Eliminators (2016)

Eliminators (2016)

 

Starring: Scott Adkins, Stu Bennett, Daniel Caltagirone, James Cosmo, Ty Glaser, Olivia Mace, Stephen Marcus, Nick Nevern, Lily Ann Stubbs
Director: James Nunn
Action Director: Tim Man

 

The year 2016 was an especially busy year for Scott Adkins, him having no fewer than eight movie roles that particular year. The biggest movie he showed up in was as one of Mads Mikkelson’s goons in the MCU blockbuster Doctor Strange, while he had smaller roles in movies like Criminal (with Kevin Costner and Ryan Reynolds) and The Brothers Grimsby (with Sacha Baron Cohen). He had non-fighting roles in the suspense-thriller Home Invasion and the 13 Hours knock-off Jarhead 3: The Siege. Only three of those movies really gave Adkins a chance to show off his martial arts skills, being Hard Target 2; Boyka: Undisputed; and this one.

Adkins plays Martin Parker, a mild-mannered widower who’s raising his eight-year-old daughter, Carly (Lily Ann Stubbs), while making a living as a security guard somewhere in London. One day, a trio of hooligans break into his house looking for a stash of cocaine, beating Martin silly with aluminum baseball bats. The joke’s on them: they got the wrong address. However, as Martin has seen the ringleader’s face, they decide to off him anyway. Martin switches into (heh) Eliminator-mode and dispatches all three of the ruffians with killer efficiency, after which he passes out from blood loss.

Parker wakes up in a hospital, handcuffed to his hospital bed because he’s now being accused of murder. Apparently, British laws involving self-defense, trespassing and Stand Your Ground are either nonexistent or they have some crappy police officers working there. Martin is declared a public menace, his daughter is handed over to Social Services, and his face is plastered all over the news.

Before you can say History of Violence, two groups of people go into action. On one hand, some government agency in the United States—for whom Martin has apparently worked—gets word and sends one of their number, Ray (Daniel Caltagirone, of Outpost: Black Sun and Time Machine: Rise of the Morlocks), to help get Martin—whose real name is Thomas—out of trouble. On the other hand, an arms dealer named Cooper (James Cosmo, of Highlander and Braveheart) also finds out and sends Europe’s greatest hitman, Bishop (professional wrestler Stu Bennett, credited as his wrestling moniker “Wade Barrett”), to ice Thomas. And thus begins the race against time for Mart…er…Thomas to rescue his daughter and find safety at the American embassy before Bishop gets to both of them.

Eliminators is a solid little action-thriller directed by James Nunn. Nunn had previously worked with Adkins on Green Street 3: Hooligans and would team-up with Adkins a few laters for One Shot. Nunn also worked with WWE studios, who produced this, on the fifth (!) and sixth (!!) entries in the Marine franchise, which is one movie that I never thought would birth so many sequels—see The Scorpion King for another film starring a professional wrestler that bore more sequels than anybody thought necessary. Nunn keeps the pace moving after the initial ten-minute introduction of our father-daughter pair, making sure that there is as much suspense as there is violent action. Despite having four parties of characters doing something at any given moment, Nunn wisely keeps the focus on the Adkins-Bennett cat-and-mouse chase and avoids any unnecessary convolutions in the plot.

While not a flaw per se, one of the strangest decisions that this movie makes is to cast Englishman Scott Adkins as an American…albeit one living in London. His American accent is passable, I guess. But with so many other movies in which he plays a British expat in the States, you’d think the filmmakers would just embrace the British setting and make him English. Whatever.

The action duties are once more handed over to Tim Man, making this his third collaboration with Scott Adkins (of ten overall) in the past decade. In my opinion, the best choreography comes early on when Thomas is escaping from the hospital and has to face two policemen armed with batons. There is some nice two-on-one choreography as Adkins has to fend off their simultaneous attacks until he can steal one of their weapons and unleash the hatred with the baton. It’s a quick scene, but it has a nice Jackie Chan-esque one-on-many vibe to it. There are a couple of quick fights that feel a bit more influenced by brawling and MMA.

