If recent films like The Villainess or Atomic Blonde didn’t satisfy your craving for a female-centric action flick, then say hello to Older Sister(aka No Mercy), a revenge thriller from first-time director Im Kyung-Taek.
Since her parents died, In-Ae (Lee Si-Young of The Divine Move) and her younger sister Eun-Hye (Park Se-Wan) have lived together by themselves. The two sisters rely on each other, but, one day, Eun-Hye disappears. Older sister In-Ae struggles to find Eun-Hye and seeks to take revenge on those responsible for her sisters disappearance (via AW).
Older Sister recently hit Korean theaters on January 1st, 2019, but with the current trend of females taking the lead in action films, we expect a U.S. release date soon. Until then, enjoy the film’s English-subtitled Trailer:
On February 19th, 2019, Warner Archive will be releasing the long-awaited U.S. Blu-ray for 1985’s Year of the Dragon, from Academy Award-winning director Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter), based on the novel by Robert Daley (Prince of the City) and coscripted by Oliver Stone (Scarface).
In this criminally underrated thriller, Mickey Rourke (Double Team) portrays White, a war veteran who has a Vietnam-sized chip on his shoulder when dealing with an emerging blood feud in Chinatown. John Lone (The Hunted) plays the crime lord standing in the line of fire of White’s relentless campaign.
Year of the Dragon also stars model Ariane (King of New York), Dennis Dun (Big Trouble in Little China), Raymond J. Barry (Rapid Fire), Victor Wong (Golden Child), Fan Mei Sheng (The Story of Ricky), Jeff Chen Chao Jung (Eat Drink Man Woman), Baau Hon Lam (God of Gamblers) and Joey Chin (China Girl).
Blu-ray Features:
Brand New 2019 Remaster
Audio Commentary by Director Michael Cimino
Theatrical Trailer
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
When Thaddeus (RZA) is found wounded near the village, miner Kung (Dustin Nguyen) and his wife Ni (Eugenia Kang) offer him refuge. As he heals, he becomes entrenched in a conflict that pits the townsfolk against the evil Ho (Carl Ng), his nefarious Clan and the terrifying Lord Pi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). With Thaddeus at his side, the mild-mannered Kung transforms into a deadly warrior!
On February 12th, 2019, Magnolia Pictures is giving Shoplifters a DVD and VOD release (currently no mention of a Blu-ray edition). This Palme d’Or Award-winning film is directed by Hirokazu Koreeda (Third Murder).
A family of small-time crooks take in a child they find on the street. Although the family is poor, barely making enough money to survive through petty crime, they seem to live happily together until an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them…
Director: Lee Seung-won Writer: Bruce Khan Cast: Bruce Khan, Park Hee-soon, T.J. Storm, Yoon Jin-seo, Kim In-kwon, Park Chul-min Running Time: 101 min.
By Paul Bramhall
The Korean martial arts movie can more or less be said to have died out at some point in the 1990’s. Sure there’s been a few attempts to revive it, the likes of 2006’s City of Violence and 2013’s The Suspect were both sold on their action, but when was the last time a Korean movie was sold purely on a guy kicking the daylights out of everyone!? For that you have to go back to the days when guys like Dragon Lee, Casanova Wong, and Hwang Jang Lee lit up the screens with their impressive array of kicks, and those days are long gone. Until now.
If you haven’t heard of Bruce Khan, it’s entirely forgivable. A master of both Taekwondo and Hapkido, Khan made tentative steps into the local film industry in the late 90’s, at a time when Shiri had pretty much put the last nail in the coffin for the Korean martial arts flick. Thankfully one of the directors he worked with had connections in Hong Kong, which led to a successful audition for a small action role in Gen-X Cops. Like many Korean martial artists, Khan was a teacher of martial arts first, with his ventures in the film industry second. Having established schools in both the U.S. and Korea, he also found time to work on the fight choreography in Jackie Chan’s The Medallion, and in 2005 landed a role in front of camera to fully showcase his skills, in fellow Korean Young Man Kang’s kung fu and Christianity hybrid, The Last Eve.
