You’ve lived your whole life on the side of law and justice. In your world, there’s right and there’s wrong. And it’s your job, no, it’s your God-given duty to bring evildoers to justice. But what would it take to make you throw away all your beliefs, make you betray every value you held dear? What could possibly drive you to commit the very acts you’ve spent years standing up against? A woman? A family member? A new house? Continue reading “Redemption (2002)”
Category: Martial Arts
Five Deadly Venoms (1978)
Kung fu movies are a little slice of heaven. Once you’ve seen some dude with bad hair in silk pajamas standing around playing patty cake with another dude in silk pajamas with equally bad, but somehow different hair, you’re pretty much spoiled for any other genre of cinema. Is there any other kind of movie that would get you so involved that you would try some drunken mantis kung fu on your bewildered dog during the talky parts? Continue reading “Five Deadly Venoms (1978)”
Absolution (2015)
The best Steven Seagal film of the last 10 years! I said that to myself giddily as Absolution opened with Steve providing some narration about how he has lost faith in mankind. And how he did some bad things but he wanted to do one good thing before he died. I was pleading with Steve to make that one good thing he was going to do be this movie! And like some gargantuan-sized wish-granting Buddha with a horse hair rug stapled to his head, he freaking did it! Continue reading “Absolution (2015)”
Urban Justice (2007)
Max was a good cop. Until they killed him. Steven Seagal was a shadowy special ops dude and he probably never had a black bag job that involved killing every gang banger in south central L.A. Until they killed his son.
Like a 4XL-sized plague of Egypt destroying the first born (and second, third and fourth) homies all over the Hood, by the end of things Steve has shot, punched, kicked, stabbed, and grenaded his way to the promised land of sweet paternal vengeance. Continue reading “Urban Justice (2007)”
Fast Gun (1988)
Fast Gun is really a movie about trust. No, not whether we trust Sheriff Jack Steiger (Fast Gun himself) to put his haunted past behind him (he got his partner killed back in L.A.) so that when the chips are down, he’ll redeem himself and not get his trusty Deputy, Cowboy, killed. (Which is fortunate as Fast Gun does let Cowboy get killed.) No, the trust I am referring to is the trust we put in director Cirio H. Santiago to deliver on the complete lack of promise exhibited by the entirety of Fast Gun. Continue reading “Fast Gun (1988)”
Karate Rock (1990)
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been stopped on the streets of my all-American small town and asked which of Fabrizio De Angelis‘ karate movies, Karate Warrior or Karate Rock, was better. That’s a lot like asking a fellow which of his step-kids he hates the most. Sure, you hate them all, but in different ways. Continue reading “Karate Rock (1990)”
Karate Warrior 6 (1993)
As Karate Warrior embarked on his sixth, final and most majestically numbskull quest ever, I found myself overwhelmed with the enormity of it all. After six films, I had spent more time with Karate Warrior than I had with my own father!
Wrestling with the sense of loss now that this journey was finally ending, I found a semblance of peace as I recalled the words of one of the great philosophers of our time who said “here at last, on the shores of the sea… comes the end of our Fellowship. I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.”
And Gandalf the White was right! It was totally ok to shed some tears over Karate Warrior’s last adventure! Tears of laughter! Continue reading “Karate Warrior 6 (1993)”