“Iron Angels 3” Theatrical Poster

Director: Teresa Woo San
Cast: Moon Lee Choi-Fung, Alex Fong Chung-Sun, Kharina, Ralph Chan Shing-Gwai, Mark Steinborn, Katy Hickman, Marco Lo Chi-Fung, Bill Rockloff
Running Time: 91 min. 

By Z Ravas

1989’s Iron Angels 3 was the third Iron Angels film in as many years, which makes one wonder whether these movies were a smashing success in the local Hong Kong market or else Teresa Woo’s production company Molesworth simply hit a groove in the late 80’s that saw them turning out these Girls with Guns flicks with efficient ease. Either way, I must once again sing the praises of distributor Vinegar Syndrome for bringing together the entire trilogy in one attractive hi-def package, albeit in a limited number (they apparently sold out of the initial 5,000 print run in a matter of days).

For those of you just joining us, the Iron Angels series is a loose trilogy of Hong Kong action films about a co-ed Charlie’s Angels-like group of mercenaries; the Angels are the team that get called in when a terrorist or criminal threat is simply too much for local law enforcement to handle. I say ‘loose’ trilogy because continuity is not exactly a priority here; the purported leader of the Angels, portrayed by David Chiang, doesn’t show up in any of the sequels, and the lead actors are often playing characters named after themselves (Moon Lee stars as Moon, for instance), suggesting our protagonists are not so much fleshed out characters as they are mere avatars for our highly qualified cast of martial artists. In other words, you could probably get away with watching these Iron Angels films in any order without feeling lost.

While my recent rewatch of the original Iron Angels helped to solidify that film as one of my favorite Hong Kong action films of the 1980’s, I had to ding the sequel a little bit for bumping up Alex Fong’s bland character Alex to the lead—sidelining Girls with Guns icon Moon Lee in the process—and saving most of the rewind-worthy action for the ending. Fortunately, Part Three gets the series back on track by bumping up the action quotient and giving Moon Lee much more to do, even if it commits the almost unforgivable sin of dropping Elaine Lui from the cast. (I can’t find any information about why Elaine Lui was absent after being such a highlight of the first two Iron Angels; one suspects it may have simply come down to scheduling issues).

Iron Angels 2 saw the Angels on vacation in Malaysia; in their final outing, there’s no time for R&R as our heroes-for-hire are busy tracking the operation of a deadly criminal organization in Thailand. Once the Angels are boots on the ground, Alex teams up with some new compatriots, including a tech wizard gweilo who’s literally named Computer, while Moon Lee gets the juicier role of attempting to infiltrate the gang as an undercover agent. This leads to several standout action sequences for Moon, including a sensational fight in which she fends off an army of black-clad henchmen with nothing but her nunchaku and dynamic kicks.

Though perhaps it’s true that no film in this series except the original has been able to get the formula 100% correct, as Moon Lee proves conspicuously absent during the big finale here. It would have been preferable to see Moon get in on the action with Alex and his ally Kwai (played by Ralph Chen), but I can’t say too many bad things about the climax of Iron Angels 3. In fact, I don’t want to say too much about it at all for fear of ruining the surprise; let’s just say Teresa Woo takes a little bit of inspiration from Thunderball era James Bond and veers close to science-fiction territory in the process. The relentless, ‘infinite ammo’ shoot-em-up action of the finale was taking me back to those Time Crisis arcade cabinets, you know, the ones where you held a big blue or red plastic gun and mowed down wave after wave of disposable bad guys. The conclusion to Iron Angels 3 is a lot of fun if you can get on its ridiculous wavelength, ending the series on another high note, exempting our M.I.A. Moon Lee.

And I absolutely must mention an earlier scene where Alex Fong steps into the ring with a Muay Thai Boxer—their fight seems to rage on for a solid 10 minutes, but more importantly that Thai boxer is played by none other than the late, great Panna Rittikrai, mentor to Tony Jaa and a damn fine martial arts filmmaker himself. It’s a treat to see Rittikrai in his prime, delivering what look like some devastating flying knees to poor Alex Fong’s midsection.

Rare is the trilogy in which the sequels manage to top the benchmark set by a beloved original; even if the first Iron Angels remains the gold standard, director/producer Teresa Woo deserves credit for maintaining a level of quality throughout the series and for making sure the climax to Iron Angels 3 met expectations for a delirious action high.

By Z Ravas’s Rating: 7.5/10

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“Iron Angels” Japanese Poster

Director: Teresa Woo San
Cast: Saijo Hideki, Elaine Lui, Yukari Oshima, Alex Fong Chung Sun, David Chiang, Hwang Jang Lee, Peter Yang Kwan, Wang Hsieh, Lam Chung, Chiang Tao
Running Time: 93 min. 

By Z Ravas

I can’t say this period of history has many consolations for those of us living through it, but getting to experience obscure Hong Kong action films via terrific looking and sounding boutique Blu-ray releases is most assuredly one of them. The first time I saw Iron Angels, it was on a crappy Region 0 DVD that I ordered off of Ebay; I say ‘crappy’ mostly because the disc kept skipping during the final twenty minutes of the movie. (If you’ve seen Iron Angels, you know some of the film’s best action is crammed into the final twenty minutes. You don’t want to miss that part!). What a difference a few years make: now I have the privilege of watching Iron Angels with a pristine hi-definition transfer, courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome.

And if you’re unfamiliar with this series, it’s absolutely worth springing for Syndrome’s recent 3-film box set. The first film ranks up there alongside Royal Warriors and She Shoots Straight as one of the finest examples of that Hong Kong subgenre fondly remembered as Girls with Guns. The movie has the brilliant idea to ask, ‘What if Charlie’s Angels were co-ed and Charlie was played by Shaw Brothers legend David Chiang?’ The story opens with a sequence that could mislead you into thinking you’re in for a military-themed actioner, as the Thai army unleashes machine guns and flamethrowers on a massive opium-harvesting operation in the Golden Triangle. Back in Hong Kong, a lead subordinate of the drug operation—played by Japanese martial artist Yukari Oshima—swears revenge and begins targeting various Interpol agents around the globe. With their backs to the wall, the Hong Kong police decide to enlist the help of the mercenary service known as the Angels.

And you really don’t need much more justification than that to string along 90 minutes of go-for-broke Hong Kong action, though the film has a capable cast to lean on. The Angels are led by Hideki Saijo, an actor primarily known for his singing career in Japan (he did a chart-topping cover of the “Y.M.C.A.”) but who comes across as a tough martial artist here; Moon Lee, a veritable icon in the Girls with Guns genre thanks to her appearances in films like Fatal Termination and Devil Hunters;  and Elaine Lui Siu-Ling, who would go on to co-star in fan favorite Hong Kong titles like The Bride with White Hair and The Red Wolf.

I have to single out Elaine Lui Siu-Ling in particular because at first you assume her role is kind of the party girl of the trio, you know, the gal with big hair who’s more into her wardrobe than taking the mission seriously—but about halfway through the film, her character makes a sharp pivot, diving into battle while strapped with grenades and bullet clips like a pint-sized Rambo. Elaine Lui totally sells you on the transition too, displaying a wealth of onscreen moxie. It’s one of the greatest examples of the Hidden Badass trope that I can recall seeing.

Director Teresa Woo Ann is immediately interesting as one of the only women filmmakers in the Hong Kong action space during this time. I should note that Raymond Leung and Ivan Lai are also sometimes listed as co-directors or Executive Directors on the film, but Woo would seem to be the driving creative force behind this project, having also served as producer and sole credited screenwriter. The action is attributed to the great Tony Leung Siu-Hung (Bloodmoon, Ip Man) and it’s undeniably spectacular stuff, despite the obviously thrifty budget, including a sequence where Hideki Saijo is hanging from a helicopter’s ladder as he fires his machine gun into a McMansion’s worth of bad guys. (As an example of the budgetary limitations: expect liberal use of stunt dummies for some scenes). The final clash between Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima is brief—in fact, I don’t think it’s much longer than a minute or so—but the two combatants go at each other with such ferocity that their bout has rightly become the stuff of legend.

There’s a short list of the top Hong Kong action movies of the 1980’s, the ones that a casual viewer can sample to get a feel for the genre and witness the industry operating at its peak; no doubt well-known titles like Righting Wrongs and In the Line of Duty IV would have to be on there, but I could imagine making a case for Iron Angels as well. While it’s not quite as technically polished as what filmmakers like John Woo and Yuen Woo-ping were producing at this time, when it’s firing on all cylinders, the movie delivers some of the most electrifying action of its decade.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 9/10

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“Under the Gun” Theatrical Poster

Director: Matthew George
Cast: Richard Norton, Kathy Long, Jane Badler, Peter Lindsay, Robert Bruce, David Serafin, Ron Vreeken, Tino Ceberano, Adam Haddrick, Sam Greco
Running Time: 93 min.

By Z Ravas

As action fans around the globe react with sadness at the untimely loss of actor Richard Norton at the age of 75, I realized it was high time I dug deeper into the actor’s body of work. Sure, like most fans of Hong Kong martial arts movies, I’d seen Norton square off against Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan in movies like Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars and City Hunter, but I’d never actually watched one of his starring vehicles. When I read a review of the 1995 actioner Under the Gun that labeled it the ‘Direct to Video martial arts version of Uncut Gems,’ I just had to see for myself how a movie could live up to that description; if you’re familiar with that 2019 high anxiety thriller from the Safdie Brothers, about a compulsive gambler trying to pay off his debt to the mob before time runs out, you know it didn’t exactly feel like it had room for spin kicks.

And yet, I’m here to tell you that that description is not far off. Under the Gun follows Richard Norton as Frank Torrence, a former professional hockey player(!) turned nightclub owner with a problem: he’s got one last shift to work before he signs a deal to sell his club and absconds to Mexico City, but seemingly everyone who walks through the doors of his establishment wants a piece of him, from the Mafia to crooked cops and even an unruly pimp. The film’s story covers the span of several hours but feels as though it unfolds more or less in real time, as we watch Norton’s pressed and stressed protagonist attempt to put his affairs in order and make it till the morning with his life (and marriage) intact. Why an ex-hockey player is also a highly trained martial artist, the script doesn’t even attempt to explain, but it’s a good thing since Norton will need every ounce of his fighting abilities to survive the night.

Under the Gun is, simply put, one of the best Direct to Video action efforts of the 90’s. It’s like someone took a compelling neo-noir about a nightclub owner who’s in over his head and then added a whole bunch of fight scenes that randomly break out at any given moment. Anchoring the film is Richard Norton’s performance, which is never less than charismatic and believable as he juggles a whole host of issues, including pressure from the mob, suspicious accountants, and a jealous wife. The movie seems to be regarded as one of the hidden jewels in the actor’s filmography and it’s not difficult to see why: it’s a great showcase for his martial arts abilities, to be sure, but Under the Gun serves as a testament to Norton’s screen presence and likability. The fact that Norton appears in almost every scene and is clearly committed also helps to make up for some of the shakier performances of the supporting cast.

Action fans need not worry about feeling left out amidst the drama: Under the Gun boasts numerous fight scenes, choreographed by Norton himself. It’s worth mentioning that Norton’s co-star Kathy Long holds her own during the fight scenes for a reason: the actress, who appeared in Albert Pyun’s Knights, was a women’s kick-boxing champion throughout the 1980’s. Appropriately, the emphasis throughout the film is largely on hand-to-hand combat, but the climax does go for a gloriously John Woo-esque shootout, featuring bad guys repelling down ropes from the ceiling as they fire their machine guns and Norton wielding dual handguns like he’s in a heroic bloodshed flick. The deliciously amped up sound FX for every punch and kick were reminding me of Isaac Florentine’s kinetic action flicks from around this time, like Cold Harvest and High Voltage, and I’d certainly rank Under the Gun alongside Florentine’s work as some of the best the Direct to Video realm has to offer.

If you’re looking for a role to remember Richard Norton by, I highly suggest giving this one a shot. It’s the kind of movie that makes me wish I ran a boutique Blu-ray label out of my basement because this is precisely the kind of forgotten gem that deserves the hi-def treatment. In the meantime, it’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime, though the lo-fi, VHS-quality presentation leaves something to be desired.

Z Ravas’ Review: 8/10

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“Kung Fu Rookie” Theatrical Poster

Director: Aman Ergaziyev
Cast: Timur Baktybayev, Irina Azhmukhamedova, Kuat Khamitov, Erkebulan Toktar, Riskul Konakbaev, Janelle Sergazina, Talgat Duisenov, Kuandyk Shakyrzhanov
Running Time: 79 min.

By Z Ravas

2023’s Kung Fu Rookie (AKA “Timuchin”) has a problem. No, it’s not the production values — the film looks sharp for a low-budget project out of Kazakhstan — nor is it the script necessarily, as this action/comedy has more than a few jokes and gags that land. No, it’s the fact that the whole movie is built around the idea that lead actor Timur Baktybayev is a walking, talking tribute to Jackie Chan… except instead of fighting like Jackie Chan, he moves like your best buddy with the beer paunch who says, “Hey, watch this” and then pretends to do a martial arts kick in your kitchen, nearly splitting his groin in the process.

Okay, okay, maybe I’m being a little harsh: Kung Fu Rookie proves it’s hard to pull off a compelling fight scene on camera, and you can tell the cast and crew here are trying. Let’s not forget that Kazakhstan isn’t exactly known for its thriving international action scene. And the setup is adequate for this kind of movie, as Timur Baktybayev’s character visits his uncle in the big city with the intention of joining the local police force. Before long, his uncle’s fruit stall draws the attention of some local gangsters who demand their share of protection money, leading to Timur having to dish out some beatdowns. While it’s more than a little reminiscent of Rumble in the Bronx, as I said the premise is fine enough for a 90 minute action flick.

But there’s no getting around the fact that a movie that’s constantly name-dropping martial arts icons like Ip Man and Jet Li has fight scenes that feel like they’re being performed at half-speed; all the participants so intently focused on hitting their marks and not hurting themselves that they give the impression of play-fighting. If anything, it makes you appreciate the genuine article even more: not only could Jackie Chan in his prime choreograph some of the most fluid screen combat you’d ever witnessed, but he knew how to humor and entertain us in the process. In comparison, Kung Fu Rookie’s action feels more appropriate for an amateur YouTube video than a big screen production.

Maybe some humility would have helped? Not only does this movie feature actual footage from Jackie Chan’s Who Am I — it’s rarely a smart idea to showcase the genuine article when you’re offering a limp imitation — but Timur Baktybayev has the temerity to point at the screen during a screening of Who Am I and say, “Look, he fights just like me!” Excuse me, sir? Let’s hope this was a flaw in the subtitles; otherwise, one is tempted to pull Timur aside and not-so-gently explain, “No, Jackie doesn’t fight like you. You try to fight like Jackie.”

There’s also not much in the way of originality to be found here: Kung Fu Rookie lifts many of its action beats from Jackie Chan’s heyday, whether it’s the brawl in the gang’s hideout from Rumble in the Bronx the car factory sequence from Twin Dragons, or the ending rooftop fight from the aforementioned Who Am I. Wholesale bits of choreography or signature physical gags are copied here, only they feel half-hearted and like they’re happening in slow motion, closer to the sluggish underwater climax from Thunderball than the ferocity of Jackie Chan in his 90’s era.