He’d appear onscreen again as the Japanese villain that frequently duels with the title character of 2012’s K-drama series Bridal Mask, however Khan’s real ambition was to create a pure Korean martial arts movie. In that regard, you could say that Revenger is the realisation of his dream. It may have taken him until he was 51 years old to become a headlining action star, but any doubt around if he’s left it too late are quickly cast aside within the opening few minutes. This guy can bust out the kicks with a lethal precision that makes guys half his age look like geriatrics. Playing a former cop that gets sent to APA-101, a lawless island penitentiary populated by death row inmates, Khan’s real mission is to kill the ruthless criminal who murdered his wife and child. That same ruthlessness, has made the criminal he’s after become the feared leader of the island.
Khan is responsible for both the story and script, and together with first time director Lee Seung-won, Revenger has a visually unique aesthetic. The setting of the island (which was filmed in Indonesia) gives proceedings a post-apocalyptic feel, with the inhabitants decked out in tattered clothing, and running around armed with axes, spears, and maces. The ‘good prisoners’, for want of a better expression, have made their own hidden commune accessible through a cave, where they hide out and practice martial arts, in case they ever find themselves on the run from one of the “human hunting” expeditions the ‘bad prisoners’ like to indulge in. It’s bizarre in the same way many of the Korean kung fu movies from the 70’s and 80’s were bizarre. In fact that’s probably the best way to describe Revenger – it’s like a 2018 version of a Dragon Lee or Elton Chong flick.
For anyone that happens to stumble across Revenger on Netflix that’s unaware of the genre, I’m sure it’ll be a jarring experience. For those of us that have worked our way through the infamous IFD distributed Korean kung fu flicks of old though, it’s hard not to smile. There’s a completely out of place comedic troupe of inhabitants, led by Kim In-kwon (The Divine Move), that mug and gurn their way through every scene they’re in. We get a cross dressing grandpa character sporting one of Mike Wong’s grey wigs (see Magnificent Natural Fist or Invincible Obsessed Fighter for points of reference!). There’s even a double sword wielding hunchback with a mohawk, who looks like he just walked off the set of Enter the Invincible Hero. Throw in crash zooms, ridiculous English dialogue (no IFD needed here!), and random plot threads that are never explained – there aren’t too many Korean kung fu movie tropes that aren’t ticked off.
One thing that is missing though, is the ridiculous attempts at wire work. In fact, there’s none. Revenger is like the antithesis to those movies filled with unnecessary wirework (re: everything coming out of China and Hong Kong right now), with Khan decimating waves of attackers like a one-man army. One particular sequence has him raiding a rundown building to rescue a child who’s been abducted, and he gets to unleash his full array of kicks and throws. Legs get snapped, heads are smashed into boxes, and it all culminates in a face off against American martial artist T.J. Storm (The Martial Arts Kid). The concept behind the sequence reminded me in some ways of the Muay Boran showcase Tony Jaa dishes out in the finale of Tom Yum Goong. Sure, nobody seems to have a chance of laying a finger on Khan, but the technique on display is so impressive that somehow, that’s just fine.
Arguably it’s the quality (and quantity) of the action on display that makes Revenger’s shortcomings for the most part forgivable. Anyone who likes coherency, or in some cases basic logic, to accompany their action quota will likely leave frustrated. The 100 minutes have clearly been constructed around the action, and as such everything else is considered superfluous. Even details that somehow feel they should be important, for example how the prisoners arrive on the island, are considered unnecessary to explain. Like an episode of Ex on the Beach, in the opening scene Khan simply wades through the shallows onto dry land, and begins kicking seven bells out of a group of assailants bothering a mother and daughter. Don’t even ask why he’s wearing a straitjacket and mouthpiece. In terms of movies that deliver impressive scenes of kicking while in a straitjacket (I’m sure there’s many), this is right up there with Rage.
Despite plot holes aplenty, Revenger is far from being filled with unknown actors, and if anything is quite the opposite. Yoon Jin-seo, an actress known for her roles in the likes of Old Boy, plays the mother Khan rescues in the opening scene. It’s revealed along the way that Khan was the cop responsible for sending her to the island several years ago, where she’d give birth to her child, but it’s a point which is never explored beyond it acting as a reason for there being tension between the pair. Park Hee-soon, last seen in The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion plays the ruthless criminal running the island, who’s brush with fire allows him to looks a modern day version of Tatsuya Fujiwara’s character in the Rurouni Kenshin series. His face, obscured by the bandages that cover it, allow for Hee-soon’s villain to be one of the more visually striking bad guys in recent memory, and he’s able to deliver the moves when called for.
