to play a legitimate Film Noir lead. The smoking, the scowling-- plus, he had a great voice for the voice overs, I had no complaints with those. If you could somehow merge the two genres, go really Nikkatsu/Seijun Suzuki-style action based Noir, but infuse it with a fight scene like every fifteen or twenty minutes, yet still have that Raymond Chandler detective element, I think you'd have something really cool. There's no reason why Wincott couldn't still make that movie.



One of the funny things about this is that it was obviously shot in Canada with pretty much an all Canadian cast, yet they were adamant that the film was set in New York. The main baddie's hatchetman had this thing where he grilled people on somewhat obscure American history trivia, like he asked Wincott who the 13th president was before he shot him. It's like "Hey man, I'm sorey, but I grew up in Canadia, eh?" Come on, mix it up, why not just set the movie in Toronto or Montreal? It'll be more fun for everyone-- I'd love some obscure Canadian history trivia in my DTV action.

This had a fair amount of Canadian character actor mainstays: Michelle Johnson, Douglas O'Keeffe, Richard Fitzpatrick, Phillip Jarrett-- Jarrett is Canadian, right? My favorite was Torri Higginson, whom most of you will know from Stargate: Atlantis, but whom DTVC fans might remember from the Roddy Piper flick Jungleground, where she plays his love interest. In this movie, Higginson plays a hospital nurse that helps Wincott escape the baddies trying to kill him as he's recovering, then restores him to health-- and after that's she's hit by a stray bullet. I would've liked to see more Higginson, maybe even her own close-up, but alas, that was all we got.



You may have noticed that all the pics have been of Wincott making funny faces in the same scene. I may be incorrect, but I believe the last time I did something similar was when I did three Gary Busey pics in the sack of asscrack The Stoned Age review. Anyway, this scene from this movie came when Wincott had his finger chopped off. They don't show it, we just see the knife placed near his finger, he's given one last chance to give up the information, then all we hear is a thump, and Wincott starts making these faces to show us that, in fact, his finger was severed. As if that wasn't enough, the baddie then takes said severed digit, and holds it up to show us he'll use it to activate a bomb attached to Wincott's parents' car. Hey, stay classy movie.

It looks like in the US it's VHS or bust-- that's what I viewed this on-- but the Aussies have themselves a DVD cut. Good for you guys. Not sure how worth it is in any case, this one just didn't work for me. Kudos to Wincott and everyone involved for going outside the box, but unfortunately, going outside the box just isn't enough.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114918/

Blood Warriors (1993)

It was time to get a little David Bradley up on the DTVC again, and this one also starred Frank Zagarino, so I thought, what the hell. That, and I got this from a friend on VHS, had an open slot here, and figured I'd go for it. I can always go to David Bradley in a pinch.

Blood Warriors has native Texan David Bradley playing a Marine from Texas who finds himself in jail. His ol' Marine buddy Frank Zagarino bails him out, gets his sentence dropped, and covers the mortgage on his dad's farm. The catch: he needs to board a plane to Jakarta and help Zags out on some business there. En route, Zags is killed, so Bradley catches up with his hot sister. When Zags's business competitor finds out his casket is empty, things get crazy. Is Zags still alive? And if he is, can Bradley trust him? And isn't this action hero gig a pretty sweet deal when you get love scenes with the woman who played the model on Seinfeld?



This isn't horrible, but it's not exactly great either. The beginning goes a little long before we get any good action, and while the action is decent, it's nothing spectacular. I felt like there were more missed opportunities than great moments, which is never a good thing. For instance, Zags is showing off for Bradley how well his mercs can fight. Bradley just sits there, then is all like "I don't want to be in your gang, Zags." What we needed there was a Jeff Wincott in Mission of Justice scene, you know, the one where he's supposed to walk this gauntlet, acts like he's not going to do it, then quickly turns and flips into the middle of all these dudes, and totally houses them. Bradley needed to kick all their asses, then throw on his cowboy hat, pop his collar, and tell Zags he'll be in his room if he needs him. With an action movie that has guys like Bradley and Zagarino, you can't have them sitting on the sidelines, and unfortunately, that happened too often.