The stark gulf between Timur Baktybayev’s ambitions and where he actually lands onscreen is amplified towards the end of the film, when he starts fighting some performers who actually look like they’ve studied martial arts (actors Erkebulan Toktar and Talgat Duisenov). I walked away with the conclusion that either Timur doesn’t have the moves like he thinks he does, or else he does but the movie failed to effectively convey his abilities. Think about Tony Jaa’s debut in Ong-Bak or Iko Uwais in Merantau; even when those movies occasionally played as unpolished or raw due to their low-budget origins, you nevertheless came away feeling like those guys were incredible athletes with genuine screen presence.

It’s hard to say where Timur Baktybayev should go from here: spend some time honing his filmmaking skills and come back with a follow-up to Kung Fu Rookie that genuinely earns its Jackie Chan homage… or be content to kick back with a bowl of popcorn and watch his hero on the big screen like the rest of us?

Kung Fu Rookie does prove one thing: being Jackie Chan is not as easy as it looks. Or, if I can quote the man himself from his 1998 book I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action: “Don’t try to be like Jackie. There is only one Jackie. Study computers instead.” Even if that sounds a little harsh, almost like Jackie Chan’s answer to Joe Biden’s “Learn to code” moment, those are words Timur might want to take to heart.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 5.5/10

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“The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil” Theatrical Poster

Director: Lee Won-Tae
Cast: Ma Dong-Seok, Kim Moo-Yul, Kim Sung-Kyu, Kim Yoon-Sung, Oh Hee-Joon, Choi Min-Chul, Ahn Sung-Bong, Yoo Seung-Mok, Heo Dong-Won
Running Time: 110 min.

By Z Ravas

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, chances are writer/director Park Hoon-jung is somewhere in Korea blushing a bright shade of crimson right about now. In fact, the biggest surprise about this year’s The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is that the Witch: Part 1. The Subversion filmmaker had nothing to do with it: the action/thriller’s high concept could be boiled down to pitting the deranged serial killer from I Saw the Devil against the swaggering gangsters of New World. Instead, the movie arrives from relative newcomer Lee Won-tae. 

As the film opens, a knife-wielding murderer (played by The Outlaws’ Kim Sung-kyu) continues to elude Kim Mu-yeol’s (War of the Arrows) cop on the edge. As it turns out, Sung-kyu is crazy as a fox – or at least crazy enough to randomly stab the imposing Ma Dong-seok (Unstoppable), here playing a gangster who barely survives the attack with his life. Seeing as how Ma Dong-seok is the only victim to walk away from a run-in with the killer, Kim Mu-yeol realizes his best hope of catching the serial murderer is to form an uneasy alliance with Ma Dong-seok and his criminal cohorts. 

It’s the kind of elevator pitch that Hollywood execs tend to greenlight in a flash, such that you have to wonder why this simple but clever hook –– good guy teams up with bad guy against even worse guy –– has never been done before, at least not in this particular configuration. Writer/director Lee Won-tae seems to know he has a hit on his hands; despite the fact that this is only his second film, after 2017’s Man of Will, he directs the material with a relaxed confidence. 

In fact, given the film’s title and moody poster art, I went into The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil expecting a somber and graphically violent thriller; but the tone here is breezy. For the most part, the movie plays as a buddy action/comedy, and the graphic nature of Kim Sung-kyu’s crimes are largely implied rather than shown. I have to admit, the movie’s almost jovial attitude threw me for a loop, considering I thought I was wading into grim territory akin to a Na Hong-jin (The Yellow Sea) picture. Director Lee Won-Tae’s influences are unmistakable –– at times, his movie can feel like a greatest hits album of the last two decades of Korean cinema, from The Chaser to Confession of Murder –– but his motivation here is to deliver pure mainstream entertainment, not to scar the viewer’s mind. 

Fortunately, Lee Won-Tae’s mission to entertain is made easier by his charismatic performers and at least two high-tempo action setpieces, including a brawl in a poker machine warehouse and a car chase. Kim Mu-yeol is an actor who’s transitioned from supporting roles to a leading man in recent years, and he’s suitably brash as a dogged cop butting up against both corrupt superiors and his city’s criminal element. Meanwhile, Ma Dong-seok might just be the most recognizable face in Korean cinema right now, after his star-making turn in Train to Busan and a future slate that includes Marvel’s The Eternals. The duo make for an ideal odd couple, and half the fun of the movie is watching as Kim Mu-yeol and his police squad form a begrudging kind of respect for Ma Dong-seok’s scrappy gangster, and vice versa. The other half of the film’s fun might be anticipating what Ma Dong-seok is going to do once he gets his considerably-sized mitts on Kim Sung-kyu’s killer. In that regard, the movie does not disappoint.

The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is not out to reinvent the wheel; it’s not a film aiming to win accolades or probe the darkest places of man’s subconscious a la The Wailing. This is slick but effective commercial filmmaking, to the point that you’ll start casting the Hollywood remake in your head long before the credits roll. Considering how many memorable killers South Korean cinema has delivered to the screen, it’s disappointing that Kim Sung-kyu never truly lives up to his billing as ‘the devil’; and part of me can’t help but feel like the movie just goes down too easy. Still, you’ll want to overlook such quibbles every time Ma Dong-seok swaggers down a hallway in one of his tailored suits or tosses a rival hood into an eletronic poker machine. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is the equivalent of a cinematic cover band, paying tribute to all the Korean action/thrillers you know and love. Sure, it’s not exactly original, but the onstage jam session never hits a bum note. 

Z Ravas’ Rating: 7.5/10

The post Gangster, The Cop, The Devil, The (2019) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Eastern Condors” Japanese DVD Cover

AKA: Condors Commando
Director: Sammo Hung
Cast: Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung, Lam Ching-Ying, Dr. Haing S. Ngor, Joyce Godenzi, Yuen Wah, Yuen Wo-Ping, Yasuaki Kurata, Phillip Ko Fei, Billy Lau, James Tien, Ng Hon, Ha Chi-Chun, Billy Chow, Corey Yuen
Running Time: 100 min.

By  Z Ravas

If you only know Sammo from his usual happy-go-lucky characters in old-school kung fu flicks like Knockabout, Eastern Condors might serve as a rude awakening. This is a brutally violent action movie set in Vietnam for which Sammo got serious, slimmed down, and cut his hair. There’s even a scene where Sammo puts Stallone in First Blood II to shame, screaming as he mows down dozens of Vietcong with a gatling gun. For some viewers the Vietnam setting or extreme bloodletting might prove distasteful. For my money, Eastern Condors is one of Sammo’s finest accomplishments as an actor, martial artist, and director.

The plot is time-tested; it’s basically a riff on The Dirty Dozen with a bunch of Chinese-American prisoners being drafted on a suicide mission into the heart of Vietnam during the war. Their Lieutenant is Mr. Vampire himself, Ching-Ying Lam, so you really couldn’t ask for a better man to lead you into battle. The rest of the crew is filled out by incredibly famous faces, including master choreographers Yuen Woo-Ping and Cory Yuen. Sammo’s future wife, the lovely Joyce Godenzi (She Shoots Straight), is on hand and kicks serious ass in the film despite having no martial arts training. Of course, this is a Sammo movie so Yuen Biao is along for the ride and his character “Rat” is probably the only one who manages to keep his rambunctious attitude even after the bullets start flying.

Eastern Condors is almost nonstop action but most of it is intense gun battles. The finale takes place in an underground base and is full of martial arts fighting, i.e. probably what you’re waiting to see. The production design team really outdid themselves here with a set that looks right out of a James Bond film and is the perfect locale for some epic brawls. Yuen Biao fights Dick Wei (Carry On Pickpocket) while Sammo takes on Billy Chow (Fist of Legend) until the two of them must pool their efforts against the ultra-tough Wah Yuen (Kung Fu Hustle).

Special mention must be made of Wah Yuen, who handily steals the last twenty minutes of the movie with his giggling, perspiring Vietnamese General. I don’t know who dreamed up this character but I love it when quirky villains are unexpected badasses, and Wah Yuen gives both Sammo and Yuen a run for their money with his fierce kicks. Wah Yuen has starred in over a 100 movies during his career but this will always be one of his most memorable roles for me.

There’s no way to mince words: Eastern Condors is a violent as hell movie – we’re talking about little Vietcong kids playing Russian Roulette, hands being chopped off, point blank shootings – which may put off fans who just want to see another Sammo and Yuen Biao team-up. However, I think that this film’s gritty edge is what makes it stand out from the rest of Sammo’s filmography. Cory Yuen’s character tells Sammo he respects him because he “doesn’t talk bullshit” – which, let’s face it, is the opposite of most of Sammo’s characters over the years, heh.

Sammo played it straight for this movie (he looks great without his usual bowl cut) and the film benefited by being a lean and mean little action flick. Sure, I wish there was more character development since there’s reportedly over 20 minutes of lost footage. The opening of the movie depicts freeze frames of some prison scenes that were cut and supposedly the Hong Kong trailer also features a lot of missing clips. But with a cast of this caliber and action so plentiful, I will take as much Eastern Condors I can get.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 9/10

The post Eastern Condors (1987) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

Angel Town | Blu-ray (MVD Rewind)

Director: Eric Karson
Writer: S. Warren
Cast: Olivier Gruner, Theresa Saldana, Frank Aragon, Tony Valentino, Peter Kwong, Mike Moroff, Mark Dacascos, Bruce Locke, Claudine Penedo
Running Time: 102 min. 

By Z Ravas

It’s a story as old as the Western: a stranger rides into a town plagued by violence and unrest. Boarding with a local, he soon finds that the town’s troubles become his own – and he’s forced to fight in order to establish peace. The twist in 1990’s Angel Town is that the stranger in question is Olivier Gruner, former French Navy Commando and 1986 Middleweight Kickboxing World Champion. In other words, “establishing peace” is going to involve more than a few well-placed roundhouse kicks.

Very much cut from the same cloth as other early 90’s martial arts films such as Jeff Speakman’s The Perfect Weapon and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Nowhere to Run, Angel Town arrives from director Erik Karson. Karson is no stranger to the genre himself: in 1990, the same year as Angel Town, he produced the Van Damme fan favorite Lionheart. He was also responsible for directing 1980’s dated but entertaining Chuck Norris ninja flick The Octagon and the Sho Kosugi/Van Damme joint Black Eagle in ’88. I have no doubt Karson was selected for this project based on his experience working with JCVD, as Angel Town very much wants to position Olivier Gruner as “the next Jean-Claude Van Damme.” You almost can’t fault the producers for their shameless imitation of past successes: after all, Gruner speaks with a thick French accent and can do the splits.

But Olivier Gruner is not Van Damme – and why would we want him to be? Gruner’s onscreen persona is much more aloof. Whereas many of Van Damme’s early films like Bloodsport saw him flash his puppy dog eyes as much as his fists, Gruner comes across as a bit more world weary and cynical. As the film opens, his character – a French kickboxing champion, naturally – travels to Southern California to begin graduate school. However, he’s arrived so close to the start of the semester that no student housing remains. His only recourse is to rent a room in an East L.A. barrio, one that is currently being terrorized by a gang leader named Angel, who holds court with a submachine gun. As Gruner stands up for his landlord Maria (Raging Bull’s Theresa Saldana) and her son Martin, it’s only a matter of time before he’s put on a collision course with Angel and his violent cronies. Fortunately, he’s not alone: his old friend and trainer (played by Big Trouble in Little China’s Peter Kwong) maintains a gym in the area, and a disabled Korean War veteran named Frank (Mike Moroff, a staple of Robert Rodriguez films like Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn) is impressed enough by Gruner’s kicks to aid in the brewing gangwar. 

Fans of the genre would be forgiven for growing restless during the film’s first act, which features very little in the way of hand-to-hand combat and includes an utterly bizarre moment where Gruner’s girlfriend sexually propositions him in a cemetery(!) before he leaves France. We know Gruner’s acceptance into grad school was necessary to get him across the Atlantic Ocean, but did we really need scenes of him meeting the stuffy dean or wooing his classmate? Thankfully, even these introductory moments are enlivened by Gruner’s fish-out-of-water charm. If you’ve read any recent reviews of Gruner’s films, you’ve probably heard the actor’s accent compared to notorious B-Movie maker Tommy Wiseau of The Room fame (recently spoofed by James Franco in The Disaster Artist), and there is an uncanny similarity, particularly in Angel Town. My favorite moment in the entire movie comes when a classmate derisively refers to Gruner as a “frog” and he responds by grabbing the student’s tie in his fist and quipping, “That’s Mister Frog to you.” 

It’s a good thing Gruner is a likable actor, as the screenplay saddles him with some truly unfortunate dialogue. You have to balk when his character asks the teenage Martin why he doesn’t just give up and join Angel’s gang; rather than suggest the boy pursue a path of community activism or police outreach, Gruner attempts throughout the film to convince him that violence is the only recourse against Angel’s posse. In reality, we all know a World Kickboxing title isn’t going to do jack when you’re caught in the crossfire of a Mac-10 machine gun, but hey – this isn’t reality, this is a low-budget kung fu flick. After the exposition-heavy first thirty minutes, which include some Perfect Weapon-style flashbacks to Gruner’s character’s troubled youth, the film settles into a martial arts movie groove, with a series of increasingly escalating fight scenes that come to include more and more of the crime-inflicted neighborhood. By the time the climax rolls around, Gruner has given up pulling his punches and has started breaking limbs and throwing fools through picket fences as the entire block watches. At only 30 years of age, Gruner is in peak condition here, and there’s no doubt he’s the real deal: somehow it never gets old watching him high-kick the same group of gangmembers into oblivion. 

It must be said Angel Town is populated almost exclusively by stereotypes (along with a fresh-faced Mark Dacascos in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him background part), with Angel and his enforcers representing the kind of violent Latino gang Ann Coulter imagines when she closes her eyes. In fact, an early theatrical screening of Angel Town at a drive-in theater in Westminster, California was reportedly marred by gang-related violence, which led to a much smaller than anticipated theatrical roll-out for the film. Would Olivier Gruner gone on to greater success, sharing the box office marquee next to Van Damme and Steven Seagal, if Angel Town had received its intended wide release? Somehow it’s doubtful, but if you’re the kind of person who visits City on Fire on a regular basis, chances are you’ll have a good time revisiting this 1990 guilty pleasure. 

Z Ravas’ Rating: 6.5/10 

The post Angel Town (1990) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

Blast | Blu-ray (MVD Marquee)

Director: Albert Pyun
Writer: Albert Pyun
Cast: Linden Ashby, Rutger Hauer, Kimberly Warren, Tim Thomerson, Norbert Weisser, Andrew Divoff, Yuji Okumoto, Vincent Klyn, Tim Thomerson, Sonya Eddy, Shannon Elizabeth, Jill Pierce
Running Time: 159 min.