In the final act, Adkins has two separate bouts with Stu Bennett. Bennett towers over Adkins and his wrestler body makes him an intimidating opponent, Adkins’s own musculature notwithstanding. Both fights are a mixture of Adkins’s trademark bootwork and ground fighting, mixing jiu-jitsu with professional wrestling throws and slams. Bennett is practically a man-mountain and repeatedly goes all Zangief on our hero, even throwing in a nice drop kick at one point. Adkins does his Donnie Yen-influenced jumping double-side kick in the second fight, while ending the first fight with a nice backflip-turned-drop kick as well. This is the best work that Adkins has done, but it’s done well and we always welcome a David-vs-Goliath martial arts fight, which this movie comes close to giving us.

This review is part of our "September of Scott" at It's a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For.

Two Scott Adkins Films Directed by Ernie Barbarash

Assassination Games (2011)
Aka: Weapon

 

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, Ivan Kaye, Valentin Teodosiu, Alin Panc, Kevin Chapman, Serban Celea, Michael Higgs, Kris Van Varenberg, Marija Karan, Bianca Brigitte Van Varenberg
Director: Ernie Barbarash
Action Director: Stanimir Stamatov

 

A lot of fans of both Van Damme and Scott Adkins were disappointed with the results of their first face-off, Isaac Florentine’s The Shepherd: Border Patrol. The announcement of a second team-up, Assassination Games, gave fans hope that the film would rise above what they thought was the mediocrity of a film made by people who could surely do better. The director was to be Ernie Barbarash, best known for his work on the cult favorite Cube series—he wrote and produced Cube²: Hypercube and took on all three duties (writing, producing and directing) for Cube Zero. At the very least, fans could expect an exceptionally violent action thriller.

JCVD plays Vincent Brazil, a professional hitman based in Bucharest, Romania. He lives alone in a luxurious apartment hidden inside a shabby project, spending his free time playing the violin and keeping his pad as neat and tidy as possible. In fact, he’s such a neat freak that it becomes comical at times.

Scott Adkins plays Roland Flint, a retired hitman who was in the employ of Interpol? It is always interesting when movies in general portray Interpol as a law enforcement agency, when they mainly an crime intelligence agency who leave the work of actually arresting people to the local authorities; they mainly just gather and share information. Well, this movie actually understands that and points out that Interpol has been hiring assassins to wipe out criminals in places where the police are too corrupt to actually do anything. In any case, Flint lives in the Ukraine, where he takes care of his catatonic wife, Anna (JCVD’s daughter, Bianca).

The new Interpol chief, Wilson Herrod (Serban Celea, of Dragonheart 3 and Anaconda 3), is facing allegations of corruption and wants to eliminate any evidence of Interpol’s dabbling in for-hire killings. The two men behind the contracts, Godfrey (Avengement’s Michael Higgs) and Schell (JCVD’s own son, Kris), decide that Flint needs to be eliminated. To that end, they arrange for Romanian crime lord Polo Yakur (Ivan Keye, of “The Vikings”) to be released from prison. Polo and his men are the men who raped and beat Bianca and left her the way she is. That is enough to get Flint riled up and back in the game.

Both Roland and Vincent are given the same assignment to kill Polo, unbeknownst to the other. Both try to kill their target at the same time, but end up getting in each other’s way. The only person dead by the time the smoke clears is Polo’s brother. So now Polo wants revenge on his would-be assassins, and those two will not only have to contend with the corrupt Interpol agents, but with each other, too.

Despite the set-up, there is not a whole lot of action in Assassination Games. There are a few outbursts of violence and brutality, and even a bit of rape and torture, but this is mainly a story driven film. There is a sub-plot involving Vincent and a prostitute (The Rite’s Marija Karan) who lives in the next apartment over, through which the former gains much of his lost humanity. The film is constantly jumping back and forth between the four groups of characters as they try to out-manoeuver each other, although we know that Vincent and Roland will ultimately join forces. As good as Barbarash and his team make the film look, I do think his approach to the material (i.e. downplaying the action) is ultimately disappointing.