Gotta love the Bradley in a cowboy hat look. Maybe not quite the fanny pack, but it's close. I know Bradley is from Texas, but he's too much of a dandy for Texas good ol' boy to work. He's a thinking man's lead, smooth, cleancut, sharply tailored suits and sleek automobiles. He needs to cruise into town in an expensive convertible and take out gangs of toughs with nice looking roundhouses and jumpkicks, throw on his sunglasses and tell the guys to have a nice day. The fact that Bradley co-wrote the script tells me he wanted to get away from that image some. Come on man, be who you are, and be proud of it.



Zagarino isn't in this much. He's kind of like Orson Welles in The Third Man, only his name is "Stone" instead of "Lime". Keith Stone, actually, not to be confused with the guy from the Keystone beer commercials. As far as I can tell, beer commercials, and in particular light beer commercials, are so bad it's almost criminal, but the Keith Stone ones are one of the few I like. Really, I'm more of a man if I drink your light beer? Or maybe you're more of a moron.

Sam Firstenberg directed this, and as I'm sure you know, he has a pretty solid track record. American Ninja, American Ninja 2, Avenging Force-- though he was also the man who put Bradley in a fanny pack in Cyborg Cop-- though to his credit, he made fun of it in the sequel, Cyborg Cop II. This was a definite step down from any of the others of his we've reviewed, and it makes me wonder if maybe something went wrong in post-production that hurt this thing-- or maybe it's his Jersey Girl.



Seinfeld fans will recognize Jennifer Campbell as the model Jerry meets flying home in first class, and then who sees him scratching his nose at a red light, and erroneously thinks he's picking it. I looked on her resume, and though she did do some action based TV shows, I didn't see another action movie after this, and I can kind of see why. She was pushed and pulled and dragged and carried and sent through the ringer in this bad boy. At one point, Bradley is carrying her over his shoulder, which made very little sense, since she seemed like she could run just fine-- and run faster than Bradley could run carrying her. It probably makes sense why we don't see as many repeat action movie female co-stars, it's a much easier paycheck looking disgusted when you think Jerry Seinfeld picked his nose.

This is not an easy find, out of print, only available on VHS. Maybe for completists, because it is Bradley and Zagarino directed by Firstenberg, but that's a big stretch. If you see it cheap in a bargain bin and don't have much else already in your basket, I guess you could go for it and add it to your bad action collection.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106432/

Basket Case (1982)

I'd been meaning to make this one happen for a long time, and I'm not sure what has kept me from it. This was a video store classic, that gross, cult, 80s horror flick with tons of blood and gore, and some stop-animation that left a little to be desired-- but we thought it was great for that reason. They don't make 'em like this anymore for one reason or another, and that's too bad.

Basket Case follows a kid named Duane from upstate as he makes his way in the big, scary, New York City. He looks like a poor man's Marc Bolan, and he carries a wad of cash and a large wicker basket around with him everywhere. What is in there? And what is he doing in the city?



As I mentioned above, this is vintage. It starts off with a guy in a remote house, yelling into a phone and screaming for his life. It's more like a guy who's pissed that someone is bothering him or egging his house than someone afraid for his life. From there's he's brutally dispatched by a rubbery gloved demon-like hand. And the movie just spends the next hour and twenty minutes living up that promising start. So few horror movies can deliver what they're selling, but Basket Case does. This is great 80s low-budget horror that is exactly what you're looking for.

I'm tired of being told that movies like Hatchet II are somehow saving the horror genre, or giving me the kind of horror I knew and loved from the 80s, because they aren't. I'm going to let you know how many minutes of Basket Case were wasted with bad conversations about the names Chad and Cleetus: zero. I'm going to tell you how much of the film was wasted with bad jokes that went on too long: zero. I'm going to tell you how much of this film felt forced, or overly indulgent, or like it was trying to hard to sell me something it wasn't: none of it. To put it in terms the kids can understand: Basket Case greater than Hatchet II.



On the other hand, before I get too carried away with 80s are better than '10s, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the bad stop animation, which was hilarious. There's a scene where the Basket Case guy flips out and destroys Duane's room. It was like a bad Herbie Hancock video. I know, I spend a lot of time on here saying that I'd rather see stop animation or other effects instead of CGIs, but a big reason for that is that I think directors get lazy with CGIs; here, we were looking at an instance where CGIs-- or maybe a bigger budget-- would've made the scene look better. Of course, it could've been made to look bad on purpose too, and in that case, it totally worked.