Indeed the final fight between Khan and Hee-soon lasts over 6 minutes, and is uninterrupted, making it a pleasure to witness. If one was to be critical of Revenger, it would be that for the majority of the runtime Khan never has an opponent to match his skills. Admittedly, there’s joy to be had in watching him kick his way through various opponents with a steely faced Steven Seagal-like level of brutality, however at some point it’s important to give our hero a threat that allows us to feel a sense of risk to his well-being. The finale delivers that for the most part, with a thrilling two-on-one sword fight (involving the previously mentioned hunchback), which segues into the one-on-one against Hee-soon. It’s a small gripe on my part, but I wish they hadn’t gone the ‘soft’ sound effect route for the punishment dished out. I know it’s reflective of reality, but what can I say, I prefer my kicks to the face be delivered with a meaty thud.
This is nit-picking though in what, regardless of which way you look at it, is a glorious return to the kind of action that Korea used to produce, back when “You’re tired of living” was a prerequisite line to any of its kung fu output. Bloody, brutal, and with cleanly shot fight scenes that don’t need to cut away every couple of moves, if Khan wants to make another movie just like this one, I’d be first in line to watch it. It’s true I have no idea what era Revenger is supposed to be taking place in, and I couldn’t for the life of me tell you if Bruce Khan is a good actor or not (the ratio of lines spoken:kicks to the head is about 1:10), however none of that really matters. Khan has made a movie in which everything that’s old is new, and if that involves occasional bewilderment in return for killer action, then it’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.
Indonesian action star Joe Taslim (The Night Comes for Us, The Raid, the upcoming Korean-produced The Swordsman, as well as the Cinemax series, Warrior) is currently putting finishing touches on Ody C. Harahap’s action-comedy Hit ‘n Run, which will also reunite Taslim with his Raidco-star Yayan Ruhian (Yakuza Apocalypse).
As FCS (via TJP) notes, Hit ‘n Run hails from Screenplay Films and signals Taslim’s big screen debut playing Tegar, “a heroic police officer who has to collaborate with his friends to take down an all-powerful crime lord”.
Hit ‘n Run also stars Tatjana Saphira (Sweet 20), Jefri Nichol (One Fine Day), David Hendrawan (The Night Comes for Us), Ju-jitsu athlete Simone Julia and Joe’s brother, Peter Taslim, a stuntman who worked on The Night Comes for Us.
Look out for Hit ‘n Run in 2019. For now, check out a still from the film:
Jean-Claude Van Damme (Kill ’em All) returns in the Taken-esque The Bouncer (aka Lukas), an action thriller directed by Julien Leclercq (The Assault).
Van Damme (Black Water) is Lukas, a midde-aged bouncer who struggles to raise his 8-year-old daughter. One day, Lukas gets into an altercation and ends up in jail, while his daughter gets placed under the care of social services. But things take an unexpected turn when Interpol recruits Lukas…
The film also stars Sveva Alviti, Sami Bouajila, Kaaris, Kevin Janssens, Sam Louwyck, and Alice Verset.
Veronica Ngo Thanh Van – multi-talented star of the The Rebel, Clash and the upcoming Furie – is teaming up with former MMA fighter-turned-action star Cung Le (Europe Raiders, Savage Dog) for a Vietnamese martial arts thriller titled The Target (aka Mục Tiêu Chết).
Unfortunately, Ngo will only be producing, and will not appear in The Target. Additionally, Wing Chun practitioner Peter Pham and Jackie Chan Stunt Team member Vi-Dan Tran (The Foreigner) are also part of the production.
According to MAAC, Truong Ngoc Anh (Truy Sát aka Tracer) was previously attached, but dropped out for reasons unknown.
We’ll keep you posted as we learn more. For now, don’t miss a featurette for The Target below (via Alejandro Torres):
Director: Scott Mann Cast: Dave Bautista, Pierce Brosnan, Ray Stevenson, Julian Cheung, Alexandra Dinu, Lara Peake, Amit Shah, Bill Fellows, Aaron McCusker, Martyn Ford Running Time: 104 min.
By Martin Sandison
Not to be confused with the Chris Mitchum-starring Indonesian actioner Final Score – a movie Paul’s review completely sold to me (and doesn’t disappoint in its batshit anything-goes way); this 2018 Final Score is a pretty different beast. Very encouragingly, both this film and Nightshooters are British productions, and they bring the action. While the latter was made for nothing, and delivers one of the best film experiences of last year, Final Score has some more money to play with. Producing and starring is none other than Dave Bautista (Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy), in a role which finds him using hand-to-hand combat more than most other films he’s made, and producing some very convincing acting chops. Oh, and Pierce Brosnan (Goldeneye) is in it too.