The action is brought to you by Stanimir Stamatov, a veteran stuntman who has also doubled for Van Damme on several occasions. Stamatov has some experience in the fight choreography and action direction department, including on the 2011 Conan remake and the more recent fem-empowerment action film The Princess. Sadly, he doesn’t have much opportunity to show off his talents. The highlight is a brief scuffle between Scott Adkins and Van Damme, which happens about halfway into the movie. Adkins shows off some of his bootwork, but not much. The climax is rushed and ultimately a disappointment—we want to see our heroes fight, not kill everybody with a remote-controlled machine gun. As I said, the film looks good and is generally well acted, but falls below the action potential of its stars.

 

  

Abduction (2019)
Aka: Twilight Zodiac

 

Starring: Scott Adkins, Andy On, Truong Ngoc Anh, Lily Ji, Aki Aleong, Daniel Whyte, Mike Leeder, Brahim Chab, Paul W. He, Philippe Joly
Director: Ernie Barbarash
Action Director: Tim Man

 

Oh, another Scott Adkins film directed by Ernie Barbarash. Assassination Games looked good, but was underwhelming. Barbarash had better luck with Adkins’s contemporary, Michael Jai White, on Falcon Rising, which a lot of martial arts fans says is one of White’s best movies. He also did a good job with Van Damme’s Six Bullets, which I’ve reviewed here. But…Abduction is a science fiction film produced by Roger Corman…so is the result closer to Cube? Or Black Mask 2?

The film opens in a strange chamber where a bunch of lifeless bodies are being dumped. A hulking man (Mike Leeder) is going from body to body, removing a spider-like robot from the back of the corpses’ necks. One of the dead bodies isn’t quite dead. That would be Quinn, played by Scott Adkins. Quinn slips away from Hulking Man and makes his way through the place to another chamber, where a bunch of people are being kept in cages with strange collars around their necks. Quinn recognizes one of the people as Lucy, his daughter. Before he can free her, a hooded figure appears and sends a bunch of mind-controlled fighters to stop him. Quinn dispatches his opponents, but is knocked out of the building, which is actually a castle in another dimension!

Quinn mysteriously emerges from a fountain in modern-day Saigon, where he wanders around with amnesia before he is ultimately arrested and placed in a psychiatric hospital. He is placed under the responsibility of Dr. Anna (Truong Ngoc Anh, of Rise and Tracer). She ultimately discovers that Quinn, for all his youth, had been around in the mid-80s when he claimed his daughter was kidnapped by aliens. So, why does he look so young?

While this is going on, a former Chinese soldier-turned-hitman named Conner (Andy On, of Invisible Target and Bad Blood) is dealing with a disappearance of his own. His wife, Maya (Lily Ji, of Skiptrace and Pacific Rim: Uprising), has disappeared. Does it have anything to do with the local Eurotrash mobsters whom he murdered? Or do his employers, Dao (Aki Aleong, of The Quest) and Sonny (Paul W. He, of Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), know something that Conner doesn’t?

Abduction is indeed a strange duck. It gives us interdimensional aliens who, according to some characters, are responsible for introducing Taoist iconography (like the bagua, or the Eight Trigram) to the Chinese. They also drain people’s qi for their own purposes, either to stay alive or to power their technology. Plus, robot spiders, hooded figures that belong in a Dark City rip-off, martial arts, the Russian mob, and giant crystalline monsters!

Despite being an American-Chinese co-production, the film doesn’t always look as good as it should. Ernie Barbarash is certainly no Alex Proyas. The CGI landscape of the castle is on the level of a SyFy original film. Some of the optical effects at the end are good, however. The main problem is that whenever the two main characters aren’t throwing punches and kicks, the film feels a bit slow, especially in the middle when Andy On is running around trying to make sense of the film’s story.

Frequent Scott Adkins collaborator Tim Man handled the action and does a great job, for the most part. The opening fight places Adkins against a bunch of fighters armed with poles and nooses. It’s a well-choreographed fight and starts off the film perfectly. Adkins also gets to beat up a pair of Vietnamese cops with nightsticks in a short, but sweet fight. After that, Adkins is more or less sidelined while Andy On picks up the slack. Andy On has certainly grown as a screen fighter since his early Black Mask 2 days (which also pit him against Scott Adkins) and he uses a lot of his grappling and groundfighting moves that he picked up in films like Unbeatable and Special ID. On has a prolonged shootout in a hotel with Russian gangsters that is the first highlight of the movie and worth the price of rental.

