Starring: Jeff Speakman, Mako, John Dye, James Hong, Dr. Toru Tanaka, Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, James Lew (cameo), Al Leong (cameo)
Director: Mark DiSalle
Action Directors: Rick Avery, Ed Parker
The Perfect Weapon is a tragic film. It’s not a bad movie. In fact, it’s one of America’s best martial arts movies, especially in terms of martial arts movies that didn’t have a Hong Kong action director working on the choreography. That’s the problem. It is one of the best and since this movie came out in 1991, the main actor has not come close to replicating the success that his first major starring role was. This was Jeff Speakman’s first role as a star and frankly, practically every movie he’s made since has been something of a disappointment (except Deadly Outbreak).
The movie opens with our main character, Jeff (Jeff Speakman) working on a construction site as your average blue-collar worker. What does this establish? Well, that he has a normal job. We need to know that. Why? Have you ever watched old kung fu movies where the hero could best be described as a “wandering fighter” and you have no idea how they get paid or survive? At least we know Jeff is a regular worker in addition to being a top-class butt kicker.
Well, we then have an opening credits sequence that shows us that this movie is going to be something of a homage to the flicks of old: the opening credits are showed as we watch Jeff perform a martial arts form in the front room of his apartment. This is straight out of the old school. Remember the beginnings to movies like Snake in Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Tai Chi? They were the same way: the lead performs a form of a style central to the storyline in front of a red background as the credits are shown. It’s the same thing here.
After his training sequence, Jeff calls his friend Kim (Mako) in the city. However, their call is interrupted by a member of the Korean mafia who wants Kim to use his antique store to store drugs (shades of Revenge of the Ninja here). Sensing something is wrong, Jeff drives to the city to help his friend. We are then treated to a flashback of how Jeff became a good fighter. We see him as a troubled youth, getting into fights and stuff. When his policeman father is about to put him into military school, Kim, a friend of the family, suggests that he be enrolled in a kenpo school to learn self-discipline. So Jeff begins to learn kenpo and all seems well until several years later when he gets in a fight with a football player and nearly beats the kid to death. Jeff’s dad, scared at what Jeff might become, kicks Jeff out of his house, thus estranging him from his family.
Jeff arrives in the city just in time to visit Kim and whoop on some gangsters who are wrecking the joint. Well, that’s just beginning of the gangster’s problems. While they’re back at their headquarters licking their wounds, they are approached by their boss’s right-hand man (Toru Tanaka) who gives them a message from their boss. Their message comes in the form of head butt to one of the guys that instantly kills him. Now, you may be asking why or how a simple head butt could kill a mere mortal man. Well, that’s because Toru Tanaka isn’t a mere mortal man. He’s a walking mountain in the same tradition as Goldfinger’s Oddjob. Toru Tanaka is the type of person who would’ve made a better Kingpin than Michael Clark Duncan. He’s made something of a living for himself playing the villain’s right-hand man in various action movies, including Eye for an Eye, Last Action Hero, and even 3 Ninjas. Here he plays the same role; he gets to kill people while smiling and muttering in Japanese (or Korean) while leaving flowers with his victims. Actually, if you saw Daredevil, Kingpin did the same thing. Coincidence?
Well, Tanaka’s (his character’s name is the same as his last name) next job is Kim. Unfortunately, Jeff is out taking a walk when Tanaka arrives. When Jeff comes back, Kim is already laying dead in his bed. Jeff chases after Tanaka’s car but soon looses him.
The next day at the crime scene, Jeff finds out that the detective assigned to the case is his brother, David (John Dye). Jeff, who’s been estranged from his family for years, refuses to cooperate and basically tells his brother to stay out of his business. Jeff begins to investigate Kim’s murder by himself. He starts his investigation at, you’re going to love this, a martial arts school in Little Korea (or whatever it’s called). It’s an interesting idea, huh? It’s as if he assumed all Korean mafia members are martial arts experts or all Asian mafia people are. Maybe he watched too many 1980s HK films in which drug dealers used fisticuffs more than guns. It may be a silly stereotype, but I think I would’ve watched more crime thrillers of my own free will if they started all their investigations at martial arts schools.
Anyways, Jeff goes into the school and finds a guy who knows who he’s looking for. When the guy refuses him, he challenges him and his cohorts (one of whom is martial arts B-movie staple James Lew) to a fight. Another page right out of the old school. Jeff takes out the three of them with his superior kenpo skills and is told that the dude he’s looking for hangs out at the Croc Pit club.
That night, Jeff goes into the club and (surprise, surprise) picks a fight with the lackey and bunch of other goons before getting knocked unconscious. Unfortunately for Jeff, one of the party animals present at the club is our good friend Tanaka. Fortunately, Tanaka’s boss tells him not to kill Jeff and Jeff is simply thrown outside.