Mike (Bautista) is ex-special forces, whose brother was killed in action. His brother’s widow Rachel (Lucy Gaskell, All the Ordinary Angels) tends a bar in London, and Mike visits often and thinks the world of her daughter Danni (Laura Peake, The Marker). The two take a trip to see West Ham United football team play where a gang of Russian terrorists led by Arkady (Ray Stevenson, Thor) infiltrate the stadium to demand the release of Dimitri (Brosnan), their former leader who is attending the game. Mike loses Danni during the game and then learns of the villains scheme, and must save the day.
Final Score unabashedly steals from Die Hard to the point of complete derivation; ideas such as the terrorists demanding the release of Dimitri, the protagonist contacting the goodies and baddies via walkie talkie, the climax featuring Danni being captured by the villains… I could go on. It’s obvious the film-makers are having a lot of fun with this, but unlike the invention of Nightshooters the film doesn’t play with these tropes very cleverly. What the film does have on its side are a blistering lead performance from Bautista, an amusing extended cameo from Brosnan (his accent is a thing of beauty) and a second half that includes full on brutal fights, a motorbike chase that continues out on to the roof of the stadium, and a good turn of Brit wit.
Bautista part produced the film, and you can see why he believes in the material; it’s a good opportunity for him to take the lead in a film that plays to his strengths of action, humour and stretching out with his acting. There are a few scenes in which he deepens as an actor and shows he can carry a film. In one of these he has a huge outburst, impressive in its lack of restraint, then a dialogue scene with Brosnan that sees the two give and take sweetly. Brosnan’s dialogue here is absurdly amusing, and a glint in his eyes seems to say: “I’m here for the pay day, and I’m gonna have some fun”. I’m sure, despite the schmaltzy music, the film makers know how ridiculous this scene is.
To the action. Each duel is choreographed differently, but with Bautista using modern martial arts moves like those in Krav Maga. There’s an authenticity to the depiction of combat that speaks volumes of the commitment of the film makers, and Bautista himself. A highly anticipated fight comes midway through, with man mountain Martyn Ford (Accident Man) taking on our hero. It’s a high impact sequence in which you really feel Ford’s punches, but unfortunately doesn’t last too long. I guess I’m used to, and love, Hong Kong movie fights that go on forever. Come the end we get some neat kicking from Alexandra Dinu (Bullet Head), she even does Cynthia Rothrock’s signature scorpion kick. There is some brutal violence throughout, with fingers sliced off to fall in to a frier, heads submerged in the frier, plenty of heads blown off. For the most part the framing, form and editing of these scenes is above-average, but occasionally there are line breaks and illogical editing that took me out of the film as a viewer.
As a lower budget British production, the film can be forgiven for some dodgy CGI, especially in the motorbike chase, and on a whole the effects work is decent. Director Scott Mann helmed an earlier film featuring Bautista, Heist, which also starred Robert De Niro. That one, like Final Score, garnered mixed reviews, but I would catch it now I think the guys got some talent. His directorial debut The Tournament I remember hearing about at the time (10 years ago) and will definitely check out. Any film with a cast that combines my homeboy, Scotsman Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting), Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), Kelly Hu (Maximum Impact) and the one-and-only Scott Adkins (Incoming) must be worth a watch. Final Score has a nicely consistent aesthetic and tone, plus a good line in knowing humour that rises above most straight-to-DVD fare, even though it seems to exist in an alternate universe wherein West Ham United are doing well in European competition.
Final Score lacks the creative spark and is too unoriginal to make a mark beyond lovers of action cinema, football and Bautista and Brosnan, but there is much to enjoy in its tension-filled narrative. One to put on with a bunch of mates, stuff pizza in to your mouth and drink your fill of beer. It’s not memorable, but consistently entertaining, and will fill 100 minutes of your time nicely.
Skybound Entertainment (The Walking Dead) and Korea’s Contents Panda are adapting the 2017 Korean actioner The Villainess into an English-language TV series. Jeong Byeong-gil (Confession of Murder), who directed the original film, is on board to helm the series’ pilot.