That brings me to a confession: when I first saw this, when I was like 8 or 9, I thought it sucked. In fact, I thought a lot of these schlock horror flicks sucked. If it didn't have Freddy or Jason or Michael Myers, chances are me and my little buddies would've thought it sucked. Okay, we also liked Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It wasn't until I was in high school that I really got into great ones like these, when films like Evil Dead and Bad Taste had taught me to not be so mainstream/big budget in my horror tastes-- not that I don't still love the Jason and Freddy flicks too.



I think I brought this up in the 1990 Bronx Warriors post, but I think it's worth mentioning again (plus, who knows how many of you actually read that one considering I wrote it over two years ago). I love these old shots of what Times Square looked like pre-Bubba Gump's Shrimp themed restaurant and whatnot. I've never been to Times Square period, but when you compare these images with the ones today outside TV shows and whatnot, you can see a lot more character in the former. This was the rough place that you could set a movie like this and make it work. What would it be today, the hero carrying his basket outside of the Today Show set? "Hey Al, I'm Duane from Glen Falls, New York!"

This is currently on Watch Instantly, which is where I made it happen for this review. As far as DVD vs. VHS, there's actually no benefit to getting this on DVD, no extras, a full screen port, so if you're a VHS nostaligist, you won't be missing anything by sticking with the VCR. Hopefully someday they'll give this the full treatment, commentary, deleted scenes, etc.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083624/

Cruel Jaws aka Fauci Crudeli (1995)

I think we sometimes forget that The Asylum didn't invent the rip-off (or for those late to the party, SyFy). The rip-off has been a part of the movie industry for as long as there's been a movie industry. And in the 80s and 90s, Italian director Bruno Mattei made it into an art form. With this one, he even had the audacity to label it Jaws V, as if it were a sequel as opposed to a rip-off-- not that the other sequels weren't rip-offs of the original in some way too.

Cruel Jaws takes place in a small town near Miami, where a marine biologist comes to visit some old friends, and is pressed into duty when people are found eaten by a shark. A rich landowner in the town doesn't want panic to set in and threaten his windsurfing race or the area's tourism, so he filibusters the sheriff and the marine biologist's attempts to close the beaches. As the sheriff so eloquently points out, "it's like an all you can eat buffet for the shark!"



This is riff-tastic. One of the ultimate bad movie night flicks. In fact, you could pair it with Shark Attack III, and it would be perfect. It's everything you'd want in a Bruno Mattei rip-off film: bad dubbing, bad dialog, bad acting, music ripped from Superman or Star Wars, scenes ripped from anything that already had sharks, bad edits, stuff that comes out of nowhere-- in short, 90 minutes of pure awesome. This is what you wanted baby. I could go into all the amazing moments, but as I usually do, I'll leave that to the comments section, so I don't give too much away. (Even though when I do that, I often get the "oh my God, how could you have not mentioned this!" Well, now you know why.)

This is the fourth Bruno Mattei film we've done, the other three being Robowar, Strike Commando, and Strike Commando 2. For those three, he went under the name Vincent Dawn. For Cruel Jaws he went with William Snyder. I wonder where he gets these names from? Vincent Dawn is almost porn star or action lead, while William Snyder, in it's full form is like a baseball player, but using "Bill" instead sounds like an accountant or local contractor. "Hey, did you talk to Bill Snyder and get that estimate?" In some ways, it's a window into how Italians view us Americans by the fake names they choose to make themselves sound more like us. "Ah, you'ah know, ah-Willeeum Snyderr. Dat sounds-ah verrry Americano, no?"



The thing I love about the shark movie is, as good or as bad as it's done, it's always a fun time. I think that's because sharks make such great baddies. As the movie states, they're like genetically engineered killing machines. All they do is swim, eat, and make babies. You can't bargain with an enemy like that, it doesn't care if you're young or old, if you're in the water, you're fair game. Plus, they're real, and people really have been attacked by them. One of the interesting things about this is, as much as it has that "throw everything in and see what happens" quality, Mattei does a great job of building suspense, especially in the early going. It's the shark attack itself, of course, that leaves something to be desired and is so funny.

