Shadow Fury (2001)

Back in June I had Rich Hawes from DTV Digest on the pod to discuss this film. It's one's he's been a fan of for some time, and even asked me and Ty from Comeuppace if we'd ever consider doing it for our sites--which was a big reason why I suggested it to him as a topic for an episode he was guesting on. In addition to us, he's covered it on his old site, Have a Go Heroes, and Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has done this as well.

Shadow Fury has a group of scientists in the near future who have figured out how to clone a super soldier. One of them, Pat Morita, goes rogue, and creates a super samurai, Masakatsu Funaki. The others call in mercenary Sam Bottoms, an alcoholic in serious need of a new liver, which, it just so happens, Funaki is a perfect match, so if Bottoms takes him down his payment is Funaki's liver. As always though, things aren't as they seem, and when Bottoms discovers one of the other scientists, Allan Kolman, has created his own super soldier--first a young Taylor Lautner, later an adult Bas Rutten--he teams up with the last remaining other one, Alexandra Kamp, and Funaki, to take him down.

This movie was a lot of fun. It borrows from a lot of traditions, the two biggest being the lone gunman in the Western with Bottoms, and the ronin, or masterless samurai with Funaki. The director is Makoto Yokoyama, who was part of the Alpha Stunt team responsible for the Power Rangers movies that Isaac Florentine was also a part of, and more notably, the late 90s Mark Dacascos classic Drive. While this isn't quite at the Drive or Florentine actioner level, it still delivers enough in its fight scenes to elevate it beyond the limitations of its budget. Beyond that, we have really fun performances from Bottoms, Funaki, Fred Williamson, Morita, and Kamp. Also, as Chris the Brain at Bulletproof said, how many movies can you see where Taylor Lautner grows up to be Bas Rutten?

Usually we start with the film's one Hall of Famer, but because Williamson's part was smaller, I figured I'd go with Sam Bottoms first. What's interesting about him in this is when we last had Rich on the podcast, we discussed Total Force and Absolute Force, which starred his brother and Bush 43 lookalike Timothy. What Sam does here with this part is he plays up the lone gun for hire part really well, making him both dark and brooding, and a hero with a sense of humor at the same time. You can see your classic Clint Eastwood hero in him, but also someone like a Richard Boone in Have Gun Will Travel. You wouldn't expect Sam Bottoms in the lead to work in an action film, but because he got what Yokoyama was going for with the character, he was able to draw on that tradition in a way that made this work even better than I think Yokoyama was hoping for. When we're watching low budget movies like this, often it's that kind of thing that's needed to elevate the material beyond its limitations, and Bottoms does that for us with his performance.

From there we have Masakatsu Funaki as the ronin figure, who loses his master, Pat Morita, early on, and from there is on his journey to find his purpose. He gets that in a lady of the night that he saves from her pimp, Cassandra Grae--who didn't do much beyond this film. Usually that construct of the hero saving the lady of the night is a worn trope--especially in those Seagal-type films where it's saving a pretty Eastern European lady from human trafficking and she falls in love with the hero--but here it works to not only underscore this drive for purpose Funaki's character has, but also the drive to discover his humanity. He's part masterless ronin and part Frankenstein, and with Grae's character, we as the audience can join Funaki as he leans into both aspects of himself. On top of that, as an MMA fighter, he does great in the action sequences, but I don't know how well it would've worked if he hadn't leaned into those other aspects of the character the way he did. Like Bottoms, his approach added elements to the film that further elevated it beyond its budgetary constraints.

Because his part was so limited, we're waiting for this moment to finally discuss our film's one Hall of Famer, the great Fred Williamson. He plays the Machine Gun Joe type who provides Bottoms with the weapons he needs in a back room of the bar he runs--which works out for the alcoholic Bottoms, he can get his drinks and his tools of the trade. This is now 26 for Williamson, which puts us that much closer to the 30 Club for him, probably something we'll hit next year. While I prefer him as a lead, seeing him in a small part like this is also fun too, and for a lot of the names that have the bigger numbers here, parts like this help get that tag number up to get him into those more exclusive clubs--though when you look at Dolph and Daniels, our two with the most tags, they don't have many supporting role films. The other thing I've noticed is, when I look at his IMDb bio, there aren't a lot of films from this period of his that I'm missing, it's a lot more of the hit or miss variety in the 2010s, or his 80s stuff that I can't always find. That's one difference between him and Dolph or Daniels, is there is a lot of Williamson stuff out there that's either hard to get, or maybe even impossible to get. I think that's another reason why he's fallen behind some of the other bigger names, but hopefully we'll rectify that over the next year and get that tag count up higher.

Finally, in trying to think of what the last paragraph should be here, one thing that stood out was how much Bottoms was drinking, despite being on the liver transplant list. In real life, there's a zero tolerance policy when it comes to that. It might not be common knowledge--I only found out when a close family friend was in that situation in the late 90s, and then it came up again recently when I was watching Scrubs with my wife. It makes sense, right? There are only so many livers to go around, why give it to someone who may just destroy that one through drinking too. Just the same, it would've made for a better plot device here, the idea that Bottoms's character can't get a transplant because he won't stop drinking, but these scientists offer to do it for him anyway with Funaki's. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As you can see from the quality of my screens, this is only available on YouTube, and it's not the best transfer--even if it does say it's high-def. I think a movie like this could use a nice Blu-ray, so hopefully that'll happen soon, or at the very least a better quality version on a major streaming site. Until then, YouTube is your best bet, and I think this is a fun enough actioner from the early 2000s, which overall wasn't as great a time for this kind of thing. And if you want to hear more about Shadow Fury, check out the DTVC Podcast, episode 102 from back in June that I did with Rich from DTV Digest.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0288215

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!