According to Deadline, the series, also titled The Villainess, follows Anes, who was kidnapped from her home in Korea and raised as a deadly assassin in Los Angeles. Just when Anes believes she has found true peace, unsettling events drive her to return to Korea to uncover dangerous truths about her home and her past.
We’ll keep you updated on The Villainess series as we learn more. Watch the Trailer for the 2017 film below:
Director: Poon Man-Kit Writer: Johnny Mak Cast: Ray Lui, Cecilia Yip, Kent Cheng, Waise Lee, Amy Yip Chi May, Frankie Chin, Elvis Tsui, Tommy Wong, Kenneth Tsang, Lo Lieh, Paul Chu Kong, Mark Houghton Running Time: 136 min
By Paul Bramhall
The tale of real life gangster Ng Sik-Ho, more commonly known as Crippled Ho, has experienced a resurgence of late thanks to Donnie Yen’s take on the character in 2017’s Chasing the Dragon. Much of the talk around Ho’s latest incarnation, was how it skilfully frames the story so as to massage it through the Mainland China censorship board, which takes a hard line on any movie perceived as glorifying a criminal lifestyle. While Wong Jing’s (and his small army of co-writers and directors) effort is an admirable one, there was more than one occasion on watching Chasing the Dragon, when I found myself thinking how much better it could have been without all the subtle political narrative manoeuvring. Thankfully, such a version exists, and it comes in the form of Poon Man-Kit’s 1991 epic To Be Number One.
Unlike Chasing the Dragon, which gave equal focus to Crippled Ho and corrupt cop Lee Rock, To Be Number One is a pure gangster tale, and all the better for it. Although on a side note, in the same year Lee Rock would also be the focus of 2 movies, the self-titled Lee Rock and its sequel. Clocking in at 135 minutes, To Be Number One is unlike any other Hong Kong movie of the era in terms of its scope and ambition, anchored by a powerhouse performance from Ray Lui as the titular character (so yes, if you want to see Crippled Ho 1991 vs Crippled Ho 2017, check out Flash Point). Made at a time when Hong Kong cinema was very much in its prime, Lui’s take on Crippled Ho was just one of nine movies he’d feature in during the same year. Interestingly he’d play Crippled Ho twice, turning up for a second time in the Amy Yip (who’s also in To Be Number One) vehicle Queen of Underworld.
While all of the subtitled releases of To Be Number One unfortunately neglect to translate the large swathes of text that intermittently appear onscreen, indicative of the passing of time and significant events of the era, luckily this oversight doesn’t prove to be detrimental to the viewers enjoyment. Man-Kit, who up until this point had cut his teeth directing gritty slices of HK Triad life such as Hero of Tomorrow and City Kids 1989, brought in a whole host of top shelf talent to bring his vision to life. Respected cinematographer Peter Pau, who would go onto lens the likes of The Bride with White Hair and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, here shows early signs of his unique eye for framing a scene, working from a script by Long Arm of the Law director Johnny Mak and Stephen Shiu.
Several reviews out there make comparisons to Brian De Palma’s Scarface, and structurally it’s a fair comparison. As a country bumpkin from the Mainland (remember when Mainlanders where always portrayed as country bumpkins in HK cinema?), Lui arrives in Hong Kong in the 70’s to escape the Cultural Revolution. While he and his friends find themselves slumming it as coolies in a rundown restaurant, they also work odd jobs that toe the line between legal and criminal, one of which eventually puts Lui on the radar of a powerful HK gang boss (played by Kent Cheng), who sees potential in his ambitious personality. Soon finding himself moving up the ranks within the gang’s well-oiled drug trade, Lui’s goals gradually begin to expand beyond the lot he’s been given, and the lust for power leads to a bloody war between the pair that stretches across the next 2 decades.
It’s a structure that’s proved to be tried and tested over the years, with the likes of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Yoon Jong-bin’s Nameless Gangster also adhering to the same framework. One aspect that they all have in common though, is that they never feel derivative of De Palma’s classic, and Man-Kit crafts a tale that’s distinctly Hong Kong in its identity. Of course another aspect of any Hong Kong production from the 80’s and early 90’s that deals with the Triads, is the action. It should be made clear that To Be Number One isn’t an action movie, but during this era in Hong Kong action was such an intrinsic part of its film industry, you could expect at least a couple of stunts or fists to be thrown even in the most unexpected genres.