The real showstopper, however, is when Adkins and On throwdown near the end as we viewers hoped they would. It’s the perfect mixture of crazy footwork and MMA, with Adkins’s character being super-powered by this point. So be prepared for Adkins’s jumping back kicks and killer spin boots. Andy On matches him move for move in this sequence. It doesn’t quite reach the level of Special ID or Once Upon a Time in Shanghai, but it certainly a great showcase for On’s skills. It’s almost enough to forgive the movie for forgetting to have a proper climax…almost.

These reviews are a part of "September of Scott" at It's a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For:

Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013)

Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013)

 

Starring: Scott Adkins, Kane Kosugi, Miki Hiiji, Shun Sugata, Markus Waldow, Tim Man, Mukesh S. Bhatt, Vithaya Pansringarm, Jawed El Berni
Director: Isaac Florentine
Action Director: Tim Man

 

Ninja: Shadow of a Tear is of those instances in which the sequel trumps the original. It is clear that Isaac Florentine and his crew actually learned from their mistakes. There is more and better action, a better final villain, beautiful SE Asian locales, a more believable plot, less horrible CGI blood, and more acting from Adkins. It is one of the top twenty (if not ten) martial arts films of the past 10 or 15 years and just gives us oodles of well-choreographed fight scenes, which is what we the viewer want.

Sometime after the events of the first film, Casey-san (a returning Adkins) has married his sweetheart Namiko (Rogue Ninja’s Miki Hijii) and has taken over her father’s dojo in Japan. To makes things even sweeter, Namiko is pregnant with their first child. Casey even has enough money to buy her nice jewelry! It’s all sunshine and smiles in the Bowman household!

One day, Casey has a violent run-in with some local hoods. Despite the random nature of the attack, Casey notices that one of them is an exceptional martial artist (most muggers can’t perform jumping triple front kicks) and is armed with a dagger with special characters engraved on the handle. Nonetheless, Casey keeps those facts to himself and resolves to not involve the police. Later that evening, Namiko is murdered at home while Casey is out buying her chocolate and algae for her pregnancy cravings. A distraught Casey assumes that the thugs from earlier were responsible, tracks them down, and murders them good.

A mourning Casey travels to his senpai’s dojo in Thailand to train off his bad emotions. Master Nakabara (Kane Kosugi, of Blood Heat and Coweb) thinks that the change in scenery will help Casey get over his wife’s premature death. After some time, one of the students (prolific stuntman Jawed El Berni, whose résumé includes Black Adam and The Suicide Squad) is murdered in the same fashion his wife was: choked/bled to death with a cord covered with metal barbs. Nakabara informs Casey that the only ninja to use that fighting technique is Goro (Shun Sugata, of Blade of the Immortal and Kill Bill: Vol. 1), a big bruiser in the Golden Triangle drug trade. Goro’s brother had been a ninja shadow warrior stationed in SE Asia during World War 2 and was killed in a duel with Casey’s own master, the late Sensei Takeda. Armed with this information, Casey heads over to Myanmar for some good ol’ fashioned ninja revenge.

The plot is interesting. I do like the faux-WW2 footage establishing the use of ninja in Burmese jungle warfare. It’s consistent with what we’ve seen in various movies (and was possibly quite true) about the Japanese wanting to take over all of Asia, the way the Nazis wanted to conquer Europe, Russia, and whatever country was too strong for Italy to take over. While we have seen a bit too much of Thailand in recent movies, the fact that much of the action takes place in Myanmar is a nice change of pace. I can only think of the fourth Rambo movie that also has been set there (in terms of action films).

Where the plot goes wrong is the general sense of time. It has none. You see, assuming this film is set in 2013, then that would mean that almost 70 years has elapsed since the end of the war. Goro would have to be in his 80s, although Shun Sugata was 58 when this movie was made. There is also a scene where Casey uncovers a grave in the Burmese jungle and finds what I believe is supposed to be a picture of Namiko as a child. If she was a wartime-baby, than she’d be about 70, not in her late 20s or early 30s.