By Z Ravas

When I was 10 years-old, I thought you couldn’t get any cooler than Linden Ashby. That probably sounds amusing now, but I still think the actor was able to combine the amiable charm of someone like Owen Wilson with a bonafide martial arts background (Ashby studied karate, tae kwon do, and kung fu from the age of 21 onwards). Although he portrayed the parody of a martial arts star as Johnny Cage in 1995’s Mortal Kombat, one gets the sense in another life Ashby could have been the genuine article. More than anything, it was likely time working against Ashby: by 1997, the year he starred in Blast, the action movie boom of the Eighties and Nineties had more or less dried up, and former superstars like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal were on their way to direct-to-VHS fare like The Legionnaire and The Patriot, respectively. 

The shrinking market for traditional action fare is keenly felt while watching Blast, a movie you might call ‘Die Hard in an Olympic training pool.’ The film arrives from notorious B-Movie king Albert Pyun, whose career trajectory more or less mirrored the dwindling favor of the action genre. While the Eighties saw him pair with Van Damme for Pyun’s biggest hit, Cyborg, and the early Nineties brought the likes of his visually impressive cyber-punk feature Nemesis, by ’97 it appears Pyun barely had a few pennies to rub together to make a film like Blast. In an echo of his later work like Ticker, Blast consists almost exclusively of tight close-ups on actors’ faces, as though the cast was never in the same room at once, and continually uses the same nondescript hallway to stand in for the entire floor of a building. On one hand, you have to feel for Pyun: there’s almost no conceivable way you could make a solid Die Hard knockoff on a shoestring budget. At the same time, watching Blast can be a dire viewing experience, the kind that only makes you sorry for yourself. 

Blast’s (frankly bizarre) opening titles acknowledge the Centennial Olympic Park Bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, and posit the movie as something like a dramatic reenactment of “what could have happened” if a band of terrorists had attacked during the games. This stab at docu-drama realism is an attempt to keep the movie grounded, but feels like a mistake as it lends the movie the feeling of a dull procedural. The first thirty minutes of the movie involve a whole lot of security checks, automated doors, and CTV monitors as the women’s Olympic swim team head to their Atlanta training facility. Thanks to a mole on the inside, Andrew Divoff’s (Wishmaster) heavily armed terrorists take over the pool and end up holding the entire swim team hostage. If their demands are not, the young women (featuring a 24 years-old and undiscovered Shannon Elizabeth of American Pie fame) will be executed one by one. 

Enter our John McClane-style “wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Linden Ashby, who’s a janitor(!) at the facility. Don’t fret: Ashby’s character is actually a former tae kwon do champion, now disgraced after a debilitating injury led him to a life of alcoholism. At first I was worried when Ashby was introduced with a hobbled leg, but the movie more or less forgets about his injury whenever it’s time for Linden to kick some ass. Unfortunately, it takes a solid forty minutes before Ashby’s character even realizes a terrorist plot is afoot, so those expecting an action-packed 99 minutes might find themselves disappointed by scenes of Divoff preening for the cameras as he rattles off his demands on national television, or Ashby’s poor co-worker (a charming Sonya Eddy, of TV’s Fresh Off the Boat) fleeing Divoff’s armed goons down that same repeating corridor.

Considering Pyun’s experience working with martial artists like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Olivier Grunier, one would hope the action in Blast doesn’t disappoint, and thankfully what little hand-to-hand combat occurs proves well executed. There’s a kind of R-rated nastiness to the violence you don’t often see in these ‘Die Hard’-lites, with Ashby bashing bad guy’s faces into sinks or stabbing knives through throats. Ashby acquits himself well as an onscreen fighter, his background on display with a couple of high kicks and a flurry of punches. The real problem is that Linden Ashby doesn’t have much screentime and, worse yet, no one to play off of. Whereas Bruce Willis was able to interact with the likes of Al Powell and even Hans Gruber himself, Ashby spends most of the movie on his own, silently dragging his increasingly beat up body down hallways and stairwells. Whether this was due to a lack of imagination during scripting or Ashby having a limited number of days on set, we can only guess. Blast frequently cuts to the actions of a few of Pyun’s other stable players, including Tim Thomerson (Dollman) and Yuji Okumoto (Nemesis), as they work to defuse the situation from the Mayor’s office, but these scenes fall flat thanks to the movie’s ambition to realism. Pyun’s attempt to simulate a crisis management situation feels antithetical to the entertainment value of a B-level action movie; the wit and oneliners of Die Hard are solely missed.

I should probably mention Rutger Hauer is in this movie. The Blind Fury actor plays a counter-terrorism expert left a paraplegic after a previous run in with Divoff’s baddie. This basically means he appears periodically in a darkly lit room, offering advice on hostage negotiation to the police. I should also probably mention that, in a baffling move, the Dutch actor was hired to portray an American Indian, complete with some kind of fake tanner and long braids. It’s something you have to see to believe, much like the ending of the film when Hauer and Divoff finally come face to face. All I’ll say is that it involves a swimming pool and a bomb inside a wheelchair. 

Blast is a strange one. The film arrives on Blu-ray from MVD Entertainment Group, a distributor who has recently made a name for themselves with their MVD Rewind Collection featuring Nineties guilty pleasures like Nemesis and Double Dragon. MVD have chosen to pluck the movie from obscurity and I’m not entirely sure why, unless they’re looking to fill out Albert Pyun’s filmography – a move I’m in full support of. While the scripting here feels dry and uninspired, I do get the sense that Pyun is straining to make an outsized project work on a miniscule budget. Pyun’s efforts can’t quite overcome a drab location, the lack of action sequences, and a charismatic lead who is conspicuously absent from much of the movie, but I can’t fault him for trying. If you’re feeling particularly charitable, or you’re a Linden Ashby superfan like I was at 10 years-old, Blast might provide a night’s modest entertainment. For everyone else, you’re probably better off rewatching Under Siege or Sudden Death for your inferior Die Hard fix. 

Z Ravas’ Rating: 5/10

The post Blast (1997) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“xXx” DVD in a “Full Screen Special Edition”

In a way, it’s almost a marvel that I rented the film at all – much like Miramax’s notoriously awful art for Infernal Affairs in 2004 (boasting a minidress-wearing Shu Qi lookalike who appears nowhere in the film), Sony’s DVD release of Shiri features a misleading cover, in this case a faceless Korean woman holding a pistol in a barely-there dress. Who knows, this blatant attempt at sex appeal may have helped Sony move more units, but it completely mischaracterizes the film for prospective viewers.

Stylish and fast-paced in the Jerry Bruckheimer mold, Shiri is a race-against-the-clock spy actioner modeled after the successful Hollywood blockbusters that came before it, only this time with a tragic romance tossed in for good measure. Even the soundtrack by composer Lee Dong-jun (Save the Green Planet!) shamelessly riffs on Hans Zimmer’s score for The Rock. What gives Shiri its particular flavor is the focus on North Korean and South Korean relations. In what is perhaps it’s most effective sequence, Shiri opens with a montage of North Korean soldiers engaging in some absolutely brutal training, training that involves mercilessly slaughtering nameless captors and even their own comrades. This is our first indication that, despite director Kang Je-kyu’s attempt at mass appeal, Shiri is not a film to shy away from hard-R violence.

For more on misleading DVD covers, click here.

From there, we soon discover the North Koreans have sent their most capable soldier to infiltrate the South and carry out various assassinations and other acts of espionage. Leading man Han Suk-kyu and a very young-looking Song Kang-ho are the two South Korean government agents on the case. If you don’t think the spy’s identity will be revealed in a surprise twist involving Han Suk-kyu’s fiancé (played by Lost’s Yunjim Kim), then you may want to pay closer attention. It’s worth mentioning that Yunjim Kim’s handler is played by Choi Min-sik, just a scant four years before he became the Oldboy we know and love.

Watching Shiri in 2018 is an almost quaint experience. The film wears its Hollywood influences on its sleeve, playing out like a remix and reworked version of James Cameron and Michael Bay’s greatest hits. There’s the military themes and emotive music of Bay’s aforementioned The Rock, while Han Suk-kyu’s attempts to keep his secret agent day job a secret from his fiancé recall Cameron’s True Lies. Unfortunately, the action sequences – often a highlight of Korean genre cinema – are far cry from the elegance and intricacy of a Cameron setpiece. While the North American DVD claims to be in 1.85:1 widescreen, the tight camera angles and shaky handheld photography during shootouts frequently made me feel like I was watching something shrunk down to a 4:3 aspect ratio. The action scenes here feel positively claustrophobic as a result, and spatial geography quickly goes out the window, as during a kitchen gun battle in which Choi Min-sik seems to have turned on some kind of video game cheat code so that he never runs out of bullets.

Sinks Titanic…

The DVD’s Special Features include a behind-the-scenes documentary that I think really underscores what a film like Shiri represents circa 2018. Throughout the doc, both newscasters and members of the production team express their hope that Shiri’s success will pave the way for more Korean films to perform well at the domestic box office. Clearly, this is a wish that has come to fruition, as just a few short years after the colossal success of Shiri (it outgrossed Titanic from, you guessed it, James Cameron), Korean cinema begin to flourish with the numerous titles we now regard as modern classics, from Memories of Murder to A Bittersweet Life and beyond. It’s oddly touching to look back and realize that, only twenty years ago, a movie like Shiri – with a budget of $5 million dollars, considered massive at that time – was seen as a gamble in South Korea. In other words: you’ve come a long way, baby.

I doubt anyone would make the case that Shiri is a great movie, or at least not a “great” movie in the same way Oldboy is, but it does prove well-acted, the production values are slick, and the storyline hits the right notes of tragedy by its denouement. The real-life stakes of North and South Korean relations also lend the film a particular gravitas it would not otherwise have as just another spy vs. spy tale. Its influence in that regard can still be felt in recent North-meets-South flicks like Confidential Assignment and Netflix’s Steel Rain. But these days Shiri is arguably most interesting as a time capsule, a snapshot of the last moment before the Korean Wave took hold and transformed the country into what many cinema fans, myself included, consider to be most exciting film industry in the world today.

Read First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Korea Edition Part I
Read First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Korea Edition Part II
Read First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Korea Edition Part III

The post Eastern Cherries – First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Korea Edition Part IV first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Secret Reunion” Korean Theatrical Poster

Director: Jang Hun
Cast: Song Kang-Ho, Gang Dong-Won, Jeon Kuk-Hwan, Park Hyuk-Kwon, Yoon Hee-Seok, Ko Chang-Seok, Lee So-Yun, Jung In-Gi, Bae Yong-Geun, Jo Suk-Hyun, Park Yong-Jin, Kwon Bum-Taek, Choi Jung-Woo
Running Time: 116 min.

By Z Ravas

Secret Reunion opens at a fever pitch most action movies hope to achieve during their climax. Gang Don-won’s character has been living in South Korea as a sleeper agent for the North when he receives orders to meet up with a ruthless assassin codenamed Shadow in order to take down Kim Jung-il’s second cousin. It appears the relative of the Northern dictator wrote a tell-all book about the regime and the diminutive leader is not happy about it. This leads to an exciting setpiece in a crowded apartment climax as Gang Don-won’s loyalty to the Communist party is tested by his crisis of conscience at so much wanton slaughter (“I can feel the bloodbath” is Shadow’s favorite catchphrase). While most of the hand-to-hand combat during this sequence is neutered by choppy editing, the setpiece still excites thanks to a racing, Bourne Identity-esque score and effective sound design as the screams of bystanders are punctuated by gunfire. The mission, which goes awry thanks to a traitor in Gang Don-won’s ranks, puts him squarely in the crosshairs of Sang Kong-ho’s South Korean government agent. The stage is set for a thrilling cat-and-mouse game between Northern spy and Southern G-Man. 

..and then Secret Reunion takes a hard detour into laid back, buddy comedy territory. More than any Korean film I’ve seen in recent memory, Secret Reunion embodies the kind of tonal dissonance that can occur when a movie seems to change genre from scene to scene. It’s as though co-writer and director Jang Hoon wants to have his cake and eat it too; the film asks, “Why can’t this be a spy thriller? And then a slapstick farce? And then a political melodrama? And then back again?” Clearly, Jang Hoon must be onto something, as Secret Reunion was one of 2010’s biggest box office hits in South Korea, and he’s since gone on to direct the award-winning The Front Line and last year’s incredibly successful Taxi Driver. But viewers who, like me, settle down in front of Secret Reunion expecting an action-packed espionage tale are in for a rude awakening. 

Fortunately, the film is mostly able to skate by on the charisma of its two leads (mostly). At this point, Song Kang-ho needs no introduction, as he’s arguably South Korea’s most recognizable leading man thanks to turns in movies like The Host and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. His role here, as a somewhat buffoonish and disgraced government agent, isn’t exactly a stretch for the actor, but Kang-ho proves charming as ever, whether he’s pretending to practice martial arts in his boxer shorts or accidentally handcuffing himself to a pole in his apartment. Contrasting Song Kang-ho’s clownish antics is Gang Don-won’s ‘soft spoken but lethal’ badass, the kind of archetype we’ve seen in the likes of The Suspect and The Man From Nowhere. I’ve always found Gang Don-won a likable presence onscreen, and a subplot involving his attempts to rescue his wife and daughter from North Korea adds some much needed dimension to his character.

Through circumstances I won’t spoil, Song Kang-ho and Gang Don-won end up living together, as improbable as that sounds. Most of the film’s runtime is comprised of the two of them gradually forming a bond, even as they suspect each other of working for the enemy. As the movie builds to a conclusion, it attempts to change lanes back into the action-thriller mold, but by then much of the tension is gone – Secret Reunion’s focus on our lead duo’s comedic antics and buddy chemistry means the stakes feel that much lower by the climax, even when the deadly assassin Shadow remerges to face down Song Kang-ho and Gang Don-won. Clearly, director Jang Hoon’s interest is in delivering crowd-pleasing entertainment and not designing elaborate action sequences.

Speaking of Jang Hoon, it’s interesting to note that the filmmaker began as a disciple of Korean iconoclast (and enduring figure of controversy) Kim Ki-duk. Ki-duk wrote and produced Jang Hoon’s first feature, Rough Cut, in 2008, before Jang Hoon spread his wings and signed a contract with one of South Korea’s largest film distribution companies. Jang Hoon’s increasingly commercialized output apparently lead to a rift with his former mentor, as Kim Ki-duk had nothing good to say about Jang Hoon in his documentary-style self portrait Arirang. I have to admit I find this behind-the-scenes drama a tad more compelling than Secret Reunion, which is not something you want to say about a movie involving spy games and lethal assassins, but as someone who was hoping for more bite than laughs, I have to say I walked away disappointed. 

Fortunately, Song Kang-ho is an actor who can carry a movie on his shoulders, and here he’s playing a very different government agent than he did in 1999’s sober, straight-faced thriller Shiri. Backed up by Gang Don-won, Kang-ho provides the film with enough star power to ensure some entertainment value, but considering Secret Reunion was second to only The Man From Nowhere at the 2010 box office, the film proves curiously underwhelming for much of its runtime.   