Our hero's girlfriend is not a nice person. She's upset that he has to help deal with a killer shark menacing the local coast, which is understandable, it is their vacation after all. What she does in response is a bit much though. She cheats on him with the main heel. Really? I wonder if Mattei is telling us anything about what he thinks of that, or if maybe he had a woman in his life cheat on him, and what he wanted done to her. You'll have to watch the movie to see for yourself.



Finally, loved this guy who looked like a guy dressing up as Hulk Hogan for a kid's party. The Fu Manchu is the best part. I had a buddy tell me once that he thought I should grow out the Fu Manchu, James Hetfield style. My thinking was, I couldn't really pull it off, and the only scenario it would work would be if I were called to be on Maury. You could see me in the greenroom with all these punk kids with their whisper thin fuzz on their upper lip, then I show up with the Hetfield Fu Manchu, all like Larry Bird in the Three-Point Contest: "Okay, which of you boys is coming in second?" Otherwise, the Fu Manchu wouldn't work for me, not like it did for that guy up there.

I guess used VHS is the way to go, or maybe DVD, especially if you're a Region 2, because I know there you can get it both in English and Italian with English subs. You could also do the Japanese VHS, which works here in America, and like their cars, the Japanese VHS is much sturdier that ours. However you get it, just get it and make this happen. You won't be disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112747/

Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)

I know what you're thinking: "Poirier, you're like 725 posts and over four years into this blog, and this is your first Troma flick? What's wrong with you?" Honestly, I don't know. I wanted to wait on them initially, because most of them I see more as independent films than DTV-- Surf Nazis Must Die for instance screened at Cannes. Then you may remember in 2010 the readers voted to do Hong Kong films instead of Troma for a multi-week feature I did. After that I went on hiatus, and when I came back, I wanted to concentrate on some of the great bad action of the 80s and 90s, just to get my passion back for the blog. Now it's September 2011, and I think it's time to break the seal and start hitting some of these bad boys which were so influential to me growing up, and made me love low-budget cinema; and I can't think of a better place to start than Surf Nazis Must Die.

Surf Nazis Must Die takes place in an LA ravaged by an enormous earthquake. In the aftermath, gangs have taken over the beaches, and one gang in particular, the Surf Nazis, are extremely vicious and equally ambitious. As they assert their brutal hold over the shore, they kill a man named Leroy, and his mother living in a nursing home is pissed. It proves to be a fatal error on their part.



I loved this one. For sheer gore fans, this probably won't cut it-- think of it as the anti Hobo with a Shotgun-- but it works as an exploitation flick, and the gore will get there, you just need to wait until the end. I like that, that they don't spend all their nickels at once, but they also don't bore you as they're readying us to spend them. Great sets, great costumes, great music, cool characters, sinister villains, and some really exceptional surfing scenes. For any new directors looking to do a modern take on exploitation, look no further than right here.

One interesting plot device that I liked here was that we saw much more of the villains-- the Surf Nazis-- than we did of the heroine, Mrs. Washington. It made for an interesting dynamic, because we certainly weren't rooting for the Surf Nazis, but the beats in the film kind of played out where we were seeing scenes and character development with the baddies that we'd be expecting the heroine to go through. Especially the end scene, where Mrs. Washington is chasing Adolf and his girl, it's like the roles are reversed.



As I mentioned above, the surfing scenes in this are great. We find out in one of the featurettes that they were shot by a professional surfing cinematographer, and they were done in Hawai'i instead of California, where the rest of the film was shot. That too added a different element, made it more like exploitation films from the past, where a gang rode motorcycles or surfed or did some other kind of marginal sport, and parts of the film would be dedicated just to them plying their craft.

Speaking of the Troma DVD, it has all kinds of great stuff, from deleted scenes, to interviews with director and producer. For a movie like this, the story about the process is always almost as fun as the movie itself. I got the DVD on sale from Troma's website in 2000 for like $5, and looking at their website, that's still the DVD they offer, only now it's $6. Not a bad deal.



Do you recognize the handsome devil on the right? It's DTVC favorite Ted Prior! He has no real speaking line, doesn't run around without his shirt and shoes killing people, and definitely no scalping. It was just a cool novelty, he played a member of one of the rival gangs, the Designer Wave, and in fact, I didn't notice him until I saw his name in the credits. See kids, it pays to stay for the credits.

