American Streetfighter

The story is OK and so is the acting but your first clue that it's not that great is the fact it's only a $1 and in a cardboard sleeve.

It really is just another Martial arts movie not much to be said. It's from the early 90's and it shows. Not the amount of violence we love to see in todays movies a decade later. Honestly it's not to bad and I'd probably watch it again. Gary Daniels is honestly not a bad actor and is a pretty decent fighter.

So when you judge this movie please realize it's not up to today's standards. It doesn't have big name actors and was probably a low budget film.

The DVD box displayed such phrases as "There are some streets you don't double-cross" and "When war comes home, and home is the streets, you turn to... American STREETFIGHTER". Say that in the movie-trailer voice, and it will sound awesome. I was hoping that this would an overblown action movie, not good, but entertaining enough that I could laugh at how stupid it was. No luck.

The movie is... mediocre. The story is mediocre, the fight scenes are mediocre, the acting is mediocre. Okay, it picks up a little during a fight at the dojo, which is enjoyably stupid- featuring a motorcycle driving through a door that is quite obviously made of styrofoam, and the one guy in the movie with a gun choosing to pistol-whip people instead of, I dunno, shooting bullets at them. Still, the whole experience is mediocre- It's not bad enough to laugh at, and it's not good enough to enjoy. The whole thing is just boring. Two years later, Street Fighter, starring Van Damme and Raul Julia came out. At least that one you can laugh at.

And for a movie about street-fighting, there sure is a lot of time spent in the countryside...

After the total disaster whose name was "Capital Punishment", every person with a tiny bit of sense in his/her mind should think that Gary Daniels would actually try to make a better movie this time. But no! This is nearly as bad. The only thing that's better here is the story. Although it was really bad, it still was progress from the total lack of plot in "Capital Punishment". Here, you could at least understand what was going on. Anyway, when a martial arts movie has a bad story (as they usually do), you focus on the fight scenes. There are lots and lots of them, but unfortunately they all just stink. It had been better if they had come up with ONE decent fight instead of about 15-20 extremely bad ones, but I guess the people behind this movie thought that quantity was the key.

Well....it wasn't!!

Gary Daniels has made a number of B-grade martial arts movies that I have enjoyed. Unfortunately, this early effort with him is not among his gems. I am sure he himself is embarrassed by this movie for a number of reasons. Here, he has a haircut (or rather, lack of a haircut) that is unintentionally funny, and he (as well as many of the other actors) have looped their dialogue in the recording studio with voices that often don't match with the mouth movements and body movements of what's on screen. Movie is hastily shot, with very little on screen that you would identify with "American". As for the fights, they are nothing exciting at all. You can safely skip this one.

Successful businessman Jake Tanner (Gary Daniels) returns home after 10 years to help his troubled brother Randy (Ian Jacklin) who is dangerously involved in illegal fights. American Streetfighter is another DTV banger from burly Blue-eyed Brit Gary Daniels. A shark in the office, Jake throws down equally hard in the ring, bust's up head's on the streets like a boss, Jake Tanner's an expert all-terrain hard ass! If the gaudy sight of a VHS cover emblazoned with an oily-looking muscle mountain on the cover puts a man-sized twizzle in your pizzle American Streetfighter's for you, dude! While the dialogue is excruciatingly awful at times, and some of the lumpy fight scenes are poorly blocked, I still got a kick out of this entertainingly goofy 90s fight-flick. Notable high points for me are Jake's leonine hair, a sweet Ninja Turtles reference, all Gerald Okamura's scenes, and the beaten Daniels heroic return to fearsome fighting form montage is the don!