The next day, Jeff is approached by a man named Yong (James Hong) who says he was a friend of Kim’s. Yong tells him that he knows a soldier-of-fortune, Kai, that knows who killed Kim. Jeff takes the advice, finds guy, and politely asks him (by threatening to strangle him) who killed Kim. Kai responds Sam, whom Jeff learns is one of the four heads of the Korean mafia in the city. Jeff infiltrates Sam’s hideout (a hotel) and is about to deal some martial arts justice when he learns that he’s been tricked by Yong, who’s the real culprit behind the murder.
So now Jeff must do whatever he can to find Yong before Yong exits the country.
So that’s our movie. It’s a fairly typical martial-artist-avenges-friend/master/whatever’s death scenario, which offers no new surprises but his handled fairly competently. However, I don’t think the script was designed to offer any special surprises in the story department. The standard story is more of an excuse to show off Jeff Speakman’s kenpo skills. The movie is basically an old school kung fu movie set in modern times. This movie would make an interesting companion piece to The Death Games because they both mere excuses to establish their leading players as martial arts dynamos. All the elements are here: the opening credits demonstration, the inclusion of kenpo philosophy throughout the film, a specific style being showcased by the hero, most of the action scenes being hand-to-hand, etc. This isn’t a modern action thriller as much as it’s an updated chopsockey film and that’s the way I like it.
I remember one movie review book criticized this movie for, among other things, the fact that Jeff Speakman’s character’s name is Jeff. I think he meant that this is sign of a bad script. Probably. It may be very well a decent and understandable complaint too. But, shall I remind you prideful people that Jackie Chan has gone by the name of Jackie in gosh-knows-how-many movies and you don’t complain? What’s up with that? So who cares if Jeff plays Jeff or Tanaka plays Tanaka? Aren’t you missing the point? Don’t you know that this movie is a tribute to a martial arts style and not an attempt to write some sort of pretentious, thought-provoking script? Don’t you realize that this movie technically has more plot than Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master, which you all praised?
Now, Jeff Speakman makes a capable lead and is backed up the best Asian supporting cast money can buy. First we have Mako, a Japanese actor who has played supporting roles in everything from comedies to action films and is almost instantaneously recognizable (that and he’s the only actor on record that is named after a species of shark). Villainy is provided by James Hong, one of the greatest character actors ever and will probably known forever for his portrayal David Lo Pan, the evil sorcerer from Big Trouble in Little China. Actually, his best role ever was as Tia Carrere’s father in Wayne’s World 2, especially in his mock kung fu scene with Mike Meyers. Backing him up is Toru Tanaka and Cary “Shang Tsung” Hiroyuki-Tagawa, another perennial Asian movie villain. In addition to that, we can mention the James Lew (Dragon, the Bruce Lee Story, Lethal Weapon 4) and even a super fast appearance by Al Leong as a stuntman and needless to say, Jeff Speakman had some mighty fine backup going into this movie.
However, there is one little thing. Absolutely none of the Asian actors in the principal roles are actually Korean. Interesting, huh? You make a movie about the Korean Mafia but then you forget to cast any Koreans. It’s not like you don’t have any Korean martial arts actors. You could’ve imported Hwang Jang-Lee. What about Phillip Rhee of the Best of the Best fame? Grandmaster Bong Soo-Han? I wonder why Americans do this? It seems to support the notion that all Asians look alike and are alike too. Oh, and it continues to this very day. Did you know that? I heard Hollywood is making a movie based on the novel Diary of a Geisha with Michelle Yeoh (Malaysian-born Chinese) and Zhang Ziyi (Mainland Chinese) in the lead roles. And critics wonder why racist stereotypes appear so often in Asian movies.
However, we don’t watch American martial arts movies for things like acting or script, do we? No. Never. Really. No, I’m not joking. Intelligent martial arts movies are not made in the United States. There’s some sort of cinematic law against it. What we watch these movies for are the fight scenes. Duh! This movie happily has quite a few fight scenes, which is exactly why it’s so tragic: no other Jeff Speakman movie has managed to put in as many fight scenes (or action scenes in general) as this movie. This is compounded by the fact that Jeff Speakman had real talent, as opposed to the shmos who are making action movies today who don’t have talent and then have to hide it all using MTV editing and CGI.
Anyways, the fights are pretty good considering the fact that they weren’t choreographed by a Hong Kong or Japanese stunt team. There are some truly great moments, such as Jeff’s ultra-fast handwork in taking out James Lew or some muggers on the street. He also looks good beating people down with sticks. The best fight is definitely his fight against James Lew and two other fighters in the gym. While there are some little gripes about close-ups and some editing problems, those are minor considering the bootage involved. These are even more easily forgivable since so many fights rely on special FX these days that this movie easily satisfies one’s yearnings for the old school.
Now, there were a lot of reasons that Jeff Speakman could’ve been a great martial arts star on these shores. First of all, he was the type of guy we could all relate to (in one way or another). He came across as your average hard-working middle class man in both appearance and attitude. Free of accents, CIA operative “histories”, exotic philosophies, and the “I’m the best at everything” attitude, Jeff Speakman was the type of martial artist that American audiences could look at and easily imagine as their next-door neighbor.