As I mentioned above, the DVD from the Troma website for $6 pre-shipping is the way to go. Don't download it to iTunes, don't stream it on Hulu, don't let your VHS nostalgia get the best of you. The DVD has all the extras, it's the director's cut, why mess around?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094077/

Fight to Win (1987)

This looked like a pretty sweet deal, especially considering it featured the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire of DTV action, DTVC Hall of Famers Cynthia Rothrock and Richard Norton. Always good to get films in with this pair. Took a while to get, but a friend hooked me up with a VHS, which was very nice of him.

Fight to Win has George Chung as Ryan, a cocky kid with major martial arts skills but is totally full of himself. After winning a local tournament, his father and his sensei's old nemesis, Richard Norton, comes by and challenges the kid to fight one of his guys, and naturally, the kid loses bad. The sensei's got some heart trouble, so he calls in prized pupil Cynthia Rothrock to train the kid, and it just happens she has an ax to grind with Norton as well. Can the kid put his ego in check long enough to gain his redemption?



Wow, this is a pretty sweet deal. Not the best, but for bad action, really good. The fight scenes were solid, there were some jokes that were funny, and some jokes that didn't work that were even funnier, and some serious moments that were even funnier than that. I posted a short dance/martial arts montage on the image page that was one of the funniest, but I think I could've posted five or six videos, there were that many great moments. Also, there was some really impressive music, solid 80s stuff, and great mullets and outfits. This is just really good 80s bad action.

I know I should be posting a Cynthia Rothrock image here-- and I put a couple on the image page-- but I had to indulge in this Norton one here instead. It has everything, the windswept, feathered mullet; the leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up; the sweatsuits; and most importantly, the vintage Ford Escort. Man, if I had the money, I'd get one of those things and have so much work put into it-- hell, I'd even get the "Antique" plates. How sick would that be? As far as the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire of DTV action, they were both good. Norton had a lesser role because he was the baddie, but he had some good fight scenes, especially with Rothrock; and Rothrock was great as the trainer who then takes on a more active role in fighting. Not the best of their team-ups, but not a bad one either.



One of the best Gary Daniels films we've reviewed is Bloodmoon, and like Darren Shahlavi, who was great but hasn't had the roles since then that he deserves, the same can be said for Chuck Jefferys, who is also a fantastic fighter. He seems to be here more for his comic relief-- and his great Eddie Murphy impression-- but when he gets his chances to show off his prodigious martial arts skills, he doesn't disappoint. A guy that definitely deserved more work.

All right, I'm going to get a little film snobby on you and bring up Yasujiro Ozu, but bear with me, I have a point. This movie, though it obviously wasn't completely Ozu-style, had some of his hallmarks, particularly a still frame that he allowed all of the action to move within without excessively panning or zooming in. (You're going to think I'm crazy when you see the one clip I decided post, because that's all kinds of edits and whatnot, but I swear, that was the exception.) One thing Ebert remarked on with Ozu's style is that it allows the viewer to fall into a rhythm, which makes the movie pass quicker in our minds, as opposed to something like Armageddon, where no shot is on the screen for more than a second, and as a result, because it's so cut up, it takes forever. Fight to Win is a great example of that juxtaposition with the modern punchfighting movie, that is a mess of bad edits and gimmicky crap that diverts out attention. We have fight scenes in this that are allowed to breathe in front of us in one continuous shot with a camera that moves ever so slightly to keep all of the action within frame, and for us the viewer, it makes it easier to get into. The thing is, this movie looks like it was made on a shoestring budget, so if they can make a fight look good with limited edits and zero computer gimmicks, then the modern DTV flick should have no problem either.



That's Hall of Fame (NFL not DTVC) safety Ronnie Lott. He has a short cameo where he comes in on a four-wheeler and shoots a bunch of guys up, then banters with one of the good guys. It's crazy to think how much the world of football has changed between 1987 and now. In 1987, Lott's 49ers were one of the best teams ever, and the idea that they would ever be the sack of asscrack they are now was inconceivable. At the same time, the idea that instead of the '9ers, it's the Pats that are one of the best teams, is equally crazy. I guess it's a reminder that nothing in sports is guaranteed, and the Pats could drop out eventually too.