Here Bloodmoon director Tony Leung Siu-Hung is on action choreography duties, and he does an outstanding job of adapting the classical style of his early career (Tiger of the Northland, A Fistful of Talons) to a more contemporary and realistic setting. I’ve always found Siu-Hung’s late 80’s/early 90’s work on triad potboilers to be underrated. He was one of the few action directors who showed a real understanding of how to still keep the hard hitting aesthetic and flow that’s synonymous with HK choreography, but apply it in the context of a more realistic environment. His work on the likes of Walk on Fire and Rebel from China are also stellar examples. Here the action is frequently bloody and brutal, with lime and acid thrown into people’s faces, brutal beatdowns, and even some flying kicks are sprinkled in for good measure, without ever coming across as gratuitous.
Lui’s rise to power is complimented by a fantastic cast of supporting characters. Just like any movie is a product of its time, so it could be said reviews also offer a unique perspective from the time they’re written. Watching To Be Number One in 2018, there’s an undeniable nostalgia to seeing so much talent from Hong Kong’s golden era onscreen together. Waise Lee, Lawrence Ng Kai-Wah, and bulked up bodybuilders Frankie Chan and Dickens Chan (ironically playing brothers) feature as Lui’s fellow Mainlanders and eventual followers. We have Elvis Tsui as a mute enforcer, who at one point gets to go John Woo with some double handed pistol action, and Cat III icon Amy Yip as Kent Cheng’s moll (both Tsui and Yip would star together in the legendary Sex and Zen in the same year). Throw in appearances from Lo Lieh as a gangster and Cecilia Yip as Lui’s better half, you’re left with a cast that can never be replicated.
Any tale that focuses on Crippled Ho eventually culminates in the ICAC’s (Independent Commission Against Corruption) purge against corrupt members of the police force, one which saw Ho’s network of cops that he had in his pocket fall apart around him. While these days the ICAC is more known as the subject of David Lam’s limp wristed Z/S/L Storm series (not to mention 1993’s First Shot – I guess Lam is an ICAC fanboy, if such a thing exists), in To Be Number One the weight of their crackdown is fully felt, as Lui finds himself in increasingly desperate circumstances. Blinded by his own greed and embattled by other rival gangster factions, the added pressure of having to deal with a police force no longer possible to brush off with stacks of cash, all culminate to show just how fragile it is when indeed, you’re number one.
Despite being an early entry in Man-Kit’s filmography, he’d never top the quality on display in To Be Number One. Perhaps too eager to replicate its success, he pulled together an almost identical cast and crew for the sprawling Lord of East China Sea and its sequel in 1993, which saw Lui step into the shoes of Luk Yu-San, a Shanghai fruit seller who rose to prominence as an opium dealer in the early 20th Century. He’d then cast Lui again in Hero of Hong Kong 1949, also from 1993, for another tale inspired by true life events, with equally uninspiring results. It’s proof that even if you have the same chef and the same ingredients, success is not always a guarantee. But in the case of To Be Number One, everything was left to simmer for just the right amount of time and in the right portions, resulting in a satisfying tale of true life crime.
While Chasing the Dragon did its part to prove it’s still possible to tell these tales in today’s SARFT friendly environment, watching Man-Kit’s magnum opus makes you realise just how many sacrifices have to be made in order to do so. While many would say they were worth it, watched against a movie like To Be Number One, there can be no denying, any other attempt could only be a distant number two.
Mak and Pun – the directing duo behind the Infernal Affairs sequels, the Overheard saga, and Donnie Yen’s The Lost Bladesman – are back with an action thriller that follows an undercover police officer who attempts to take down a drug trafficking syndicate from the inside.
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.
On March 5th, 2019, Samuel Goldwyn Films is releasing the DVD for Buffalo Boys, an actioner set during the Dutch occupation of Indonesia.
When all seems lost in a small town overrun by colonialist violence, two revenge-seeking brothers arrive, meting out bloody justice that leaps effortlessly between brutal Western gunslinging and stylized Eastern swordplay.
Directed by Mike Wiluan – producer of Macabre, Headshotand Beyond Skyline – Buffalo Boys stars Ario Bayu (Macabre), Tio Pakusadewo (The Raid 2), Pevita Eileen Pearce (Single), Happy Salma (Capres), Donny Damara (2014), Mikha Tambayong (Fallin’ in Love) and El Manik (Carok)
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