Starring: Keith Cooke, Gary Daniels,
Thom Matthews, Tina Coté, Norbert Weisser, Tim Thomerson, Selena You Chau-Yuet
Director: Albert Pyun
Action Director: Burton Richardson
Albert Pyun has had an odd career trajectory. His first theatrically-released movie was the Conan-influenced The Sword and the Sorcerer, which was a surprise box office hit. He then made the quirky sci-fi comedy Radioactive Dreams before moving on to legendary bad movies like Alien from L.A. His Van Damme collaboration Cyborg turned out to be a modest hit, making about twenty times its production budget in theaters. Nonetheless, it did not take long for Pyun to be consigned to direct-to-video hell, making all manner of low-grade schlock about kickboxers, robots, powerful women, or some combination of the three.
That last element is kinda funny. Think about every time that some hack journalist makes a declaration about a movie like Wonder Woman or the ill-fated Ghostbusters film from 2016, saying that it “draws the line in the sand in the battle of the sexes” and that Hollywood has finally “come to its senses in making a movie about a strong female action hero.” And yet people like Albert Pyun have been embracing them since the 1990s in films like the Nemesis sequels, Raven Hawk and the no-budget Tales of an Ancient Empire. But does Pyun get any credit for his foresight? No. Probably because his movies are often not good…and audiences are very unforgiving about terrible Captain America movies.
Heatseeker is the third movie in Pyun’s informal “Cyborg trilogy,” which includes Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Cyborg and Knights, which female kickboxer Kathy Long. Despite its obvious low budget, which Pyun tries to mask with tight camera angles and limited lighting, it deliver the goods when it comes to martial arts and has a few interesting commentaries about the state of sports in the future.
In the year 2019, cybernetic implants have become the huge rage. People get them in order to look bigger, stronger and more attractive. It is also becoming more and more prevalent in the sports industry. The film opens with Chance O’Brien (Keith Cooke, Reptile in Mortal Kombat and Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) defeating Xao (Gary Daniels, of White Tiger and Recoil) in a kickboxing match. O’Brien is one of the last professional fighters who has not given into peer pressure to get implants installed in his body.
Following his loss, Xao is implanted with an even more powerful system of implants, which is overseen by the marketing director (frequent Pyun collaborator Norbert Weisser, of Ticker and Omega Doom) of the powerful Sianon Corporation, based in Manilla. The marketing director, who has the unlikely name of Tsui Tung, wants to corner the cyber implants market and to that end, has organized a tournament in which the best fighters from around the world—all of whom are using implants from a competing company—will throw down to determine just who makes the best hardware. And just to be sure, Tsui wants Chance to participate as well.
Meanwhile, Chance is in Rome for a fight—his opponent, Raul, is played Burton Richardson, the film’s fight choreographer. Following his (slim) victory, Chance decides to take a break from the ring and marry his trainer, Jo (Tina Coté, another Albert Pyun regular). Before they have a chance to settle down, Tsui and his men kidnap Jo and leave him an ultimatum: go to Manilla to participate in the tournament, or he’ll never see his fiancée again. With no other alternative but to fight, Chance flies to the Philippines to fight for his girlfriend’s freedom. But as confident that Tsui Tung is that his company’s cyber devices are the best, he’s not above treachery just to ensure that the odds continue to be stocked in his favor. But maybe Chance and his fellow fighter Bradford (Thom Matthews, of Bloodmatch and Friday the 13th Part VI) can figure out a way to rescue Jo without having to put Chance’s life on the line.
There is an interesting (and timely) story to be told in Heatseeker. I’ve heard people complain about how technological advances in manufacturing sports equipment are ruining sports. I know an amateur tennis player who says that the latest racquets are so powerful that 80% (or some other large number) of the sport becomes dependent on the serve. Or how the latest soccer ball designs make it move awkwardly in the air, making life difficult for the goalies. What about the Speedo LZR swimsuit, which led to so many broken records that the International Olympic Committee ended up banning it?
Heatseeker deals with a similar theme, albeit in the form of kickboxing cyborgs. The tournament allows people with up to 50% of their body replaced by cybernetic implants to participate, athough they mention that some people have found ways to make changes on a cellular level, thus bending the rules. By this point in sports history, Chance O’Brien is the only professional fighter left who still believes that Natural is Better. The crass commercialism of professional sports is emphasized with each participant in the tournament being introduced in the ring in terms the company produced his implants, with the commentators going on spiels about the history and current economic situation of the company, not to mention how the outcome of each fight will affect the company’s stock performance. The athlete of 2019, according to Heatseeker, has become less important than the equipment they use.
This is one of those few cases in which I could get behind the film getting a remake. I’m sure that if that were to ever happen, the filmmakers would probably miss the point and just focus on the bells and whistles of kickboxing cyborgs as opposed to commenting on the state of sports and its relationship to technology. What is especially interesting is that if the film were to get an all-female remake, that would change the game entirely. Imagine a world where all the female MMA fighters are jacked up on cyborg parts, having defeated all of the naturals accept for a single fighter. That might become a metaphor for the entrance of transsexual women into the female sports arena and the fears regarding that, especially once we get more trans women in contact sports.
Jeet Kune Do stylist Burton Richardson handled the fight direction duties for this movie. Richardson worked a number of times with Albert Pyun, with Knights being their first collaboration. He proceeded to work on the fourth and fifth Kickboxer movies, among others. Despite never reaching the level of his other American colleagues, he definitely showed a lot of promise in this movie. Perhaps it’s his background in a Chinese martial arts style, especially one that draws on concepts from so many other fighting systems, but the hand to hand exchanges, especially those involving Keith Cooke and Gary Daniels are a lot more complex than your usual metronymic haymaker-step-block-step-haymaker exchanges in Hollywood fight fests. It helps that both Cooke and Daniels have extensive training in Chinese martial arts styles, too. Both men are awesome kickers and get ample opportunities to show off some great bootwork skills. I also appreciate that the other fights in the tournament (i.e. those that don’t involve Cooke and Daniels) are just as well-mounted as the “main events.” Look for top Hollywood action director Chad Stahelski as one of the participants. There are also a number of group fights between Cooke and a number of less-skilled opponents, which gives him some great opportunities to take a lot of people out in a flurry of quick punches and kicks.
My main complaint is that the final fight between Gary Daniels and Keith Cooke is disappointingly short, running only about three minutes or so. Despite being the most advanced of the high-tech cyborg fighters—the film calls them “Heatseekers,” hence the title—Daniels gets his butt handed to him rather easily. I mean he gets in some good hits, but it doesn’t take long for Cooke to disable his cybernetics and get the upper hand. Another (lesser) flaw is how it seems that the characters’ styles, as described by the announcer, seems to change from fight to fight. In the climax, Cooke is said to use “traditional kung fu” and Daniels uses “high-tech shootfighting.” But durning Cooke’s fight with Thom Matthews, the announcer says he uses the “kickboxing-tae kwon do style.”
I ended up enjoying Heatseeker a lot. I’ve been a fan of Keith Cooke ever since he played Reptile in Mortal Kombat. I then watched him in that movie’s sequel, the China O’Brien movies and King of the Kickboxers and feel that he was the great Hollywood bootmaster of the 1990s, easily more so than Jean-Claude Van Damme. I’m glad that Albert Pyun, for all of his limitations as a writer and director (and within the confines of a visibly limited budget), gave us the viewer a proper showcase for the man’s talent, as well as those of his co-stars. It’s not art, but it’s a fantastic face-kicking festa!
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