And that's it, this is a good one, if you can find it. VHS, and I'll tell you, this transfer isn't great-- lots of scratches from the source film. But for you VHS nostalgists, that probably makes it all the better. I think this is more of a collector's flick, so keep your eyes peeled, and don't be afraid to spend, because it's a good one for your collection. They don't make 'em like this anymore, which is too bad.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165776/

Blood for Blood aka Midnight Man (1995)

I figured it was probably time to get more Lorenzo Lamas on this blog, so here we are. I'd been waiting on this one because it's on Hulu, and I'm not a big fan of Hulu as far as this kind of thing goes, i.e. watching a movie for a blog. It's hard to capture images, because there's a "Buffering" logo that remains on the screen during a pause, meaning I have to do a moving print screen and hope I caught the look I wanted at the right time. Then all the images are slightly different sizes, and the function to scan through scenes is not as user friendly as Netflix Watch Instantly. Anyway, probably more than you wanted to know about that kind of thing.

Blood for Blood is about a gang war in LA between the Russians and the Cambodians-- though none of the Cambodians are actual Cambodians. Anyway, foremost among these (non)Cambodians is Lorenzo Lamas, a cop who's brought in by a special task force so he can translate on a surveillance mission. And with that, things go bad, and Lamas is pulled in deep, so deep he has James Lew after him and his family. Will he survive? And what does Mako have to do with all of this?



This was a mess. Cambodians? Cambodian secret mystical warriors? And Lorenzo Lamas is one? All of that would be all right if the action were there, but it wasn't. In spots it was good, but overall we had big spots of stuff that I could've cared less about. When I think of a movie that did this well, Samurai Cop-- sans the bacon grease scene-- comes to mind. That's what this should've been, completely let loose and over the top. Do I want Lamas fighting Lew with his daughter crying to her mother in the next room? No, I want Lamas as a playboy that hits on as many women as possible and beats guys up with some mystical Cambodian energy that he's fully aware of and is carried off without any irony. All right, the Speedo scene in Samurai Cop was a bit much too, and we definitely don't need to see Lamas in a Speedo, but otherwise Samurai Cop would've been the way to go here.

Lamas isn't as bad an actor as movies like this make him out to be. When he gets a good script-- or he's allowed to be a baddie-- he's pretty good. But when he gets something rough like this one, where he's supposed to act on substandard, kitschy drama that has no business being in a bad actioner like this, it goes pear-shaped quick. Whose idea was it to saddle Lamas with this whole "I've never been in a shootout, I'm all stressed out about it" thing? And the family man crap was too much too. He needs to be single, flying in there by the seat of his pants, pushing the envelope, going completely against department regulations. And he can still be a secret Cambodian warrior, it'll just be a much more fun one.



James Lew, also not Cambodian, but playing one. He has some weird weapons in this too. One was a rope with a knot on each end, and he'd whirl it around and stuff. It looked pretty silly. Not as silly as the cape with blades on the end. That's a rough way to go, getting caped. Had this movie gone the Samurai Cop route, all of that stuff would've been great, but when you've been pounding me inside all night with crap about Lamas and his family and his bad dreams, I'm not going to take that fat one over the plate and hit it out-- I can only enjoy the fun stuff so much after all that pain.

Movie sucks? Better get Mako. And it almost worked. We needed more Mako though. We needed Lamas in a Mako led training montage. We needed Mako in Hawaiian shirts. Maybe Mako selling Italian ices near the beach, I don't know, we just needed more Mako. There was a lot of crap that this movie that didn't have to have that replacing it with Mako would've made better.



I'm not overly familiar with Cambodian culture, but I'm not so sure the people making this movie were either. There was no explanation why they were Cambodians, especially considering none of the actors playing Cambodians were Cambodians. There are not only so many cool things about Cambodia from a historical/cultural standpoint, but there is also a lot of turmoil due to the Pol Pot regime that could've been explored too. Again, what was the point of using Cambodians, if you're technically not going to use Cambodians?

It seems like Lamas has more stinkers than classics, and this is definitely in that former category. It wasn't just that it had limited action, it was the crap that went on when there wasn't action that hurt so much. Sometimes these actioners try too hard to be something other than an actioner, and as a result, we get something messier than it had to be.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110508/