Trash Tuesday Reviews:
This is not a well made movie.
Knowing that, this is one of the most entertaining action flicks in my collection.
Part of the entertainment level was due to external factors, so if you have a group that can laugh at a bad film once in a while and enjoys mindless action and flashy kills, this will light up the evening.
Spoilers: Roddy Piper is a surprisingly endearing lead, despite his character being a self contradicting cop who somehow can take on any number of assailants and taking the same amount of damage every fight.
Sonny Chiba's character is missing from the action in the middle of the film and has one of the most contrived reasons for his refusal to use firearms (but not other projectiles), but comes back very strong in the third act and delivers some very hype stunts and kills. (Definitely watch the American release, not the UK, if that's what you're looking for. They cut the most wild shuriken sniping ever filmed.)
The first 10 minutes packs in every Buddy-Cop cliché ever written (plus katanas) and the film makes a 180 into a classic into a Spy-Romance 30 minutes in. Nothing about this movie is predictable. Even the most predictable MacGuffin switch-a-roo had us absolutely convinced it never happened and the director was just using the 5 minutes of shenanigan's to pad things out (due to all the enemy witnesses dying by the end of the scene). But no! It pulled a double switch-a-roo on us!
Anecdote: We tried at first to predict where each scene and plot point was going but the bizarre writing quickly proved we would never be able to. So instead, we started throwing out our wildest ideas and were ecstatic when each of them came true on screen one-by-one.
Knowing that, this is one of the most entertaining action flicks in my collection.
Part of the entertainment level was due to external factors, so if you have a group that can laugh at a bad film once in a while and enjoys mindless action and flashy kills, this will light up the evening.
Spoilers: Roddy Piper is a surprisingly endearing lead, despite his character being a self contradicting cop who somehow can take on any number of assailants and taking the same amount of damage every fight.
Sonny Chiba's character is missing from the action in the middle of the film and has one of the most contrived reasons for his refusal to use firearms (but not other projectiles), but comes back very strong in the third act and delivers some very hype stunts and kills. (Definitely watch the American release, not the UK, if that's what you're looking for. They cut the most wild shuriken sniping ever filmed.)
The first 10 minutes packs in every Buddy-Cop cliché ever written (plus katanas) and the film makes a 180 into a classic into a Spy-Romance 30 minutes in. Nothing about this movie is predictable. Even the most predictable MacGuffin switch-a-roo had us absolutely convinced it never happened and the director was just using the 5 minutes of shenanigan's to pad things out (due to all the enemy witnesses dying by the end of the scene). But no! It pulled a double switch-a-roo on us!
Anecdote: We tried at first to predict where each scene and plot point was going but the bizarre writing quickly proved we would never be able to. So instead, we started throwing out our wildest ideas and were ecstatic when each of them came true on screen one-by-one.