While it is feasible that Kane Kosugi’s Nakabara could be the son of a WW2 veteran, it means that his dad would have been in his 50s when he was born. The writer should have gone for the characters being grandchildren of WW2 veterans as opposed to children. That would definitely have been easier to swallow. This is similar to The Texas Chainsaw 3-D, in which Alexandra Daddario’s character is supposed to have been a baby during the events of the original film (1974), but is only in her twenties some 40 years later.

So, the action. There is a whole bunch of it and I really don’t think that Adkins will be able to outdo himself in this one. Hwang Jang Lee would be proud of all the aerial kicks he does, while he gets the spin on some his whirlwind kicks that’ll satisfy anyone who’s been waiting since Righting Wrongs to see someone get it right. The choreography itself is excellent, with lots of actual exchanges that keep the fights from becoming Thai-style show reels. While most of the weapons on display are katana and knives, Casey does get to kill a lot of people with kama, or sickles. I also love that one of the main ninja uses a variation on the kusari weapon, but made with barbed wire. Mix that with the fact that said character has a quirky neck twitch and is a poet, and you got a memorable villain.

The action was handled by Tim Man, and you can bet your top dollar that I’ll be keeping an eye on the man’s work in the future. He obviously knows what he’s doing, which is more than I can say with many Chinese/Hong Kong action directors today. He honestly knows what his audience expects and gives it to them in spades. Sure, some of the fighting is a bit more wushu than karate and kenjutsu, but it looks great, benefits from some excellent camerawork, and comes so fast and frequent that only the stodgiest of purists will really care. Man shows up in the film as Goro’s second-in-command[1], and his duel with Adkins has the feel of one of those Mad Dog fights in The Raid: Redemption. Tim Man performs some great aerial kicks and the fight is an excellent exchange of powerful and flexible kicks, hand-to-hand fighting, and knife techniques.

The finale is considered by many fans to be one of the hallmarks of Western/Hollywood fight action. Without getting into any detail about the circumstances of the fight, Scott Adkins has to throw down with his senpai, played by Kane Kosugi—it’s not much of a spoiler, since Kosugi hadn’t actually had a fight before Casey went to Myanmar. Most viewers will figure out that you don’t not put your second-billed martial arts actor in a fight unless you’re saving him for something big. And big it is. Two of the best martial arts actors just go buck wild on each other for a good five minutes. Lots of wonderful kicking from both men, plus complex exchanges of handwork. Casey’s character is said to be a demon with the bo staff, so of course he picks one up when Nakabara comes at him with a katana. The latter also goes Darth Maul on Casey with the double katana, which is really neat. And yes, there is a lot of Hong Kong-style furniture destruction in this fight, guaranteed to make more frail viewers (and some of us veterans) wince in discomfort. It’s such a great fight that it makes you sad to know just how underused Kane Kosugi is in the martial arts genre.

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[1] - Watch for the end credits where Tim Man accidentally shows up twice on the cast list!

This review is part of our "September of Scott" at It's a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For.

Castle Falls (2021)

Castle Falls (2021)

 

Starring: Scott Adkins, Dolph Lundgren, Vas Sanchez, Scott Hunter, Kim DeLonghi, Connor Lyons, Justin B. Wooten, Kevin Wayne, Eric Gray
Director: Dolph Lundgren
Action Director: Tim Man

 

Once in a while, the universe surprises you with talent in unexpected places. Take Dolph Lundgren for example. He often plays these superbuff action heroes, albeit ones whose intelligence is often questionable. Even just looking at him, you wouldn’t expect much from him. And yet, Dolph Lundgren has a degree in chemic engineering and is a fairly intelligent individual, despite the roles he plays. Moreover, he’s actually a pretty decent movie director. I liked his early directorial effort The Mechanik; I thought it had a great atmosphere and some solid action. On the same token, this COVID-19-era action drama shows considerable talent on Lundgren’s end, with a strong set-up, some solid (if ultimately unremarkable) action, and great use of a (mostly) a single location.

Scott Adkins plays Mike Wade, an over-the-hill MMA fighter who has lost his last fights and has been relegated to “sparring partner” status at his gym. After a failed attempt to convince his former coach to let him back on board—he takes one one of the up-and-coming fighters and loses after falling on his bad shoulder—he packs up and heads to Birmingham, Alabama for a fresh start. He finds temporary work demolishing a defunct hospital that the mayor intends to transform into a commercial center.