Z Ravas’ Rating: 6/10

The post Secret Reunion (2010) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Psychokinesis” Korean Theatrical Poster

Director: Yeon Sang-Ho
Writer: Yeon Sang-Ho
Cast: Ryoo Seung-Ryong, Shim Eun-Kyung, Park Jung-Min, Kim Min-Jae, Jung Yu-Mi
Running Time: 101 min. 

By Z Ravas

Train to Busan must be the most popular Korean film in America since Oldboy. No, I don’t have any hard data to back that up (although the movie did gross close to $100 million worldwide). But anecdotally, here in the States – where Korean cinema is still something of a niche interest – Train to Busan is the first Korean movie I’ve heard anyone having “water cooler conversations” about since Choi Min-sik stormed down a hallway with a hammer in his hand. No doubt, Train to Busan’s accessibility on Netflix had something to do with its wide reach. Given the film’s massive global success, it’s easy to imagine director Yeon Sang-ho was given something of a blank check when it came time to make his next movie. Now raise your hand if you expected Sang-ho to follow up his fast-paced zombie thriller with…a whimsical comedy about a deadbeat dad turned telekinetic superhero. No one?

Talk about a curveball. Yes, the filmmaker – who began his career in animation – has strayed from the horror genre altogether, writing and directing a movie that could easily fit alongside the Marvel Cinematic Universe if it wasn’t so, well, off-beat and lackadaisical in its storytelling. That’s not a diss: Psychokinesis is a movie imbued with the same kind of ambling quality as it’s protagonist, portrayed by a charming and quite funny Ryu Seung-ryong (The Piper).  

As the movie opens, Ryu Seung-ryong is living a low-key existence as a security guard. You might call him a slacker, someone who isn’t afraid to skimp instant coffee packets from his employer when they’re not looking. Unbeknownst to him, the daughter who he abandoned years ago is having a much harder time of things. All grown up (and played by Train to Busan’s Shim Eun-kyung), she’s doing her best to run a successful fried chicken restaurant, but some greedy land developers are forcing her and other local business owners out – using any means necessary. When a meteorite from space crash lands and imbues some spring water with superpowers, Ryu Seung-ryong takes a sip and is suddenly given the chance to reconnect with his daughter and perhaps save her from Kim Min-jae’s (The Battleship Island) shady construction company.

That said, Psychokinesis takes its time getting there. Although Ryu Seung-ryong is granted his psychic powers quite early in the movie, director Yeon Sang-ho isn’t really interested in orchestrating comic book battles. Even when Ryu does end up using his abilities, their presentation is not much more outlandish than what we saw Carrie do decades ago, with Ryu waving his hand to send a bunch of rubberfaced goons toppling to the floor. Yeon Sang-ho is much more invested in the estranged relationship between father and daughter, a similar thread that he drew upon in Train to Busan, as well as the tightknit family of business owners in Gangwon Province who find themselves threatened with eviction. 

Fortunately, Yeon Sang-ho has assembled a talented cast, particularly Ryu Seung-ryong – whose gift for physical comedy here frequently reminded me of vintage Jackie Chan (I was continually amazed he was able to find new ways to strain his face and move his body every time he summoned his powers) – and Shim Eun-kyung as his stern but good-hearted daughter. Late in the movie, Jung Yu-mi (Chaw) makes an appearance as the corporate interest pulling the strings behind the evictions, and let’s just say the beautiful actress is afforded the chance to play against type as a truly unhinged villain. 

While it only runs 101 minutes, Psychokinesis still feels a tad longer than necessary, and even as I watched it I had to wonder if part of my enjoyment of the film was the result of residual goodwill from Train to Busan. The climax of the film sees Ryu Seung-ryong taking to the skies in comical leaps and bounds a la Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, which is fun in of itself, but I doubt very many of us watch Korean cinema because we want it to mimic Hollywood blockbusters – we so enjoy these movies precisely because they tend to deviate from the Hollywood playbook, or at least do them one better. Regardless, in the same way that Ryu Seung-ryong’s affable nature eventually thaws his daughter’s cold heart, Psychokinesis is too likable to judge harshly. Yeon Sang-ho’s background in animation is on clear display: the film’s crisp, visual storytelling means you could watch Psychokinesis on mute and still be able to follow the action and enjoy yourself. 

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Psychokinesis? After following up a relentless zombie flick with a superhero comedy, I have absolutely no idea what Yeon Sang-ho is going to do next. I just know it’ll be interesting. 

Z Ravas’ Rating: 7/10

The post Psychokinesis (2018) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Illang: The Wolf Brigade” Theatrical Poster

Director: Kim Ji-woon
Cast: Gang Dong-Won, Han Hyo-Joo, Jung Woo-Sung, Kim Moo-Yul, Han Ye-Ri, Heo Jun-Ho, Minho, Shin Eun-Soo, Kim Pub-Lae, Lee Dong-Ha, Choi Jin-Ho
Running Time: 138 min.

By Z Ravas

A Tale of Two Sisters. A Bittersweet Life. The Good, the Bad, the Weird. I Saw the Devil. Age of Shadows. Over the last 15 years, the work of Kim Jee-woon has come to help define popular Korean cinema. In that regard, he occupies the same rarefied echelon as filmmakers like Chan Wook-park (Oldboy) and Bong Joon-ho (The Host). Even Jee-woon’s brief foray into Hollywood filmmaking, the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle The Last Stand, is now seen as little more than an unfortunate blip in an otherwise remarkably consistent career. It should come as no surprise that each new film by Kim Jee-woon arrives with a massive amount of hype and expectation; this may go some ways to explain just why his latest work, the Netflix-distrbuted Illang: The Wolf Brigade, has been met with a wave of negative reviews since its release in South Korea last summer, where it underperformed at the box office.

Illang is loosely based on the manga from Ghost in the Shell creator Mamoru Oshii, which itself was adapted into the popular anime feature Jin-Roh back in 1999. The opening twenty minutes of Illang, as weighed down by exposition as they may be, are likely what fans of the anime were hoping to see: in a near-future unified Korea, police in riot gear uniforms clash with unruly protestors and anti-government terrorists known as the Sect. Amid the violence, the Wolf Brigade – a specially trained and heavily armored brand of government response force – are unleashed upon the Sect forces with a hail of machinegun fire. Make no mistake, Warner Brothers (who co-produced with Lewis Pictures) has thrown some money at this film. Illang boasts high production values; the opening’s slick futuristic look and high powered weaponry had me thinking we were in for director Kim Jee-woon’s own take on Paul Verhoeven’s Eighties classic Robocop.

From there, the film temporarily pumps it brakes, and one realizes that the Jin-Roh source material is merely a framework for Kim Jee-woon to tell a standard Korean revenge tale. As it turns out, the higher-ups in the government feel the Wolf Brigade are a little too good at their jobs. Those in power prefer the status quo, as instability and chaos on the streets create the perfect climate to maintain control over the populace. Some shady government types hatch a plan to frame a Wolf Brigade soldier (The Master’s Gang Dong-won) for a terrorist plot so they can use him as a scapegoat to disband the Wolf Brigade entirely. Unfortunately for them, Gang Dong-won is too cunning to fall for their scheme and he evades capture with the help of a former Sect member, played by Han Hyo-joo (Cold Eyes). The story of a well-trained soldier on the run from relentless hit squads with a doe-eyed beauty in tow frequently put me in mind of Lee Jung-beom’s 2014 No Tears for the Dead, and at times Kim Jee-woon seems as though he’s trying his damndest to out-do the action sequences in that film.

Granted, Illang’s emphasis on world building and technical prowess means that the characters frequently recede into the background – in truth, it was halfway through the movie before I realized that Gang Dong-won was meant to be our protagonist. Can you blame me? With megastar Jung Woo-sung’s (Asura: City of Madness) stoic drill instructor and Kim Moo Yeol’s (War of the Arrows) slimy bureaucrat taking up so much screentime, it can be difficult to know who we’re supposed to follow. Kim Jee-woon has a relatively straightforward story on his hands but chooses to focus on its dizzying layers of conspiracy. The director continually runs the risk of muddling a very simple narrative, but then he throws another shootout or car chase your way, and suddenly all that matters is that you’re in the hands of someone who can expertly orchestrate a kinetic action sequence. Jee-woon’s blockbuster style here involves a fluid blend of handheld and steadicam work, jawdropping aerial photography amid hundreds of extras, and a glorious amount of spent bullet casings.

In the interest of full disclosure, it’s been well over a decade since I’ve seen the anime adaptation of Jin-Roh. It’s an animated feature known for its methodical pace, moody contemplation of the relationship between statecraft and terrorism, and frequent allusions to the Red Riding Hood fairy tale. I can understand if fans of the manga and anime feel as though Kim Jee-woon has betrayed his source material by deploying it as window dressing for yet another Korean action/thriller, a genre that is starting to feel more than a little familiar now that we’re eight years after The Man From Nowhere (and a whopping thirteen since A Bittersweet Life). In truth, The Wolf Brigade functions best when it’s not attempting to contemplate whether Gang Dong-won is a wolf in man’s clothing or vice versa, and instead doubles down on Kim Jee-woon’s penchant for ultra-violence: case in point, the film climaxes with a brickwall-busting tussle that tells me Jee-woon has seen and studied John Hyams’ Universal Soldier: Regeneration.

I began this review with a list of some of Kim Jee-woon’s best and most acclaimed works. I can guarantee that Illang: The Wolf Brigade will never be counted among them. But judged on its own merits, as a slick piece of pop entertainment you can watch with the effortless click of a button thanks to Netflix, The Wolf Bridgade is a damn fine action movie and a not altogether bad way to spend a Saturday night.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 7.5/10

The post Illang: The Wolf Brigade (2018) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

Despite their doors being shuttered over a decade ago, Tower Records is a place that continues to loom large in many consumers’ nostalgic hearts. Don’t believe me? Just watch 2015’s All Things Must Pass, which –– while not a great documentary –– is admirably devoted to preserving the memory of the once great entertainment franchise. For media fans all over the globe, Tower served as a one-stop shop for vinyl and CDs, magazines, and other wares. Back in the pre-Blu-ray era, my local Tower was also the premiere destination for Asian films on DVD, and I spent countless weekends hoping to find the next mind-melting kung fu or action movie.

In fact, I owe Tower Records for introducing me to perhaps our greatest purveyor of extreme Japanese cinema: the one and only Takashi Miike. In those early Internet days, it was honestly difficult to find information on any Japanese movie that wasn’t called Battle Royale. So imagine my surprise when I wandered through the Foreign Film section at Tower Records and a knowledgeable employee (who I mysterious never saw again) began chatting me up about this director named Miike, whose work was just now finding its way to American shores. I was intrigued by the cover art and descriptions for a bevy of movies that couldn’t have appeared more disparate: the chilling bait-and-switch of Audition, the manga-come-to-life that is Fudoh: The New Generation, and the zombie-comedy-musical Happiness of the Katakuris. Any of those films would have been an ideal starting point for a budding Miike fan, but for some reason my interest was drawn elsewhere.

“Fudoh – The New Generation” Japanese Theatrical Poster

Maybe it was my love of Asian gangster movies; maybe it was the evocative title; or maybe it was the Tower employee assuring me that the film contained the first ever parody of The Matrix’s bullet time. Either way, my introduction to Takashi Miike came with my purchase of City of Lost Souls that afternoon. It’s a Miike effort that is discussed rarely, if ever, these days, but in its own way it worked as a stellar entryway into Miike’s mad, mad world, and in any event, by the time the credits rolled I knew I needed to see more.

On the surface, City of Lost Souls is your standard lovers-on-the-run tale, not so different from the Tarantino-penned True Romance, as the Brazilian-Japanese protagonist Mario and his Chinese girlfriend Kei (played by iconic Nineties Hong Kong actress Michelle Reis) find themselves in the crosshairs of Chinese Triads and Yakuza crime bosses while stranded in a country that would love to see them deported. In Takashi Miike’s hands, however, City of Lost Souls becomes a live-action cartoon, crackling with the kind of manic energy and punk rock attitude that defined the opening ten minutes of his 1999 breakthrough Dead or Alive. Early in the film, we watch as Mario and Kei leap out of a helicopter and land on their feet as unharmed as the Road Runner. Later, the lovers lie asleep in bed as a spider crawls across Kei’s shoulder, only for it seamlessly merge with her skin as a tattoo. I haven’t even mentioned the cockfight where the chickens imitate Keanu Reeves’ gravity-defying kung fu. If it isn’t already clear, we have departed reality and entered Miike land. And it is a terrifying and wonderful place to be. 

There’s a touch of social commentary here, as Mario’s heritage speaks to the fact that Brazil is home to the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan, and many of those Japanese have faced discrimination when migrating back to their homeland. That said, City of Lost Souls is not a film concerned with realism –– realism would only get in the way of the fun Miike has in store, like two crime bosses engaging in a deadly game of ping-pong. This is a film defined by Miike’s go-for-broke lunacy, making it an exemplary work of this period of his career, when he was just beginning to carve out a niche for himself away from the Direct-to-Video market.

“The City of Lost Souls” International Theatrical Poster

By selecting both Time & Tide and City of Lost Souls as influential films in my life, it’s obvious to me that my teenage self was most impressed by visual inventiveness and kinetic action. Saying a movie resembles a music video carries something of a stigma these days, but there was a time when filmmakers as diverse as Wong Kar-wai and Takashi Miike were adopting the fluid camera work, surreal lighting, and rapid-fire editing regularly found on MTV in the Nineties, and using it to innovate global cinema. There’s a certain roughness around the edges to City of Lost Souls, and one senses that Miike’s heart may not have been in it the way it was for his more esteemed works, but its devil may care stance and irreverent humor earn it a place in the Miike canon. It’s also one of the few Japanese action movies I can think of that reflects the ethnic diversity of modern Tokyo. 

My sense is that City of Lost Souls is not a film that immediately springs to mind when considering the work of Takashi Miike. I myself am actually due for a rewatch –– it’s been years. But there are sequences and moments peppered throughout the movie that have stayed with me in the decade since, and, much like Time & Tide, it was a film that transformed me from casual viewer to full-fledged connoisseur. Little did I know when I plucked City of Lost Souls from the shelves at Tower Records, but I was taking another early step into the world of collecting (and obsessing) over Asian action cinema. Directors like Takashi Miike have ensured it’s been as wild as a helicopter ride with Mario and Kei. 

Read Eastern Cherries – First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Japan Edition Part I
Read Eastern Cherries – First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Japan Edition Part II
Read Eastern Cherries – First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Japan Edition Part III

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By 2002, I’d seen a handful of Hong Kong action movies – mostly John Woo staples like A Better Tomorrow and Miramax’s dubbed Jackie Chan pictures – but it wasn’t until my hand reached for a lonely copy of Tsui Hark’s 2000 gonzo action masterpiece Time & Tide at Blockbuster Video that I truly became a devotee of the genre. To my teenage self, Hark’s surreal blend of audacious camerawork, Matrix-esque bullet time, and bravado setpieces registered as a revelation. Time & Tide is a film that rarely pauses to catch its breath, one that’s infused with kind of formal inventiveness you’d expect to find in an arthouse picture, not a big-budget action movie. The heady rush of Hark’s visual storytelling isn’t without a price: despite repeated viewings over the years, I’d be hard-pressed to give you a succinct description of the plot; but at this point, that’s almost part of Time & Tide’s charm. Sometimes you have to leap before you look. 

