Streets of Rage (1993)

I don't know how I made it 1100+ posts here on the site, and this is the first Mimi Lesseos movie we've covered. Okay, actually that's not entirely true, because she was in Final Impact, the PM Lamas flick we reviewed a couple years ago; but this is the first Lesseos starring film we've done. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this, along with Bulletproof Action and Daily Grindhouse, so you can go to their sites and see what they thought.

Streets of Rage has nothing to with the too sweet Sega Genesis 90s side-scroller, but rather follows Lesseos as Melody Sails, an intrepid fact-checker who wants to be a reporter, who also happens to be a former special forces soldier in the Army. In trying to dig up a story, she comes into contact with some local homeless kids, one of whom finds the local lady of the night (girl of the night is more apt considering how young she is) that gave him money from time to time dead in an alley. Sails thinks something's up, so she digs deeper, and finds that there's a local pimp exploiting these kids. That pimp won't like it when Lesseos gets a hold of him.

This is an interesting one, because it's very low-budget. Like the credits look like something from a 90s company's orientation video, and the film settles into its extreme low-budget-ness from there. Lesseos is fantastic as an action lead, the problem is, she's not really allowed to be an action lead due to the material (which was written by Lesseos). It's almost like she didn't know how to split the difference between action film and hard-hitting drama, so we were left with long periods of no action, which I think hurts us because that's why we're coming to this movie, to see her kick some ass. With an 85-minute runtime, we should have some kind of action every 10 minutes or so, and the message of these poor forgotten kids on the street should be embedded inside of that. Still, all those issues aside, Lesseos as a lead makes this a lot of fun, and from a 90s action film standpoint, I think this is worth a go. 

Again, this is our first time really covering a Lesseos film, but I think in watching this I see why. This should have been a full showcase of who Lesseos is as a martial artist and action lead, and it never fully did that for us. We didn't get a lot of fight scenes, and there were a couple where she was wearing a skirt and heels, which made them look a bit awkward as she couldn't pull off the moves as well as she'd have wanted. By the same token, we see the talent there, right from the first fight where she beats up two guys hassling one of the kids, which makes us want more. Done right--and I don't mean on a higher budget, but done with more consistent action scenes--this could have been the one that makes Lesseos on that level of some of the best 90s DTV stars. That leather jumpsuit she wears at the end should have been an iconic part of an iconic actioner, but ultimately the legacy of this film is what it could have been, as opposed to what it was, and I think unfortunately the same is true for Lesseos.

For review purposes I tend to watch the credits, just in case a name pops up (like Art Camacho, who's been in almost everything in early 90s DTV action), and one name I caught was Joseph Merhi, the "M" of PM Entertainment, in the "thanks" section. In addition to Final Impact, Lesseos was also in the PM flick The Last Riders, so that may be where the connection comes from, but I looked at her other films on IMDb and didn't see her thanking him in any others. One comp to Mimi Lesseos is Ronald Marchini, as they both went the route of making their own productions, but I wonder with Lesseos if it was more out of necessity. There are about 134 PM feature films listed on IMDb, and there aren't that many that have female leads; beyond that, there aren't many that don't have leads, male or female, who weren't established names. That makes me think maybe Merhi told Lesseos to establish her name first, and then he'd put her in some PM films. If that's the case, I think that's a major missed opportunity, as Lesseos teamed with Art Camacho and Spiro Razatos could have given us some all-time great stuff.

One interesting element about the script Lesseos wrote, is she developed her lead as someone who needed to discover her self-worth, despite the fact that she was a decorated veteran and special forces soldier. She's trying to make it as a reporter, and she's in a relationship with one of her coworkers, who is stringing her along. As the film goes on, she gets better suitors and can dump that coworker, but she's also gaining more self-confidence beyond what she can do as a fighter. I think she was trying to show a vulnerability we often don't see in action leads, and I liked that. The question is, how do you incorporate that into an action movie without diminishing the action quotient? I remember the film Colombiana did it well, but that was Zoe Saldana in a film written by Luc Besson and directed by Olivier Megaton. That's the kind of level this film was going for, and I appreciate that they were going for it, but as we saw here, it's tough to pull off.

 

Finally, I wanted to quickly touch on the old Sega game of the same name. It's crazy to think that game came out 30 years ago now. If any game could've spawned a great movie, it was that one. The thing is though, I would've said the same thing about Double Dragon, but the movie we got for that in the mid-90s wasn't all that great--though it had some great Dacascos. I imagine a Streets of Rage adaptation in the 90s would've killed everything good about that franchise too. I saw on Wikipedia that there's an adaptation in the works, but I feel like that's too late now. We needed a 90s straight ahead actioner with people like Jeff Wincott, Gary Daniels--and Mimi Lesseos. She would've been a great Blaze, right? Total missed opportunity there, no movie adaptation, no Mimi Lesseos in the no adaptation, and instead, while this Streets of Rage is a fun outing, we're just left with what ifs. One thing that is nice about the 2020s though: I can stream this movie for free on Tubi, and if I want to get nostalgic for the video game, I can watch someone playing it on YouTube.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As I just mentioned, this can be streamed for free on Tubi, and I think as an action fan it's worth it. This may not be the best, but Lesseos brings some solid martial arts in spots, which makes this an overall fun 90s actioner.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111302

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