In short: Tough and Deadly (1995)

CIA agent Jack Monk (Billy Blanks) is captured and nearly killed for reasons that will become sort of clear much later. He barely escapes with his life and ends up as an amnesiac John Doe in a hospital bed. Bounty hunter and private dick Elmo Freech (Roddy Piper) stumbles over him in hospital. At first, Elmo only hopes there might be a bounty and therefore profit involved, but when somebody tries to kill his new-found interest, he saves Jack’s life, springs him out of hospital, lets him move in, trains him up again and makes him his new bounty hunting partner under the exciting name of John Portland. Why? I suspect the love that dare not speak its name.

Of course, John’s/Jack’s enemies are soon on his trail again. As luck will have it, the mysterious traitorous CIA agent (Phil Morris) after Jack’s life just happens to be in business with Elmo’s old nemesis, mafia boss Milan (Sal Landi), which will most probably raise the body count a bit.

After they turned out to be a rather effective duo in 1993’s Back in Action Roddy Piper and Billy Blanks reunited again – and unfortunately for the last time – for this little lark. Directed by Steve Cohen, Tough and Deadly features your typical Direct-to-DVD movie script, where nobody’s motivations, not to speak of plans, make much sense, but where bone crunching kicks happen every five minutes; mostly to bad guys’ faces. Though, to give the script credit where credit is due, it is well-paced - aka contains only scenes of male friendship my brain can’t help as parse as romance, a few one-liners, and ass-kicking of varying and increasing brutality, and nothing else to slow it down any – and clearly knows what its viewers will want out of their low budget US action flicks.

I for one can hardly resist the siren song of crunching bones, gun shots, and very minor explosions set to a synthesizer soundtrack possibly even more generic than Tough and Deadly’s title, particularly not when all the cheap yet cool carnage is committed by a martial artist and fitness guru who is a neutral actor (so good enough for this sort of thing) and a pretty fantastic, if showy, screen fighter, and by everyone’s favourite unmasked wrestler-turned-actor easily getting by on regular Joe charisma, a shit-eating grin, who is also a pretty fantastic - and completely different - screen fighter.

As a buddy action movie couple Piper and Blanks work quite well too, with many a tender look between the two, speaking dialogue that is at worst so unfunny it becomes funny again, at best quite purposefully funny, and tending more to the latter. As always, it’s a bit of a shame the romance between the two is never consumed on screen but I suspect action cinema won’t be ready to make its obviously yet unspoken gay characters just gay until 2025; I’d be glad to be proven wrong, particularly because certain critics can then stop pretending every tender male friendship on screen is a sign of repressed homosexuality, and instead concentrate on praising those that actually are, like the one here.

Anyway, Tough and Deadly is another fine outing for Blanks and Piper, and while it didn’t make me think, watching it made me pretty happy.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,action,martial arts,steve cohen,roddy piper,billy blanks

TC 2000 (1993)

The world has ended (cue lots of “again”s) thanks to our destruction of the ozone layer. Our betters have fled into a place cleverly called “The Underground”, where they are protected The Controller (Ramsay Smith) and his security forces.

Jason Storm (Billy Blanks) and his partner Zoey Kinsella (Bobbie Phillips) belong to the part of the security forces known as TCs, tasked with scouting and surface police operations. The Underground hasn’t been very secure in these last few weeks, though, for surface gang leader Niki Picasso (Jalal Merhi) and his merry band have been making attacks on Underground operatives and even incursions into Underground territory. Why, you might start thinking Niki has outside help.

While she and Jason are battling one of these incursions, Zoey is shot in the back by a shadowy figure (spoiler: it’s the Controller!). Because he seems actually interested in the death of his partner, the Controller fires Jason and sends his men out to murder him. Of course, Jason escapes to the surface where he decides to destroy Niki and the Picassos, teaming up with martial arts master Sumai (Bolo Yeung).

Once Jason’s away, the Controller and his pet scientist turn Zoey’s remains into an ersatz-Robocop – the TC 2000 – re-imagined as a Californian 80s aerobics teacher with a penchant for leather and high-heeled boots. Zoey’s supposed to team up with Niki to get access to a chemical weapons facility and cleanse the surface world from its population.

I wouldn’t exactly say T.J. Scott’s – made before he started a rather interesting and fruitful looking career as a TV director – TC 2000 is the cheapest looking post-apocalyptic martial arts movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly among the top (bottom?) ten, seeing as it takes place exclusively in boiler rooms, boring warehouses, boring warehouses dressed up as grey corridors, and other industrial buildings I really wouldn’t have needed to see. At least, it’s more than one industrial building, or the production takes care to pretend it is.

It’s also – need I even say it? – a patently ridiculous film, with the post-apocalyptic world seemingly mostly populated by beefy men with frightening haircuts who like to grimace a lot and dress as sillily as possible (favourite: Niki Picasso and his gang who aren’t quite as beefy but prefer some kind of pseudo-punk hipster garb and Picasso-like face paintings to make up for their lack of muscles). Everyone’s an idiot, too, though that might be the steroids. The plot, such as it is, does (no surprise here) make little sense even as an excuse for the fight scenes, and is presented in the least efficient way possible. The fights themselves are pretty bland, with choreography of little interest or inventiveness, which is a bit of a shame with a cast consisting of people who know what they’re doing in a screen fight, well, and Jalal Merhi who makes his usual creepy imitation of a speaking wooden puppet while hogging a position in the film’s credits he doesn’t deserve.

On the positive side, there are many shots of Blanks and co grinding their teeth during the fights in ways human teeth were never meant to be ground, there’s a lot of bad emoting, a bunch of stupid ideas, and Bobbie Phillips working very hard at making even more ridiculous fight faces than everyone else. I think she even wins the competition.

I’d be a liar if I pretended I didn’t enjoy at least half of the film quite a bit. I just can’t resist the bargain basement charm of a film that does one-liners so embarrassing they overshoot becoming cool again and become doubly embarrassing, and that tries to sell post-apocalyptica with production values so low, most Italian post-apocalypse films look lavish in comparison. Plus, there’s Bolo (doing Bolo finger gestures), and Billy, and Matthias Hues, sweating, losing shirts, wearing idiotic sunglasses, and, in Billy’s case, doing an off-screen monologue that suggests we’re listening to a first read-through done by someone who – how shall I put it? – isn’t a very good reader, Bobbie Phillips still sounding like Minnie Mouse even when she’s a killer cyborg, and a lot of ideas that are completely outside the film’s reach. What’s not to like?

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,martial arts,sf,post-apocalypse,t.j. scott,bolo yeung,billy blanks,bobbie phillips,jalal merhi

On ExB: Back in Action (1993)

This is an easy one, because we all love Roddy Piper, right? And we can hardly contain ourselves finding him teamed-up with a weird-looking, shirt-hating fitness guru who kicks people in the face a lot, right?

And wouldn’t you know it, that team-up is exactly what this week’s column over at Exploder Button is all about, so just click on through.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,action,billy blanks,roddy piper,bobbie phillips,kai soremekun,nigel bennett