After about the third or fourth film I watched — either 5 Pattern Dragon Claws or 18 Fatal Strikes, I can’t be sure — I noticed how similar the movies were to another. I wasn’t exactly surprised, having digesting so many of these cheap chopsocky efforts over the years, but never in such close proximity. Basically, each […]
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The Guillotines
Not necessarily. The guillotines of The Guillotines are of the shimmering CGI kind, and so obvious as to be cartoons. Still, this Hong Kong pic is at its best when the guillotines spin on their scooped launchers like rabid dogs waiting to be unleashed, then zoom around the place looking for a head to latch […]
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Enter the Dragon: 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition
With this, director Robert Clouse made what is easily Bruce Lee’s finest film (and then proceeded to follow it up with a never-ending string of schlock). While Lee is technically one point of a heroic triangle — with A Nightmare on Elm Street’s John Saxon and blaxploitation icon Jim Kelly being the others — let’s […]
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Dragon
The reason? Science! As a friend put it, Dragon plays like CSI: Kung Fu. I’d add a dash of Rashomon. Set in 1917, it opens with kindly papermaker/family man (Donnie Yen, Ip Man) reluctantly thwarting the robbery of a general store, leaving the two criminals dead. But how, wonders the investigating detective (Takeshi Kaneshiro, Red […]
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The Four
It takes a good half-hour before we begin to comprehend who’s who and who’s aligned with whom. Even then, the story — based on a presumably popular novel — is plotted with spying and more than one alliance switcheroo. Everyone seems concerned about locating a stolen coin cast, yet the object is almost a MacGuffin; […]
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Tai Chi Zero
In an acting debut that deliberately doesn’t require him to act much, wushu champ Yuan Xiaochao plays Lu Chan, nicknamed “The Freak” from birth because a horn-like protrusion on the side of his forehead. When pushed, his eyes go milky and, for a brief time, he hulks out with brute force until blood spurts out […]
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I Am Bruce Lee
For example:• He was a child star in Hong Kong — the Macaulay Culkin of his day and place.• He was a 1957 cha-cha champion.• In college, he was obsessed with General Hospital.• He was quoted as saying, “My obsession is to make, pardon the expression, the fuckingest action motion picture ever made.” That film […]
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Kill ’Em All
Then, Saw-style, eight of them wake up locked in a dingy warehouse room dubbed The Killing Chamber, where hit men are taken to die. All of them are assassins, but only one will be allowed to leave after rounds and rounds of glorious mortal combat. So says Snakehead (Gordon Liu, the ’70s martial-arts superstar experiencing […]
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The Outlaw Brothers
Yes, it comes from the Dragon Dynasty line — release No. 57, to be precise — but it’s sillier than the bulk of Dragon Dynasty product, which largely skips this period in favor of old-school Shaw Brothers. But Frankie Chan’s The Outlaw Brothers? It’s as of-the-times as a 1990 flick can be, right down to […]
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Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
Lately — and all too quietly — the Indomina label has been releasing some excellent packages of Asian action films I’m afraid otherwise would go unseen by North American audiences: True Legend, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame and now, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. Apparently a sequel and/or semi-remake of 1992’s […]