“Time and Tide” Japanese Theatrical Poster

Nicholas Tse, then just an up-and-coming heartthrob with appearances in Gen-X Cops and A Man Called Hero, plays an all-around screw-up trying to hold down a job as an amateur bodyguard. Before long, his new gig finds him crossing paths with stoic Taiwanese actor (and massively successful rock star) Wu Bai, appearing here as a former mercenary “with a very particular set of skills,” now looking to start a new life with his pregnant bride. Time & Tide’s rather misleading American tagline was “Trust is fatal,” but Nicholas Tse and Wu Bai will have to team up if they have any hope of surviving a villainous band of South American assassins known as the Angels. Or something. 

With hindsight, it’s easy to view Time & Tide as Tsui Hark’s gleeful return to his Hong Kong stomping grounds, bringing with him everything he learned while crafting his Hollywood collaborations with Jean-Claude Van Damme. The same freewheeling, anarchic visual stylings on display in 1998’s Knock Off are present here, but truly flourish thanks to a setting that has more to do with classic heroic bloodshed tropes than JCVD selling jeans with nanobombs in their buttons. Back then, I’d never seen an action movie quite as kinetic as Time & Tide, and by the time Tsui Hark’s constantly roving camera followed Wu Bai out a window as he repeled down the side of a Hong Kong tenement building, I knew I was hooked. 

(I’m clearly not the only fan: Time & Tide continues to be an influence on the current generation of Asian action directors, as over a decade later that tenement building sequence I mentioned was more or less lifted for both Choi Dong-hoon’s 2012 smash hit The Thieves, and 2014’s No Tears for the Dead from The Man From Nowhere director Lee Jung-beom.)

Trust is fatal.

Time & Tide proves that, at its core, action cinema is about one thing: motion. The film serves as a tribute to the human form in flight, whether Hark’s actors are scaling the side of a building, leaping over a catwalk, or kicking a live grenade before it explodes. Although these days Tsui Hark has grown more enamored of computer effects, Time & Tide is host to a plethora of practical stunts. The director’s restless visual ingenuity still impresses, and guarantees you’ll be saying “how the hell did they do that?” at least once every five minutes. 

You could make the argument that Tsui Hark had already produced better films around this time – whether the nihilistic wuxia of 1995’s The Blade or the lush fantasy of 1993’s Green Snake; and certainly those movies are a little easier to follow, due to Time & Tide’s almost free-association script. But for me, Time & Tide will always loom the largest. It’s the rare action film that reinvigorates the form. During one scene, everything pauses so Tsui Hark can zoom in on Nicholas Tse locked inside a refrigerator as he attempts to survive an explosion; it’s appropriate, as that’s kind of what watching this movie feels like at times. No one else has made a film quite like this –– and I’m not sure anyone but Tsui Hark would be bold enough to try.

For me, Time & Tide represented a turning point. No longer would I be content to wait for the next Jackie Chan movie to be released in American cinemas. No longer would I merely keep an eye out for the occasional Hong Kong film that my local video store decided to procure. Now I was on the hunt; I had to actively track down and get my hands on any movie that featured a Chinese actor throwing a punch or brandishing a pistol. The transformation was complete: Time & Tide had turned me from a fan into a fanatic.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wr98onsScQ

Read First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Hong Kong & China Edition Part I
Read First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Hong Kong & China Edition Part II
Read First Experiences of Asian Cinema: Hong Kong & China Edition Part IV

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“The Outlaws” Korean Theatrical Poster

Director: Kang Yoon-Sung
Cast: Ma Dong-Seok, Yoon Kye-Sang, Jo Jae-Yun, Choi Gwi-Hwa, rk Ji-Hwan, Hong Ki-Joon
Running Time: 121 min.

By Z Ravas

I walked away from 2016’s smash hit Train to Busan with a distinct impression that supporting actor Ma Dong-seok had stolen the movie – no small feat in a film about a train full of rabid zombies! Although I’d caught the actor in plenty of parts before, including Kundo: Age of the Rampant and The Unjust, it was his role as a proud papa-to-be defending his family against the zombie masses that forever endeared Ma Dong-seok to me. Only a year later, he’s back with a role that feels entirely tailored to Dong-seok and his onscreen persona, which is one that’s equal parts lovable teddy bear and hulking bruiser.

The Outlaws is based on the true story of a 2007-era police operation that saw a sweeping round-up of gangs in the Guro District of Seoul. One neighborhood there in particular, Garibong-dong, has long served as a home to many Chinese citizens who have emigrated to Korea seeking economic prosperity. Unfortunately, Seoul’s version of Chinatown is also plagued by criminals and lowlifes, some of whom smuggled themselves into the country to escape Chinese authorities. As the film opens, Ma Dong-seok’s seasoned detective is able to keep the peace on his beat by primarily serving as a mediator between gangs, most of whom are petty hoods just looking for a little extortion money – not drug dealers or murderers. Ma Dong-seok’s laconic style of police work, which occasionally sees him sitting down for tea or sharing a drink at a karaoke bar with organized crime for the sake of brokering a truce, is challenged by the emergence of a nihilistic criminal (played by Golden Slumber‘s Yoon Kye-sang) and his duo of vicious enforcers.

I’m imagining the film’s storyline is “loosely” based on real life incidents, as the conflict in The Outlaws quickly boils over to the kind of street-level anarchy one might expect in a Takashi Miike Yakuza flick. In fact, part of pleasure of The Outlaws‘ opening half hour is watching the Guro District’s carefully maintained ecosystem utterly up-ended by Yoon Kye-sang, an almost Joker-like instigator who has no qualms about chopping off someone’s hand if he feels they’ve disrespected him. Ma Dong-seok’s scrappy police team and the other local hoods are all caught entirely unprepared for Yoon Kye-sang’s savage gangland takeover, and the pressure to capture the dangerous criminal mounts as the body count rises.

46 year-old writer/director Kang Yoon-sung appears to have arrived out of nowhere, but he actually spent a few years as an actor before realizing he felt more at home behind the camera. The Outlaws makes for an auspicious debut, and the movie not only made a splash at the box office but landed Kang Yoon-sung a well-deserved nomination for Best New Director at the Blue Dragon Film Awards. Part of the reason the film is so successful is how vividly the filmmaker captures the texture and feel of the Guro District. The movie lands on the shortlist of Korean movies that really go out of their way to establish a sense of place beyond the neon glow of downtown Seoul, and the screenplay devotes time to depicting just how much local business owners and concerned citizens are suffering due to the turf warfare erupting around them. Kang Yoon-sung reportedly spent three years perfecting the script, and it shows; much like Asura: City of Madness, I would not be surprised if the director was in part inspired by HBO’s The Wire, as the film displays some of that show’s scope and ambition.

Despite plenty of humor, much of it derived from Ma Dong-seok’s pitch-perfect comic timing, The Outlaws doesn’t shy away from brutal violence or short bursts of choreographed action; Kang Yoon-sung even offers an impressive single camera take of Yoon Kye-sang slicing up the guests at a birthday party with a hatchet. One might say a flaw of the script is that it has to tie itself in knots to make sure Ma Dong-seok and Yoon Kye-sang never end up in the same room together, lest the film be over long before its two hour runtime; but when the hard-nosed detective and amoral crime boss finally do come face to face, the wait is more than worth it. From True Lies to The Man From Nowhere, there’s something of an unwritten rule that fight scenes in bathrooms are always good, and – without spoiling anything – The Outlaws gives a titanic tussle in the Incheon International Airport bathroom that certainly lives up to the memorable action sequences that have come before.

Ever since Oldboy gained the attention of the international scene way back in 2003, South Korean has been firing on all cylinders with stellar genre fare; even so, it feels like the industry has been on a particular hot streak during the past few years, and for me The Outlaws easily ranks alongside the best the country has been offering as of late. The film offers a role that feels tailor made for charismatic tough guy Ma Dong-seok, and serves as the rare blend of action and comedy that doesn’t hold back when it comes to hard-hitting violence. No matter what project writer/director Kang Yoon-sung tackles next, I guarantee I’ll be buying a ticket.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 8.5/10

The post Outlaws, The (2017) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Battleship Island” Theatrical Poster

Director: Ryoo Seung-wan
Cast: Hwang Jung-Min, So Ji-Sub, Song Joong-Ki, Lee Jung-Hyun, Kim Soo-Ahn, Kim In-Woo, Kim Joong-Hee, Lee Kyoung-Young, Shin Seung-Hwan, Ahn Se-Ho
Running Time: 132 min.

By Z Ravas

Although director Ryoo Seung-wan has engaged in big-budget spectacle in the recent past – 2013’s The Berlin File felt like the filmmaker’s attempt to top the Bourne trilogy, and long before that he’d dabbled in the superhero (Arahan) and spoof (Dachimawa Lee) genres – he’s long felt most at home helming scrappy action flicks like the fan favorite City of Violence, not to mention 2015’s box office smash Veteran. Of course, it’s never fair to expect a filmmaker to operate in just one mode, no matter how good they are at it, and so Ryoo Seung-wan is back with his most expensive and ambitious project yet: the World War II epic The Battleship Island.

The film is based on conditions at Hashima Island, home to a daunting military installation that feels one part labor colony, one part wartime fortress, in which the Japanese army forced some 400 Koreans to work in its labyrinth of coal mines. Although the real world location still stands, and is a UNESCO-sanctioned World Heritage site, much of the film’s $21 million dollar budget went into constructing massive sets to replicate Hashima Island (considering how many explosions go off during the movie, it was probably wise not to film at the historical site!). Indeed, the sprawling sets built for the film serve as the viewer’s first indication of Battleship Island‘s biggest selling point: this is easily one of the most impressive Korean productions ever made, and despite some occasionally below-par CGI, Ryoo Seung-wan’s technical accomplishment frequently stands alongside the best Hollywood has to offer.

As the story opens, the Japanese Army is beginning to realize they’re on the losing side of war, even as their country’s leaders direct them to carry on as usual. Part of their orders involves regularly shipping off Korean detainees en masse to work the coal mines of Hashima Island, a perilous job due to unsafe working conditions such as gas leaks and runaway mine carts. Despite their will to escape, and the measured leadership of an exiled Korean political figure (played by The Pirates‘ Lee Kyoung-Young), no prisoners have managed to overtake their captors or flee the ocean-bound fortress.

But that fate might just change with the most recent shipment of laborers, a ragtag group that includes a womanizing band leader (Hwang Jung-min) and his young daughter (Train to Busan’s Kim Soo-ahn), as well as a swaggering gangster (So Ji-sub). So Ji-sub is an actor known primarily for his work on Korean television, but I imagine most Westerners will recognize him as the titular character from A Company Man, as well as the Kim Ki-duk-penned Rough Cut. Hwang Jung-min, meanwhile, needs no introduction, as he arguably the most recognizable actor working in Korean cinema these days; I have to confess that Jung-min’s presence took me out of the movie somewhat, simply because he is the sole Movie Star in a film that is clearly attempting to convince you of its historical verisimilitude, but you won’t catch me saying a bad word about his performance.

If The Battleship Island possesses a fatal flaw, it’s that it too often feels like a holdover from the many Korean productions we saw circa 2014, such as The Admiral: Roaring Currents and Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale, in which the Japanese villains are portrayed as extremely one-dimensional, desperately evil monsters, a characterization that is likely exacerbated here due to the World War II setting. As in those pictures, the Japanese characters are portrayed by Korean actors, and the only direction from Ryoo Seung-wan seems to be for them to play their parts as big and broad as possible. The movie also pulls no punches when addressing the Japanese military’s use of “comfort women” – while it mercifully stops short of depicting the practice onscreen, it is distressing how often the screenplay threatens the audience with something unspeakable happening to the very young Kim Soo-ahn. There’s even a (brief) flashback of Japanese soldiers rolling a Korean schoolgirl over a bed of nails that recalls the notorious nastiness of Men Behind the Sun.

Granted, I doubt most audiences are asking for a World War II movie that glosses over the atrocities of that time period, but offering up such a one dimensional and cartoony portrayal of the Japanese hardly seems to do right by the people who endured hardships on Hashima Island. Indeed, some of the survivors of the labor camp have spoken out against the film’s inaccuracies – as just one example, the Japanese are seen in the film burning the corpses of deceased workers en masse, when in reality Koreans were offered respectable burials. Fortunately, the fictional storyline is enlivened by the addition of Song Joong-ki as a capable Korean spy who infiltrates the mine in order to rescue Lee Kyoung-Young’s political leader. Despite his babyface looks, Song Joong-ki proves quite believable during his action sequences; there’s even one scene in which he takes down some soldiers with a detached bayonet that felt clearly inspired by the opening battle sequence of Donnie Yen’s Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen. Events are soon set in motion that will see the forced laborers attempt a daring escape from the Island, which leads to the movie’s climactic setpiece (and perhaps its biggest flight of fantasy).

Even with a hefty runtime devoted to telling this story – and the Director’s Cut is reportedly even longer at 151 minutes – by the end it’s clear that Ryoo Seung-wan’s real interest in this tale lies in staging the miners’ heroic prison breakout, and it’s a grand finale worthy of any Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott picture, complete with crane shots that soar over the battlefield and an emotive score. If Ryoo Seung-wan is hoping to cross the pond to Hollywood like his peers Kim Jee-woon and Chan-wook Park, he has no doubt delivered his calling card with the visually stunning Battleship Island. Fans of his leaner and meaner action flicks like The Unjust will likely be entertained by the spectacle on display during the climax, but with such a simplistic depiction of the events surrounding Hashima Island, the movie too often feels like the most superficial retelling possible of what is, in actuality, a remarkable true story.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 6.5/10

The post Battleship Island, The (2017) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Beyond Skyline” Theatrical Poster

Director: Liam O’Donnell
Producer: Brothers Strause
Cast: Frank Grillo, Bojana Novakovic, Callan Mulvey, Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Lindsey Morgan, Betty Gabriel, Antonio Fargas, Samantha Jean
Running Time: 105 min. 

By Z Ravas

The idea of producing a sequel to Skyline was initially met with a healthy amount of skepticism, and perhaps for good reason. Despite a drubbing from the critics, the original film proved a financial success way back in 2010 – but that box office profit had more to do with its modest budget of $10 million rather than any goodwill it generated among science-fiction fans. The Los Angeles-set alien invasion thriller was primarily designed as a way for directors the Brothers Strause to display their uncanny knack for stretching a dollar to deliver digital spectacle on the cheap; an ability they’d honed over the years working in the FX business and helming movies like (the universally panned) Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the siblings were almost solely concerned with Skyline‘s visuals, as screenwriter Liam O’Donnell has candidly stated in more recent interviews – claiming the duo were unconcerned with tossing out crucial pages of the script if it meant they could save some cash or get to the next plot point a little faster, much to Liam’s chagrin.

