Black Eagle (1988)

Black Eagle (1988)
aka: Red Eagle; For Your Shurikens Only [1]

Starring: Sho Kosugi, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Doran Clark, Bruce French, Vladimir Skomarovski, William Bassett, Kane Kosugi, Shane Kosugi
Director: Eric Karson
Action Director: Sho Kosugi

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and suppose that Sho Kosugi was a little tired of being typecast in ninja films by 1988. Moreover, the "Ninja Craze" that had helped jump-start his career was already waning by that point. So a project like Black Eagle, in which Kosugi could play a James Bondian secret agent while giving his sons a free Mediterranean vacation seemed like a great idea. The end product is very similar to the 1981 007 film For Your Eyes Only in its general plot contours, with a dash of The Living Daylights thrown in for good measure. It also pits one of the martial arts greats of the 1980s against an up-and-coming martial arts actor who would become the biggest name in the genre in the following decade. That alone is enough to warrant a single viewing of the film.

A radar station on Gibraltar picks up a message of an F-111 getting shot down during a mission in the Mediterranean. The jet crashes into the ocean off the coast of Malta, a breeding ground for spies on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The KGB was also monitoring this and is particularly interested in this particular jet: their Intelligence suggests that the jet was equipped with a state-of-the-art laser guiding system, which the USSR currently does not have. So they send in their best men, Col. Kleminko (Vladimir Skomarovski) and Andrei (Jean-Claude Van Damme) to find the jet and retrieve the system.

The CIA is also on the case and realize that it's only a matter of days before the KGB abscond with the fruit of years of American research. This being the "Evil Empire" days of the Cold War, such a development would certainly not do. Their first operative is quickly captured and murdered by Andrei. so they have to bring in their best: Ken Tani (Sho Kosugi). Tani is currently on assignment in Afghanistan, fighting those pesky Ruskies alongside the Taliban. Upon finishing his mission, Tani is whisked away and given a new mission by CIA bigwig Rickert (William Bassett, of Black Dynamite and The Karate Kid): find the downed aircraft before Kleminko does.

Tani is initially reluctant, as his agreement with Langley is to get two weeks off every summer to spend with his sons, whom he rarely sees because of his globe-trotting work. Rickert informs Ken that his sons have already been sent to Malta and are under the care of attractive CIA agent Patricia Parker (TV actress Doran Clark, who got her start in The Warriors). This pisses off Tani, as it puts his children in harm's way. But it also is enough for him to grudgingly accept his mission. Assisting him in the search for the jet is Father Bedelia (Bruce French), a former Vietnam-era CIA assassin turned Catholic Priest. So the next few days will find Ken Tani trying to balance out time spent with his children and killing off those nosy Russians as they draw closer to him and his family.

Like For Your Eyes Only, this movie follows the exploits of a super secret agent as he scrambles against time to retrieve an important piece of military hardware from the floor of the Mediterranean before the KGB does. On the same token, Ken Tani's introduction in Afghanistan and scenes of him fleeing KGB agents across the roofs of Malta are reminiscent of similar sequences in the previous year's The Living Daylights. That would make the Col. Kleminko character a stand-in for FYEO's Kristatos, with Van Damme a composite for the Emil Leopold Locke and Eric Kriegler characters. Obviously, Ken Tani doesn't get to sleep with anyone, probably because he was Asian and Hollywood just didn't do the whole "Asian Man nails the white girl" at that point. I guess this was a few years before Russell Wong. There is some romantic tension between Ken Tani and Patricia Parker, but it never goes anywhere.

Director Eric Karson was best known for The Octagon when he made this, which was an important martial arts film in Hollywood history. It is, however, an extremely flawed film and some of those same flaws show up in Black Eagle as well. The movie tends to drag whenever there isn't an action sequence going on and even then, the staging of said action scenes (in terms of music, editing, and overall direction) does not serve to get the blood pumping. Karson is certainly no John Glen (or Lewis Gilbert or Terrence Young) in terms of maintaining a steady pace of a 100+ minute film. 

While not the first film to place Sho Kosugi in a leading role, the script does require him to act more than fight. According to the IMDB, it is also a movie in which his character wasn't dubbed over in post-production, unlike his Ninja trilogy. As an actor, Sho Kosugi is okay.  He has a sort of goofy charisma, which serves him well when he's trying to play himself off as a nerdy oceanographer in one early scene. His sons, Kane and Shane, are another story. Their performances are so wooden you could it fashion them into a pair of deadly bokken swords. Obviously, that is no fault of their own. Their dad wanted to include them in his work and dragged them around from one movie set to the next. Kane at least did grow up into one of the genre's underappreciated martial arts actors of the post-2000 era. Who knows what became of Shane, though. The supporting cast does a good enough job that I won't complain too much about the acting.

Sho also handled the fight choreography, whenever that does happen. Most of the fights are over before they begin, with Kosugi just punching or kicking an untrained opponent into submission--although the film implies that his character is killing the KGB agents with one or two blows. The fights are not always filmed well, often shot from angles that obscure the technique being performed. So even when the camera is pulled back far enough, we the viewer can't quite see how Sho is dispatching them. Kosugi and Van Damme do get to throw down no fewer than three times. The first time is a brief scuffle outside a hotel, where the two exchange roundhouse kicks for a few seconds before the latter makes a break for it. The next fight is set at an abandoned fort and goes on for a bit longer. The two are more or less evenly matched in this movie, with Van Damme's Andrei having the advantage of being made of pure muscle and being able to shrug off many of Kosugi's attacks. Van Damme has more or less adopted his signature screen fighting style by this point, holding position after executing punches for maximum muscle exposure. Their final duel is more of the same: one man kicks, the other man blocks; one man kicks, the other man dodges; etc.. Both men get bloodied up quite well in the last fight, though, so at least Kosugi isn't channeling his inner Seagal. And Van Damme fans will enjoy him watching him dodge spin kicks by going into the splits, which is probably not recommended in real life.

Black Eagle is one of those movies that is mildly enjoyable on account of its intentions and putting star Sho Kosugi in a slightly-different type of action movie than his usual ninja nonsense. The Malta locations are pretty nice to look at, too. The faux-007 approach to the material is neat, even if it isn't executed with the panache of the real thing. A better director with a firmer eye for action direction (i.e. John Glen, George P. Cosmatos, maybe even Bruce Malmuth) could made this a minor classic. As it stands, Black Eagle is more a curio for fans of its leading men.