Steven Seagal had a tendency to play practically the same role over and over again: a CIA/special forces agent (or ex-CIA/special forces agent) with a past or with a dumbfounding knowledge of some sort of philosophy or religion that most people aren’t aware nor would often care about. I guess the problem is that it’s not always important to the story being told and ends up becoming pretentious and/or unnecessary. When you look at American audiences, they don’t relate well to these sorts of things and too often tend to be xenophobes or simply don’t care. Speakman tended to play people that were more “normal” by comparison, people that audiences could often relate to. While he didn’t have quite the dynamic range that Van Damme (comparatively speaking, Van Damme has had a somewhat colorful career in the various roles that he’s played), he didn’t have the pretentious baggage that Seagal carried with him.
Most importantly, Jeff Speakman had a unique style to showcase in his films: kempo. One of the reasons for Steven Seagal’s initial popularity was the uniqueness of aikido, a martial arts style which, if nothing else, was dedicated to snapping wrists and limbs in the quickest, most brutally realistic way. That went over well with American audiences, who up until The Matrix, had been grounded in “realistic” martial arts. So kempo, was another unique style that had a lot of onscreen potential. As we saw in The Perfect Weapon, it used a lot of super-quick hand techniques that looked great onscreen in addition to your usual kicks, grappling, and weapons. It became almost a trademark for Speakman; Seagal had his aikido limb-breaking, Van Damme had his jumping spin kicks, and Speakman had his fast hands. What made him arguably better was that he was no slouch doing the other things like kicks or weapons; Seagal couldn’t kick, Van Damme’s punches were too stiff, but Speakman was a lot more well-rounded.
Tragically, Speakman never became a big name in Hollywood, but was soon relegated to making B-movies. His second movie, Street Knight, had a short run in theatres and since then, all of what he’s done has been straight-to-video. However, that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that most of the scripts that he’s chosen to do since The Perfect Weapon have barely given him ample time to show off his awesome kempo skills. This has been somewhat common in Steven Seagal movies, but at least Steven Seagal has several movies that give him more than ample time to show off his aikido. Speakman maybe has two (at least that I’ve seen) that give him a good opportunity to bust out the goods. Most everything else has been a disappointment[1]. That’s why I’d say that Speakman’s career is something of a tragedy.
Well, The Perfect Weapon is without a doubt Jeff Speakman’s best movie and possibly one of the best American martial arts movies made in the post-Bruce Lee era. Now, I love my HK movies as much as the next guy, but I have to give credit where credit is due. Jeff Speakman and company, you all made a tremendous freshman effort.
[1] - Street Knight- Jeff
Speakman plays a private investigator whose services are contracted by a woman
to find her brother, who’s gotten mixed up in a gang war. It turns out that the
said conflict is being engineered by a gang of jewelry thieves, who want to
divert the law’s attention while they perform some high stakes robberies. There
isn’t a lot of fighting in this movie; the best scene is where he uses his
ultra-quick kempo techniques to beat a guy to death with a wrench. (2/5)
The Expert- This time around, Speakman is a SWAT Team trainer whose
sister is murdered by a serial killer. The killer escapes the death penalty by
pleading insanity and Speakman resolves to take justice into his own hands.
Like the movie before, there’s very little fighting in this one. There’s a cool
scene where he does some slick knife fighting on a prison inmate. (2/5)
Deadly Outbreak- In spite of the title which brings to mind the
movie Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman, this movie is your
usual Die Hard-clone. Luckily, it’s one of Speakman’s best films as
it’s filled to the brim with action and has a lot more kempo than his other
films. Our man Speakman is a security guard at an Israeli laboratory who goes
into action when a group of terrorists led by Ron Silver take over the
facility. Lot’s of fighting, gunplay, explosions, and chases to keep your
average action fan more than satisfied. (3.5/5)
Scorpio One- This was a Sci-Fi Channel original movie dealing with a
space station and some government conspiracies regarding it or something. Jeff
Speakman plays a special forces officer who goes onto the space station looking
for a saboteur. The movie is fairly unremarkable; there’s a scene in the
beginning where Speakman wipes out some Middle Eastern terrorists and a little
bit of fighting on the space station, but nothing remarkable. (1.5/5)
Memorial Day- A political conspiracy thriller that has something to do
with Jeff Speakman as a soldier who has amnesia or has been brainwashed into
being an assassin. I don’t remember much more than that. The movie rips off
scenes (and dialogue) from Scorpio One and is overall
forgettable. There are some kempo fast hands fighting in the end (my dad and I
were impressed), but nothing special. (1.5/5)
Escape from Atlantis- A family adventure movie about a dad (Speakman)
and his children who accidentally end up in Atlantis during a family outing.
They soon find themselves fighting for their lives against the tyrannical ruler
of the city. Speakman has about two fight scenes. In one, he beats up a buch of
Atlanteans, much to the surprise of his children (and me, for that matter). In
the finale, he takes on the ruler of Atlantis in a bit filled with spiked balls
swinging on chains. Nothing great, but not bad, either. (2/5)
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