Now, almost a decade later, Beyond Skyline represents Liam O’Donnell’s chance to slide into the director’s chair (the Strause Brothers remain onboard as producers) and prove he can deliver a coherent and entertaining science-fiction film when allowed creative control, potentially remedying the inconsistencies of the original Skyline in the process. Granted, on its own a sequel to Skyline wouldn’t typically be the cause for much internet buzz – the movie maintains a 4.4 average user rating on IMDB – but martial arts buffs sure paid attention after the surprise announcement in November 2014 that Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian had been cast in one of their first English-language productions since achieving international stardom with 2012’s The Raid and 2014’s The Raid 2. Sure, some of that initial excitement may have diminished slightly considering that in the two years we’ve been waiting for Beyond Skyline see a release (filming was completed in May of 2015), the Indonesian martial arts duo made a cameo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Uwais himself headlined the Mo Brothers’ Headshot. But there’s no denying that, even in 2018, Beyond Skyline still represents the action icons’ biggest starring roles in an English-language movie.

Before anyone gets the idea that Beyond Skyline is Iko Uwais’ debut Hollywood vehicle a la Jackie Chan in The Protector, it must be said that the lead of the film is definitively Frank Grillo. Grillo is an actor who has spent the last several years building his genre movie cred, appearing as the villainous Crossbones in Marvel Studios’ Captain America movies, serving as the face of Blumhouse’s surprisingly popular Purge flicks, and more recently headlining the excellent Netflix crime thriller The Wheelman. You might think that an alien invasion film would be outside of the tough guy actor’s usual repertoire, but the opening of Beyond Skyline finds Grillo in a comfortable mode: playing a gruff, no nonsense L.A. cop saddled with a rebellious teenage son (who looks way too old to portray a teenager). Before you’re worried that this sequel is about to turn into a rehash of the dysfunctional father/son dynamic at the heart of A Good Day to Die Hard, an eerie blue light signals the arrival of the very same spaceships we saw in the original Skyline. Yes, this is one of those sequels that takes place contemporaneously with its prequel, sort of like Bourne Legacy and Bourne Ultimatum. 

As hundreds of Los Angeles citizens are vacuumed off the street and into the hovering alien mothership above, Beyond Skyline quickly shifts into disaster movie mode – and rarely takes its foot off the gas. At 105 minutes, Beyond Skyline could have likely shaved off fifteen of those and been one of the most fleet-footed and fast-paced Direct to Video movies of all time, but as it stands the film is still entirely about one thing: action. Whether it’s Frank Grillo’s detective partner striding toward a giant, Cthulhu-like alien warrior and calling it a “puta” while cocking his shotgun, or Grillo swinging on cables through the massive interior of a spaceship in a desperate attempt to save his son from being lobotomized by alien forces, Beyond Skyline rarely pauses for the viewer to collect their breath before hurtling them towards the next setpiece. Beyond Skyline reportedly cost an extra $5 million compared to the original, and writer/director Liam O’Donnell has certainly inherited the Strause Brothers’ knack for visual bombast on a dime store budget. Two decades ago, this is the type of movie that would have cost $100 million and been backed by one of the major studios. It’s remarkable – and kind of charming – that in 2018 a movie featuring this level of planetary destruction and this many special FX shots can feel almost…indie.

If you’re wondering just how in the world the script plans to introduce Iko Uwais into this whole mess, fear not: those alien spaceships can travel great distances in a short amount of time, and one of them quite handily crash-lands in Laos, where Iko Uwais and company are fighting a war on two fronts: one against the alien invaders, and another against the local militia, who are taking advantage of the chaos to loot and plunder civilians. Grillo and his own ragtag group of Los Angeles transplants eventually join forces with Uwais, realizing that if they want to survive they’ll have to make a final stand against the interplanetary menace. This is where the movie’s pace temporarily starts to drag, as Iko Uwais offers a guided tour of the underground bunker his tiny army has been utilizing in their fight; and it must be said that, up to this point in its runtime, the movie has not featured much in the way of the high-contact Silat you’d expecting from two fierce onscreen fighters like Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian. You might be starting to wonder if the the film has cast these two gentlemen not to take advantage of their talents but merely as a way to attract a built-in audience of martial arts fans.

Well, banish the thought: the final act of Beyond Skyline delivers the action in a big, bad way. I never knew I wanted to see Indonesian martial arts used on 8 foot-tall alien supersoldiers, but this film has shown me I was living in ignorance. It’s a pleasure to watch Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian backed into a corner by the ugly creatures and respond in the way they know best – by punching, kicking, and absolutely-fileting-with-knives. Be advised, this movie does not shy from taking advantage of its “R” rating! I could talk about the almost kaiju-like battles that take place during the climax, and a major plot twist that arrives just before the credits roll, but the less you know about all that, the better. Half the fun of Beyond Skyline is being continually surprised by the next outrageous, face-melting visual or action beat that director Liam O’Donnell throws your way.

At times, Beyond Skyline feels like the mad fever dream of a teenage boy who’s just watched Alien, read the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft, and binged a martial arts-influenced anime like Guyver, all while riding the sugar high of a 7-11 slurpee. I’ve never seen a movie quite like it, and something tells me I never will again – unless the producers greenlight a sequel. I’ve got my fingers crossed that happens. Fortunately, the film’s post-credits gag reel (yeah, it’s even got one of those!) displays a blooming friendship between Frank Grillo and Iko Uwais, as Grillo makes the promise that the two of them will work together again soon. My response? Take my money, guys!

Z Ravas’ Rating: 8/10

The post Beyond Skyline (2017) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“A Special Lady” Korean Theatrical Poster

Director: Lee An-Gyu
Cast: Kim Hye-Soo, Lee Sun-Kyun, Lee Hee-Joon, Choi Moo-Sung, Kim Min-Suk, Oh Ha-Nee, Ahn So-Young, Kwon Yool, Cha Soon-Bae, Sun Wook-Hyun
Running Time: 90 min.

By Z Ravas

Any way you slice it, 2017 was a great year for women in action cinema. Guided by one-half of John Wick’s directing duo, Atomic Blonde saw Charlize Theron once again in full-contact combat mode; even if the film’s poe-faced attitude and unnecessarily confusing espionage plot kept it from reaching the heights it could have, it was still a pleasure to watch every time Theron let out a guttural yell and beat a musclebound henchman to death with her high heels. On the other side of the globe, last summer’s The Villainess brought outrageous first-person action sequences to the Korean revenge thriller, and minted Kim Ok-bin as a La Femme Nikita-style icon in the process. The victory lap for this year of lethal women should have easily been A Special Lady, a film whose stylish trailer grabbed the Internet’s attention as soon as it dropped, and which arrived in Korean theaters just five months after The Villainess. Sadly, that’s not the case.

In theory, A Special Lady is headlined by Kim Hye-soo (Coin Locker Girl), a talented actress who first caught my eye as the femme fatale in 2006’s Tazza: The High Rollers – something about the actress’ smoldering looks and elegant demeanor feels born for the noir genre, and some 11 years later I was excited to see her step in front of the camera for her very first action role. I say Hye-soo headlines A Special Lady “in theory,” however, because most of the film’s runtime is spent following Lee Sun-kyun’s character. Sun-kyun is a talented actor in his own right, as evidenced by A Hard Day (easily one of the best films I saw in 2015), but I still couldn’t help but feel that A Special Lady had pulled something of a bait and switch: promising its leading lady Kim Hye-soo in action but seldom delivering it.

The movie opens with a jaw-droppingly salacious sequence as Mr. Kim’s (played by Choi Moo-sung of I Saw the Devil) criminal organization lures several high-profile CEOs, doctors, and even the local District Attorney to a love motel for the sole purpose of filming their sexual proclivities and using said footage as blackmail. Watching from the monitor room is Kim Hye-soo as Mr. Kim’s right hand woman, always cool and collected but nevertheless searching for a way to retire from this underhanded business. Meanwhile, Mr. Kim’s top henchman Lee Sun-kyun pines for Kim Hye-soo’s unreturned affection while doing Mr. Kim’s dirty work; he’s the one who must resort to violence when anyone rebuffs Mr. Kim’s attempts at blackmail, and – as an early flashback shows – he’s the first to take a steak knife in the gut any time a gang war erupts in a parking lot a la New World. After a decade in the business, he’s tired of serving as a glorified lap dog; and when the vengeful District Attorney plants visions of usurping Mr. Kim in Lee Sun-kyun’s head, the stage is set for a bloody confrontation – so just as Kim Hye-soo hopes to walk away from a life of crime, she instead finds herself caught between her boss and the co-worker she’s known since their days together in the orphanage.

The stage is set for a bloody confrontation, sure, but it does take a long time to get there; A Special Lady is one of the more plot-driven revenge thrillers out there, and it feels like a solid hour of scheming and dealing goes by before we see much in the way of action. The increased emphasis on characters and storytelling isn’t exactly a problem, except that the star of the film – Kim Hye-soo – proves conspicuously absent for much of the runtime, as we follow Lee Sun-kyun’s eventual psychological breakdown. A veteran actor of both commercial fare (R Point) and arthouse fodder (Night and Day), Lee Sun-kyun knows how to command the screen, but his character isn’t particularly likable and his arc from faithful henchman to spited employee feels more than a little familiar for the genre.

When the action does finally erupt, we get a scene of Kim Hye-soo wielding off her captors with a hacksaw in a scene that seems to deliberately recall Lee Byung-Hun’s similarly desperate escape in 2005’s A Bittersweet Life. Unfortunately, channeling that modern classic does no help for A Special Lady, as we are only reminded of a far superior film. It must also be said that Kim Hye-soo’s lack of traditional martial arts training certainly shows, so it’s wise that the filmmakers armed her with a massive shotgun and an array of knives for the conclusion. Her ending battle against a room full of guards is easily the highlight of the movie, and possesses the kind of kinetic thrills one wishes had been present throughout the entire production; this climactic bout is less of an intricately choreographed dance than it is a desperate fight for survival, and fans of Korean cinema will likely find themselves satisfied by the blood-letting as Kim Hye-soo stabs back (and stabs again) at her attackers.

In the hands of a more skilled filmmaker, A Special Lady could have had a satisfying character-driven drama peppered with action, along the lines of 2014’s excellent Man in High Heels or the needs-no-introduction The Man From Nowhere; but A Special Lady serves as Lee An-gyu’s directorial debut after assistant director duties on widely seen movies such as The Good, The Bad, the Weird and Blades of Blood. While Lee An-gyu’s future as a filmmaker is not without potential, A Special Lady needed to make a stronger impression to stand out in a genre populated by so many stunners. As such, it’s difficult to recommend that Asian film buffs make their way here before they’ve watched those other, more essential titles. Here’s hoping that Kim Hye-soo’s most ass-kicking role is still ahead of her.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 6/10

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“Danny the Dog” Japanese Theatrical Poster

Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, Bob Hoskins, Kerry Condon, Andy Beckwith, Scott Adkins, Silvio Simac, Christian Gazio, Michael Ian Lambert, Kazu Patrick Tang
Running Time: 133 min.

By Z Ravas

Supposedly after shooting the particularly bloody Kiss of the Dragon, Jet Li wanted to reteam with French writer/producer Luc Besson for a film that would actually depict the consequences of violence. If that was the case, then they certainly succeeded with Unleashed: I can’t think of a Jet Li movie with more brutal fight scenes than this. Rather than glorify all the bloodshed – which is admittedly exciting to watch thanks to the efforts of Li and choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping – the film examines the damage incurred on the soul of Li’s character Danny “the Dog,” who is one deeply wounded individual.

Danny’s spent the better part of his life under the control of a small-time gangster/loan shark played by Bob Hoskins, who treats Danny quite literally like a dog. With his metal collar on, Danny is a blank slate – emotionless and mute. But take his collar off and sick him on a foe, and Danny becomes the most vicious fighter you’ve ever seen. Too bad Hoskins’ character is a bastard who keeps Danny locked in a cage and regularly abuses him.

Later in the film, circumstances intervene and Danny flees into real world. Thanks to the kind-hearted efforts of a blind piano tuner, played wonderfully by Morgan Freeman, and his step-daughter, Danny begins to feel human. He discovers a passion for music and starts to piece together the fragmented memories of his past. Of course, Bob Hoskins’ gangster isn’t going to take this lying down – Danny was responsible for bringing him in a lot of money – and everything builds to an inevitable confrontation.

Unleashed is what happens when you actually put a lot of thought and care into your action movie’s screenplay, and hire Academy Award-worthy actors like Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins. Sure, the fight scenes are spectacular – how could they not be, with Jet Li and Yuen Woo-Ping involved – but there’s nearly an hour stretch of dramatic material, without any fighting at all, and it’s just as absorbing to watch thanks to the acting talent involved. Jet Li really seemed to push himself as an actor and he conveys a lot with his eyes and animal-like mannerisms. Morgan Freeman brings his character to life with a deep sense of joy and humanity, and you can tell Freeman treats this role just as seriously as his more “prestigious” films.

Even if the story treads similar ground to his previous movies like Leon/The Professional, Luc Besson really did a wonderful job with the screenplay. You come to care for the makeshift family that Jet becomes a part of, such that I felt genuine regret when Bob Hoskins’ character reared his ugly mug again – even if it meant that “more action” was on its way.

Director Louis Leterrier was a Besson protege, working on this film and Transporter 2 before making his way into Hollywood blockbuster territory with Incredible Hulk and Clash of the Titans. Given the dismal success of those latter two films, it probably goes without saying that Leterrier’s forte is for smaller, less special effects-heavy films like this. I doubt anyone would ever accuse Leterrier of being a great director, per se, but Unleashed is by far his best work. He draws excellent performances from his cast and films the fight scenes in such a manner that you can see every move. The editing and camera angles are all top notch, and the infrequent use of wires is not terribly distracting. I’d love for Leterrier to take a break from the Hollywood game and do another film like this or even team back up with Jason Statham.

If you’re worried that Unleashed is all weepy drama and no action, don’t be. The ending fight scene between Jet Li and Michael Lambert is one of the best fights of Jet’s career. There’s a sequence where the two of them are trading blows in a cramped bathroom stall that is nothing short of breathtaking – I honestly don’t even know how Yuen Woo-Ping went about choreographing such a fight because the space they’re fighting in is so cramped. It seems like this close-quarters match must have been a personal challenge for Woo-Ping, perhaps a way to keep things interesting after all these years of choreographing fights. If anything, the man outdid himself; it’s really an exhilarating scene.

It’s worth noting that Jet Li’s opponent in this scene, Michael Lambert, is no slouch himself when it comes to combat; he’s one of the busiest stuntman in Hollywood, having worked on films as diverse as The Bourne Ultimatum, Batman Begins, and Gladiator. He also served as Chris Evans’ stunt double on this year’s Captain America and is assistant swordmaster on next year’s John Carter (I’m really good at using IMDB, guys). Needless to say, the guy’s resume speaks for itself and at 6’1″ he proves to be more than a formidable opponent for Jet Li.

