If your first act in setting up your elite hit squad of ex-special forces guys is to shoot your special forces girlfriend in the head after she refuses to join up and you don’t make sure she’s dead, you’re pretty much doomed to failure. Something as elementary as double tapping your target is covered in about the first ten minutes of Special Ops 101. Continue reading “Excessive Force II: Force on Force (1995)”
Category: Martial Arts
Red Sun Rising (1994)
Don “The Dragon” Wilson has made some great movies (Cyber-Tracker 2). He’s made some near great movies (CyberTracker, Future Kick). And he’s made some not so great movies which I know is sort of a “duh” statement, but if you’re still not convinced by the sheer common sense of this, see Night Hunter. Still, I think we all knew that he had a really horrid, tedious movie in him (and probably several, if we’re being honest with ourselves) that emphasized his natural blandness while failing to emphasize his strengths such as diving out of the way of exploding cars and brawling with cyborgs. Continue reading “Red Sun Rising (1994)”
Misfire (2014)
Kickboxing and low budget action movie legend Gary Daniels has been making movies most people have never seen for the last 25 years. He’s on the other side of 50 now, but being an old action hero doesn’t necessarily mean you should hang up your prop gun and stop kicking guys in the head. Jean Claude Van Damme is also over 50, Steven Seagal is over 60 and well into his 70s, Chuck Norris is the action Methuselah! But your movies have to try to hide your advanced years, not call attention to it! Continue reading “Misfire (2014)”
Running Red (1999)
Gregori and Sergei were just a couple of brothers in the Soviet special forces on a mission to take down a Spanish nerve gas factory! Aside from the fact that Soviet special forces guys go on some strange missions, they run into the same sorts of problems our own movie special forces guys sometimes run into.
The mission goes horribly wrong, a commanding officer demands that Gregori kill a child and when he refuses, does so himself! Sergei meanwhile gets all shot up by the Spanish bad guys and dies with Gregori at his side. Gregori then retires from the Soviet Army to a life in suburban California, desperately trying to forget the past! It’s like this guy is everything we love about Doctor Zhivago, Ivan Drago, and Yakov Smirnoff (he says “Do svidaniya!” to a guy right before he shoots him) all rolled into one! Continue reading “Running Red (1999)”
Bloodmatch (1991)
Borderline compelling in a minor trainwreck sort of way, Bloodmatch keeps you watching because you’re never sure what it’s up to. That’s not to say that it’s some sort of groundbreaking film or ingeniously plotted or anything like that. It’s straight forward enough – though to be honest I’m not sure I ever really grasped the finer points of the story. It’s just that what is going on is so unpleasant, you’re hoping that they’ll somehow figure out a way to make it all palatable to the viewer. You probably won’t be surprised that they never do. You’ll probably be even less surprised that the movie is directed by Albert Pyun. Continue reading “Bloodmatch (1991)”
Karate Cop (1991)
Omega Cop is back! And this time he’s Karate Cop! Why? Because that’s the title of the movie! Ron Marchini, the short, stocky guy with large ears who in Omega Cop played the last of the Special Police on a planet suffering from the Greenhouse Effect, again plays John Travis in a post-apocalyptic tale of a guy obsessed with his hat! Continue reading “Karate Cop (1991)”
Omega Cop (1990)
If your mom has told once, she’s told you a thousand times: do not steal Omega Cop’s hat! A group of thugs learn that lesson the hard way during one of the seminal moments of this first Omega Cop adventure!
The world is being thrown into chaos by one of those Greenhouse Effect deals, causing water to be scarce and solar flares to be mega deadly! Even worse is that this has somehow caused gangs of slavers to be formed! And even worser yet, post-apocalyptic punks are out there stealing Omega Cop’s freaking hat! Continue reading “Omega Cop (1990)”