Fearless is still probably my favorite film Jet has made since breaking into Hollywood, but Unleashed has to be his best English language picture. Sure, Kiss of the Dragon had some spectacular action but Unleashed goes the extra mile by adding a story with heart and characters worth caring about. An understated but memorable score from Massive Attack only strengthens the film. Luc Besson and Jet Li have proven to be a most formidable team.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 8.5/10

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“Death Note” Poster

Director: Adam Wingard
Cast: Nat Wolff, Lakeith Stanfield, Margaret Qualley, Shea Whigham, Paul Nakauchi, Jason Liles, Willem Dafoe, Jack Ettlinger, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Chris Britton
Running Time: 100 min.

By Z Ravas

The Hollywood remake of Death Note is a project that’s been passed like a hot potato from filmmaker to filmmaker for the better part of a decade. Back in 2011, it looked like Lethal Weapon scribe and Iron Man 3 director Shane Black would be the unlikely creator behind the camera; once he left the project due to creative differences with Warner Brothers, indie auteur Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho) was even floated as a possible contender. Instead, the movie quietly found a home in 2015 with both Netflix and director Adam Wingard, who may have already had a relationship with the company thanks to his films like You’re Next and V/H/S finding the majority of their audience through the streaming service.

Two years later and the movie has finally made its debut, only to immediately be met with derision and scorn from fans of the popular manga and anime, who have balked at the notion of condensing a 15 hour anime into a single film as well as the casting of a white lead (despite the story being relocated from Tokyo to suburban Seattle). In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll say my prior experience with the series is an appreciation of Shusuke Kaneko’s (Gamera: Guardian of the Universe) two-part live-action adaptation, which astonishingly came out over a decade now. Rather than compare Netflix’s Death Note to that release, or even the 12-volume manga, I chose to approach this movie on its own terms as the next film from promising young director Adam Wingard… since it is the next film from Adam Wingard.

If you wondered why the producers of Netflix’s Death Note would secure Wingard for this adaptation of the Japanese property, it becomes abundantly clear early on in that they must have been massive fans of his 2014 film The Guest. That movie served as a loving homage to Eighties horror/thrillers like The Terminator, and launched the big screen career of Beauty and the Beast’s Dan Stevens; it also featured the best Steven Seagal-style bar fight since Steven Seagal stopped having fights in bars. From the sleek neon lighting and ceaseless downpour of Seattle rain, to the moody electronic score and doomed high school dance, there’s much of this Death Note that at times feels like a redux of The Guest. If you’re like me, and consider The Guest to be one of the best genre flicks of the last decade, you’ll likely be simultaneously pleased and struck with familiarity, like hearing a pleasant cover song.

The Eighties horror movie theatrics feel entirely appropriate, given the dark premise at the heart of Death Note: a social outcast named Light (Nat Wolff) receives a supernatural journal that allows him to strike dead anyone he wishes just by visualizing their face and writing their name in its pages. It isn’t long before Light confesses his secret to his high school crush Misa (Margaret Qualley from HBO’s The Leftovers), like some perverse reversal of the ‘superhero revealing their identity’ trope. The duo quickly become lovers and vigilante executioners, seeking to rid the world of its worst terrorists and predators while creating a global cult to their imaginary death god Kiro. However, when Light’s own father – a Seattle cop played by Shea Wingham (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans) – teams up a renowned junior detective named L (Get Out’s Keith Stanfield), the net tightens around Light and his murderous crusade against crime.

In contrast to Shusuke Kaneko’s adaptation, in which the quirky and candy-addicted L stole the movie as a teenage Batman-esque detective (complete with his own Alfred-like butler!), it’s clear that Wingard’s fascination lies more with Light and his girlfriend Misa. The young couple’s repeated use of the Death Note allows them to feel above the rest of humanity thanks to a Crime and Punishment-esque superiority complex; but seeds of mistrust are sown between the two once they develop very different ideas about how to best utilize the lethal tome. It’s here that Wolff and Qualley really shine as the kind of disaffected duo who, in the absence of the Death Note, may have formed a suicide pact or shot up their school. To the actors’ credit, they manage to keep this kids highly watchable despite the fact that they’re stone cold sociopaths; less convincing is the film’s attempt to sell us on the worldwide cult of personality that has developed around Kiro since the screenplay rarely leaves the state of Washington.

Death Note’s secret weapon may be its breathless pacing. Perhaps it’s merely due to its presence on Netflix, but Wingard’s film often feels like an eight episode mini-series edited down to a brisk 100 minutes; Wingard wastes no time and puts Light in possession of the Death Note and committing his first murder by the ten minute mark, in an elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque sequence of events that recalls the Final Destination series. Unfortunately, these quite fun – and quite gory – death setpieces (deathpieces?) all but disappear during the second half as the movie turns into a straight ahead cat-and-mouse thriller between Light and his rival L. The mental chess game between these two may have been the highlight of the Japanese version, but here I found the exaggerated origin of L – an orphan raised by birth to be an international supercop who works outside the law but with the law’s assistance – only clashed with the relatively realistic tone Wingard strikes. Or at least as realistic as you can get with an eight foot-tall demon lurking in the shadows.

Yes, I would be amiss if I didn’t at least mention Ryuk, the avatar of death who serves as the custodian of the Death Note. He’s a creepy-looking creation right out of the early Tim Burton playbook, and here is ably voiced by Willem Dafoe, an actor who can do sinister and menacing in his sleep. That said, the screenplay doesn’t find much for Ryuk to do other than glower from the corner of the frame; he’s mostly here to remind Light of the Death Note’s various binding rules, and – going back to Final Destination – is perhaps not dissimilar to Tony Todd’s character in those movies.

The fact that Death Note ends with much of its story left unresolved, cryptically teasing the motivations for a possible sequel, is not likely to help Netflix win over fans who already regard this American remake with ill will. Fortunately, those folks will always have their beloved manga and anime to continue to enjoy. Approaching this Death Note on its own terms, as a straight-to-streaming horror movie, I found it to be a fairly solid Adam Wingard film – with a slick look, dreamy soundtrack, and a few creative applications of the Death Note concept. Some have called Netflix’s remake a crime against cinema; this Asian film aficionado would simply call it a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 7/10

The post Death Note (2017) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Enter the Warrior’s Gate” Chinese Theatrical Poster

AKA: Warrior’s Gate
Director: Matthias Hoene
Cast: Mark Chao, Ni Ni, Uriah Shelton, Dave Bautista, Francis Ng, Sienna Guillory, Ron Smoorenburg, Dakota Daulby, Kara Hui, Dakota Daulby, Zha Ka
Running Time: 108 min.

By Z Ravas

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a meek and bullied young Anglo kid finds himself transported to a distant world of Chinese mysticism and martial arts, where he teams with a band of powerful warriors who teach him how to stand up for himself. If you think I’m describing the plot of 2008’s Jackie Chan and Jet Li team-up The Forbidden Kingdom, you’d be right. But it’s also the plot of last year’s Enter the Warrior’s Gate, which is undeniably writer/producer Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen’s take on the same basic premise.

The film represent the first real French-Chinese collaborative production for Besson, who has long had a fascination with Chinese action cinema. Made on a budget of about $48 million, and shot in British Columbia as well as China’s Hengdian World Studios (the largest film studio in the world), the movie landed at the box office with a resounding thud. Thanks entirely to the Chinese box office, Enter the Warrior’s Gate grossed a measly $3.2 million, while in North America it’s more or less been delivered straight to Netflix. In comparison, The Forbidden Kingdom crossed an impressive $127 million back in 2008. But did Warrior’s Gate deserve such a dismal fate?

The story follows teenage Jack (Uriah Shelton), who – in a Gamer-esque wrinkle – is mistaken by the residents of another realm as a powerful warrior because he happens to be good at video games. He’s drafted by Mark Chao’s soldier to help protect a Princess, played by the perfectly charming actress Ni Ni. In our world, Jack and the Princess spend some time gallivanting around a Canadian mall, eating ice cream and developing a crush on one another, when the Princess is kidnapped and taken back to her own land by a fierce barbarian (Kickboxer: Vengeance’s Dave Bautista). Aided by Mark Chao and an eccentric wizard portrayed by Hong Kong stalwart Francis Ng, Jack has to summon his inner courage and rescue the Princess before she becomes Bautista’s bride-to-be.

And that’s about it. Along the way, Jack and Chao are briefly waylaid by a black-garbed witch (played by Kara Hui of My Young Auntie fame), but mostly their journey involves male bonding and brief martial arts training before they confront Bautista and his armada. It’s then that they engage in skirmish after skirmish with the barbarian horde, including a scene where Bautista’s right hand man – the imposing actor Zha Ka, whom you may recognize from Police Story: Lockdown and The Taking of Tiger Mountain – transforms into a computer-generated giant. If you’re hoping that Bautista gets to show off his mixed martial arts skills, you’ll be disappointed, as the hulking bruiser mostly sticks to swinging a sword around. To his credit, lead actor Uriah Shelton – who apparently is most known for his role on TV’s Girl Meets World – trained in martial arts as a kid, though he mostly does a lot of spinning and sliding over tables to avoid bad guys here.

Which gets to my main point: despite the presence of fan favorite actors such as Dave Bautista and Francis Ng, any adult viewer of Enter the Warrior’s Gate is bound to have a sinking realization. This is a movie produced for and targeted exclusively at 12 year-old boys. By all rights, German director Matthias Heone (Cockneys vs. Zombies) should have cut the few instances where side characters are skewered by swords and gone for a PG-rating, as – in terms of its tone and the low-intensity of the action scenes – this film is PG through and through.

There’s no harm in producing an East-meets-West, introductory kung fu movie aimed at kids. Certainly many parents may be looking for the right movie to show children who are slowly developing an interest in martial arts. Unfortunately, I don’t think Enter the Warrior’s Gate is the right movie. The action is shot in an uninspired manner, few of the martial arts-trained actors are given the chance to shine, and at 108 minutes Enter the Warrior’s Gate is about 18 minutes too long. I’m not even mentioning how Besson forced poor Mark Chao, dressed in ancient Chinese battle armor, into an embarrassing dance routine while the credits play.

A studio like Pixar knows how to tell a story to captivate viewers of all ages and transcend the young demographic their films are marketed to. Luc Besson is no Pixar. While some of the script’s one-liners are more clever than you might expect, and it’s fun to see Hong Kong icons like Kara Hui and Francis Ng in a movie so squarely aimed at Western audiences, Enter the Warrior’s Gate has too many flaws to make it an easy recommend. And if you have a 12 year-old in your life who is begging to watch a kung fu flick, may I suggest a convenient alternative? A little known movie called The Forbidden Kingdom…

Z Ravas’ Rating: 4/10

The post Enter the Warrior’s Gate (2016) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

Female Fight Squad | DVD (Lionsgate)

AKA: Female Fight Club
Director: Miguel A. Ferrer
Cast: Amy Johnston, Cortney Palm, Rey Goyos, Sean Faris, Dolph Lundgren, Shaun Brown, Levy Tran, Folake Olowofoyeku, Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez, Jeanette Samano, Briana Marin, Chuck Zito
Running Time: 90 min.

By Z Ravas

Hot on the heels of Lady Bloodfight’s Netflix debut, Lionsgate has released Amy Johnston’s other martial arts film, the movie formerly known as Female Fight Club, via On Demand services. Unfortunately for fans of the talented stuntwoman-turned-actress, this movie fails to deliver exactly what its title promises: there may be plenty of women in the cast, but there is precious little fighting to be had during its 95 minute runtime. It’s hard to say exactly where the production went wrong, but when hulking Swede Dolph Lundgren is the highlight of a movie that’s supposed to be about female empowerment, you know you’re in trouble.

Female Fight Squad starts out promisingly enough: Amy Johnston plays a troubled young woman who has fled her violent, street fighting past in Las Vegas to live the quiet life of an animal shelter worker in Los Angeles. It’s in these scenes that Johnston is at her most likable: it’s easy to relate to her passion for animals, and the affection she shows to a three-legged dog who remains unadopted is touching. However, when some shady dog fighters show up to the animal shelter looking for their pitbull, Johnston is forced to throw down; the resulting beating she delivers to the two much larger men ends up on YouTube thanks to the shelter’s security cameras, and all of a sudden Johnston finds herself in the fighting world spotlight once again. Her sister, played by Courtney Palm, arrives on her doorstep with some bad news: she’s deep in debt to a shady promoter (Rey Goyos), and the only way out is for Johnston to train her sister’s team (the titular Female Fight Squad) and earn back the dough in the ring.

With that, Johnston heads back to her old stomping grounds, reconnecting with both the owner of her former gym (portrayed by Chuck Zito, veteran stuntman, actor, and former president of the New York chapter of the Hell’s Angels) and an old flame, played by Never Back Down’s Sean Faris. She trains her sister’s fighters, including some charismatic actresses like Levy Tran, although the ‘training’ mostly involves Johnston dropping them to the mat with a well-placed kick or two. The investment Johnston makes into teaching them ends up feeling like a waste of both her character’s time and the viewer’s time, however, as the Female Fight Squad fails to stand a chance against the current street-fighting champ Claire the Bull (stunt performer Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez).

Female Fight Squad commits two cardinal sins of the direct-to-video action movie genre: there is precious little fighting, and director Miguel A. Ferrer wastes too much film on an over-the-top bad guy (Goyos) whose misjudged performance seems to be trying to channel a Nicolas Cage level of quirkiness. There’s an early encounter between Johnston and Goyos in a library, in which his Goyos expresses his fondness for crafting bird houses as his way of offering a home for broken things. This comes across as a metaphor for his underground club, one that might reveal something about this character’s psychology and his desire to cultivate female fighters. Only the metaphor is completely undone later when Johnston arrives at Goyos’ warehouse and finds a bunch of birdhouses strewn about – a silly image that couldn’t make the villain seem any less threatening. Another moment sees the actor trying to glower menacingly while eating an ice cream bar on top of a freezer stuffed full of body parts. To describe this character as ridiculous would be an understatement.

It must be said Dolph Lundgren is not in the movie much, but he makes the most of his small turn, portraying Johnston’s tough-as-nails father serving a prison term for a murder he may or may not have committed. He gets one fairly hard-hitting fight scene in jail that might be the highlight of the movie – perhaps tellingly, it’s the one scene from Female Fight Squad that Miguel A. Ferrer includes in his director’s reel. Dolph even makes a winking joke about his character having a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering (spoiler: Dolph has one in real life). His role continues the trend of Johnston’s characters having martial arts-trained fathers, a nod to the actress’ own dad. Chuck Zito serves as another paternal figure in the movie, and his Sylvester Stallone-esque fighting coach offers some much needed warmth to the movie.

The problem with Female Fight Squad is that it fails to show us just what Johnston can do. Her turn in Lady Bloodfight, along with her stunt work in movies like Suicide Squad and Deadpool, proved that Johnston possesses formidable fighting skills, but the action scenes in Squad are frustratingly brief and few and far between. It must be said that the fighting on display is captured in a fairly respectful manner – free of choppy editing or claustrophobic framing – and I’m sure budgetary and time constraints played a part in the lack of martial arts work. It may be worth pointing out that this is director Miguel A. Ferrer’s debut feature, and his previous credits primarily include short films and music videos. Everybody has to start somewhere, but at this point the direct-to-video world is a crowded market filled with some fairly quality and action-packed titles. As such, I can’t recommend this film to anyone but Johnston’s most ardent fans, those who will be content just to witness the actress in another starring role. For my part, I consider myself along those fans – and while I don’t regret watching Female Fight Squad at all, I have to be honest and say I walked away from the movie disappointed. Here’s hoping that Amy Johnston is allowed to shine with her supporting turn in Jesse V. Johnson’s upcoming comic book adaptation Accident Man.

By Z Ravas’ Rating: 4/10

The post Female Fight Squad (2016) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Death Fighter” Theatrical Poster

Director: Toby Russell
Cast: Matt Mullins, Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, Chiranan Manochaem, Joe Lewis, Jawed El Berni, Gigi Velicitat, Yuhkoh Matsuguchi, Prasit Suanphaka
Running Time: 88 min.

By Z Ravas

The movie once known as White Tiger, now titled Death Fighter, has seen a long and winding road to release. I say this primarily because the film represents the last appearance by Joe Lewis, Karate Champion and friend of Bruce Lee, before his untimely death… in 2012! Reportedly, filming on Death Fighter wrapped shortly before Lewis’ passing, but various production lawsuits and the lack of a distributor kept the film on the shelf for years and years. Fortunately for fans of martial arts, any behind-the-scenes strife doesn’t show in the finished product: I’m happy to report Death Fighter is an appreciable throwback to the action movies of old, pitched somewhere between classic Hong Kong martial arts cinema and Cannon Video guilty pleasures like American Ninja or Delta Force.

As the story opens, FBI Agent Michael Turner (played by Matt Mullins of Blood and Bone and Mortal Kombat: Legacy fame) is on vacation with his girlfriend in Bangkok, Thailand. Only, his girlfriend can’t get his attention to save her life. That’s because Michael’s ulterior motive for the trip is to help his longtime mentor at the FBI, portrayed by Joe Lewis, track down a notorious gold smuggler and human trafficker named Draco, who operates somewhere on the Thai/Burmese border. It’s barely ten minutes into the movie before Matt Mullins and Joe Lewis raid one of Draco’s shady warehouse dealings, with Mullins facing off – ever so briefly – against martial arts veteran Cynthia Rothrock and newcomer Jawed El Berni (Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, The Viral Factor). Even Joe Lewis gets in a few licks – I should mention here his character is not in the movie for very long, but I have a feeling his loyal followers will be pleased to see him in action just the same.

After Mullins finds himself temporarily defeated and no closer to stopping Draco, a local police chief puts him in touch with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson’s Bobby Pau, an ex-Special Forces member turned mercenary and alcoholic. While Wilson is at first reluctant to join forces with the hotheaded American on a quest for revenge, he eventually agrees and drafts his pal Otto (played by newcomer Prasit Suanphaka) for good measure. It’s here that the pace slows somewhat, with the trio making their way through the jungles of Thailand before stopping in the village of a local doctor, portrayed by Thai television actress Chiranan Manochaem.

Fortunately, this village serves as the backdrop for one of the film’s biggest action sequences, and from here on out Death Fighter’s momentum rarely lags. After a few outings that were said to disappoint fans (namely Hard Target 2), fight choreographer Kazu Patrick Tang puts his full talent on display, planning intricate battles for each member of the cast. Matt Mullins showcases some devastating flying kicks that would even make Undisputed’s Uri Boyka duck, while Don the Dragon Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock acquit themselves well considering their age, as both were nearly 60 at the time of filming. Surprisingly, it’s Prasit Suanphaka as Otto who impressed me the most: despite being no taller than five feet, he fights with an unrelenting speed and ferocity that brings to mind The Raid series’ Yayan Ruhian. IMDB tells me Suanphaka still doesn’t have another credits to his name, but I would happily watch anything he does next. Female lead Chiranan Manochaem acquits herself well during action scenes, especially since I don’t believe she has any formal training.

The movie builds to the kind of finale you’d hope for, with Matt Mullins and Jawed El Berni squaring off in a rematch that delivers. Even if Russian baddie Draco ends up being more of a wannabe Scarface rather than a credible villain, it doesn’t spoil the fun. Fortunately, the fight choreography is captured in medium shots and free of the kind of fast cutting that so often cripples low-budget action movies like this. There’s probably a reason the martial arts are filmed with such reverence here: director Toby Russell, while having few narrative movies to his credit, was responsible for the infamous 1994 documentary Cinema of Vengeance, which sang the praises of Hong Kong filmmaking and for years was the only place I’d ever seen any footage of heroic bloodshed favorite My Heart is that Eternal Rose. Clearly, Russell studied those Hong Kong moviemaking techniques with a close eye, and he incorporates that style here, only with the updated and hard-hitting feel of Panna Rittikrai’s films such as Born to Fight and Bangkok: Knockout.

And while the storyline is mostly a serviceable framework designed to set up a bunch of fight scenes, it’s worth noting that this is the most charismatic I’ve ever found Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson onscreen. His acting here has the natural ease of someone who’s spent more than two decades in front of the camera. Wilson appears genuinely invested in his role of a down on his luck mercenary prone to the drink, and his more lively performance contrasts nicely with Matt Mullins’ smoldering anger. Then again, maybe that smoldering wasn’t from anger: it must have been hotter than hell when they shot Death Fighter in Thailand, as there are several scenes where the actors’ faces appeared to be drenched in sweat, even outside of the jungle.

It’s not often a movie can sit on the shelf for five years and still feel like a breath of fresh air upon release. It’s also rare that a direct-to-video action title delivers the goods. Death Fighter accomplishes both. No matter who you’re a fan of in the star-studded cast, you should find plenty to enjoy with this film. If you’ve found yourself saying “They don’t make ’em like they used to” as of late, here’s one they did.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 7/10

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Lady Bloodfight | DVD (Lionsgate)

AKA: Lady Bloodsport
Director: Chris Nahon
Cast: Amy Johnston, Muriel Hofmann, Jenny Wu, Kathy Wu, Jet Tranter, Mayling Ng, Sunny Coelst, Rosemary Vandebrouck, Lisa Cheng
Running Time: 100 min.

By Z Ravas

Ever wonder what happened to Chris Nahon? After helming Kiss of the Dragon – what many fans consider to be one of Jet Li’s best English-language films, if not the best – way back in 2001, the filmmaker chose to keep a relatively low profile rather than capitalize on his potential as a martial arts director. He reemerged a full eight years later with the dubious anime adaptation Blood: The Last Vampire, but that endeavor didn’t seem to live up to the potential of the Blood license nor Nahon’s abilities as an action stylist. That’s precisely why I was so curious to sit down and watch last year’s Lady Bloodfight once it made its way to Netflix. Had time weakened Nahon’s talent behind the camera – or was I about to witness the French filmmaker’s triumphant return to the world of bone-crunching kung fu action?

There was another reason to be excited about Lady Bloodfight: the film represents the headlining debut of Amy Johnston, a stunt professional who has more than paid her dues over the years. In addition to her stunt work on movies like Captain America: Winter Soldier (in which she doubled for Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow), Suicide Squad, and Deadpool, Johnston is a trained martial artist whose passion for the pursuit no doubt dates back to her childhood (her father was a kickboxing champion). I had high hopes that Johnston might shine in her first turn as a female lead. Even the presence of Bey Logan on writing and producing duties wasn’t enough to damper my enthusiasm.

(Okay, hey, I don’t mean to knock Logan, as the man has been closely associated with Hong Kong cinema for almost as long as I’ve been alive, but I think we all heard the horror stories that came out of his 2010 effort Blood Bond: Shadowguard.)

So, after all that fanfare, how is Lady Bloodfight? In a word, I found it perfectly entertaining. The plot is simple enough, in fact it’s more or less borrowed wholesale from the 1988 Jean-Claude Van Damme classic Bloodsport – actually, the film’s original title was Lady Bloodsport, until someone in the production likely wised up and realized they were headed for legal trouble. Amy Johnston stars as a young woman named Jane who travels to Hong Kong in order to take place in an ancient martial arts tournament known as The Kumite (sing it with me: KUMITE! KUMITE! KUMITE!). Jane wants to test her mettle in the ring, naturally, but she also longs to find out what happened to her father, who mysteriously disappeared after nearly winning the Kumite many years ago.

It’s a little puzzling that Lady Bloodfight never actually addresses why all of the fighters in this particular Kumite are women – the viewer is left to wonder, is there a separate Kumite for men and women each year? Regardless, it doesn’t really matter, as the classic ‘fighting tournament’ story structure is deployed in effortless fashion. Jane goes on a personal journey as she is taken under the wing of a wise instructor (Mariel Huffman), befriends a sassy Australian gal (the charming Jet Tranter), and squares off against a fierce Russian fighter (Wonder Woman’s Mayling Ng in quite a bit of makeup) so terrifying she could make Bolo Yeung cry ‘uncle’ in the ring… seriously.

I’m sure most by now most readers are asking: how are the fights? They’re serviceable. Nothing here matches the classic, Hong Kong-style grace and fluidity of Kiss of the Dragon, making me wonder if Corey Yuen wasn’t behind the camera for the action scenes in that movie, but nor are they a choppy, rapidly edited Bourne-esque jumble either. Instead, Chris Nahon splits the difference, landing somewhere between the clear cut style you’d hope for in a martial arts movie of this ilk and a more flashy, Hollywood-esque mode. The action scenes make it quite clear that Amy Johnston knows her stuff, but I suspect we won’t really see her full onscreen capabilities until we see her in stuntman-turned-director Jesse V. Johnson’s Accident Man later this year.

Surprisingly, it might be the storyline that held my attention the most in Lady Bloodfight. The movie is actually invested in Jane’s character and her journey to discover just what happened to her father, and Johnston delivers a commendable performance. Her teacher, Shu, has her own path to take as she seeks to reconcile – or defeat – her rival (Jenny Wu) and her rival’s pupil (Kathy Wu). Refreshingly, few of the characters in the movie are out-and-out right villains, except for the aforementioned Russian Svietta (whose baddie looks like she was raised by Ivan Drago and Bond villain Jaws), and each has their own particular motivation. Lady Bloodfight likely won’t transform Amy Johnston into a martial arts icon overnight the same way Bloodsport did for Van Damme, but this certainly seems the beginning of a promising career in front of the camera.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 6.5/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Y-f2OdMis

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“Gun Woman” Japanese Theatrical Poster

Director: Kurando Mitsutake
Writer: Kurando Mitsutake
Cast: Asami, Kairi Narita, Noriaki Kamata, Matthew Floyd Miller, Dean Simone, Tatsuya Nakadai
Running Time: 86 min.

By Z Ravas

It’d be easy for detractors to label 2014’s Gun Woman another case of low-budget sleaze – after all, Japanese AV turned action star Asami spends most of the film’s climax stark naked and drenched in blood – but director Kurando Mitsutake is far too savvy a filmmaker for that. Since 2009’s Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf, the writer/director/occasional-actor has managed to accomplish the seemingly impossible: he’s kept Japanese action cinema alive through a series of micro-budgeted movies that hold appeal for both grindhouse aficionados and martial arts buffs alike.

While the more recent Karate Kill might be said to be Mitsutake’s strongest effort to date, and makes one salivate at the possibility of the filmmaker being granted an even bigger budget to realize his outsized ambitions, there’s no denying that Gun Woman is the movie that put Mitsutake on most genre fans’ radar. For that reason, and others, it’s worth taking a look back at Gun Woman, which is conveniently streaming on Netflix.

At first brush, Gun Woman’s plot may sound overly familiar: after a brilliant Doctor’s (played by Into the Sun’s Kairi Narita) wife is murdered before his eyes by the insane son of a Japanese business magnate (in a positively unhinged performance from Noriaki Kamata), he swears revenge. Crippled himself in the attack, the Doctor has no choice but to look for aid in realizing his ambitions, and thus kidnaps a homeless, drug-addicted young woman (Asami, who broke into the mainstream with several Sushi Typhoon efforts) to train as the perfect assassin. If you think the writers of La Femme Nikita might be looking to sue after hearing that synopsis, rest assured that Mitsutake lampshades the fact early on by having a side character remark, “What is this, some kind of Japanese manga or Luc Besson film?” It’s a tacit admission from the filmmakers that they know their material owes a creative debt to the great action movies that have come before, and also tells the viewer to lighten up and enjoy the ride.

And what a ride it is. Most of the movie comprises of Asami’s lengthy training sequences, which involves a good deal of psychological torture since the Doctor transforms Asami into a killing machine against her will. The dynamic between these two characters is quite interesting, if not disturbing: the Doctor may have saved Asami’s life by forcing her to kick her drug habit, but by fashioning her into the instrument of his own revenge, he continues to put her in harm’s way again and again. For her part, Asami begins to develop a bit of Stockholm Syndrome – it’s fairly fascinating stuff as, even if it’s not exactly Oscar-worthy material, the characters are far more ambitious than your standard micro-budget B-Movie.

Bear in mind, this all plays out against the backdrop of a demented villain who wouldn’t be out of place in a Toxic Avenger movie or one of Takashi Miike’s most off-the-wall pictures like Fudoh: The New Generation. Many viewers will no doubt balk or be offended by Gun Woman’s cadre of necrophiliac baddies (yes, you read that right), but – in contrast with other films of similar ilk such as Hobo With a Shotgun – I never felt like Kurando Mutsutake was wallowing in and celebrating the depravity of his rogues gallery. Rather, the script goes to great lengths to make you despise its cast of demented degenerates, such that you can’t wait to see Asami take them out. Mission accomplished.

Once Asami becomes, well, the Gun Woman (bear in mind this is a taut and fast-moving flick at 86 minutes so it doesn’t take long), and is unleashed on Noriaki Kamata and his bodyguards, the bullets fly and the bodies drop. While the climax is certainly smaller scale than the extended finale of Karate Kill, it’s no less impressive to watch Asami go up against goons who tower over her diminutive size, especially when she’s so, well, vulnerable. The movie goes to great lengths to justify why Asami has to enter the bad guy’s complex wearing only her birthday suit. Of course, the reasoning is rather ridiculous but – what can you do? Its a creative decision that certainly got people talking and, surprisingly, Mitsutake and his team do such a good job choreographing the ending sequence that, after awhile, you just kind of forget that Asami is fighting evil with nary a stitch to wear.

Okay, so Gun Woman isn’t exactly high art. It’s still a dynamite example of what can be accomplished by a team who is passionate about independent filmmaking and high-octane action. Asami delivers a performance that radiates both vulnerability and steely-eyed determination at once, and she acquits herself extremely well during the fight sequences for someone who has no formal martial arts training. I have no doubt team behind Gun Woman will continue to craft bigger and better films, but this is the effort that put them on the map – and rightly so. If low-budget exploitation cinema gets your blood running hot, you have a new friend in Kurando Mitsutake.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 6.5/10

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