Dolph Lundgren plays Richard Ericsson, a prison guard whose daughter Emily (Lundgren’s real-life daughter, Ida) is dying of leukemia. Ericsson’s health plan is slow on the decision on whether or not to fund the homecare nurse who takes care of Emily. When the hospital calls to inform him that there is a surgery that might save her life, they mention that his plan will only cover 50 grand of the procedure, leaving him to foot the of the bill: four-hundred thousand dollars. As he laments to the hospital employee, “My house isn’t even worth that much.”

Ericsson’s fortunes are about to take a turn for the better. There’s a black inmate at the prison, Lando (Eric Gray), who is constantly being harassed by the white convicts who occupy his block. The latter are led by a white supremacist named Damian Glass (Abominable’s Robert Berlin). Glass hates Lando because the latter stole his money and hid it somewhere. Lando makes a deal with Ericsson: he’ll tell him where the money is hidden if he transfers Lando to the South Block, where the rest of the African-American prisoners are housed. Desperate for money, Ericsson takes up Lando on his offer.

Glass is able to relay the info about the stolen money to his brother, a drug dealer named Deacon (veteran stuntman Scott Hunter, whose credits include Gemini Man; Suicide Squad; and Avengers: Endgame). Deacon rounds him his cronies and has Ericsson followed until the location of the money is revealed: Castle Falls Hospital. That would be the same place Mike Wade is working. And what do you know? On the last day of the job—the same day the building is to be leveled with explosives—Mike discovers the money in a cabinet somewhere on the eighth floor. Let the games begin!

Castle Falls reminds me a more action-oriented version of Trespass, which was a great suspense film which also involved people looking for riches in an abandoned building. Trespass was more about the suspense, and the action didn’t really kick in until the final reel. Lundgren, however, spends about half the film setting up the characters and their inevitable (and violent) meeting, after which he deftly jumps back and forth between suspense and action. Lundgren even sets up some great shots, like someone falling out a window to their death, but with the camera placed a few hundred feet away at an event the mayor is holding. Although we see the body falling, everybody at the event is oblivious to the fact that people are running with guns and killing each other in front of them.

While we’re not dealing with the most complex characters ever written, we see enough of them that we feel sympathy for the protagonists. Dolph Lundgren turns a heartfelt performance early on and is a bit more cautious and strategic in his approach to entering the building and dealing with the bad guys. Conversely, Scott Adkins’s Mike Wade is a decent man whose been dealt a bad hand—his career ended prematurely and he now lives out of his truck—but with his life on the line, any and all of his pent-up anger from the recent disappointments in his life gets released in brutal moments of fury.

The action was directed by Tim Man (Triple Threat and Ninja: Shadow of a Tear), whose name doesn’t show up in the end credits. The opening match pits Adkins against stuntman Evan Dave Taylor, and the two put on a good display of MMA, from kicks and punches to jiu-jitsu holds and takedowns. The action is more MMA-oriented, with haymaker punches, more basic kicks (roundhouse and side kicks), and more groundfighting and shooting (the wrestling technique). Adkins doesn’t get many opportunities to unleash his famous bootwork, but he does perform a jumping sidekick with both legs. Adkins does throw down with co-star Dolph Lundgren, who was about 62 years old at the time of filming. Although Lundgren is still in good shape for his age, it’s clear that the man is slowing down and his punches aren’t as strong as before. Or the fight choreography might simply have been rushed and end result is that some of the hits come across as weak in that particular fight.

While not the best film in any of these guys’ filmographies—Dolph Lundgren, Scott Adkins, or Tim Man—I thought that the general direction was good and the action was brutal enough to make for a fine way to spend a scant 80 minutes of your free time.

This review is part of our "September of Scott" at It's a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For.

Undisputed III: Redemption (2010)

Undisputed III: Redemption (2010)

 

Starring: Scott Adkins, Mykel Shannon Jenkins, Marko Zaror, Mark Ivanir, Robert Costanzo, Lateef Crowder
Director: Isaac Florentine
Action Director: Larnell Stovall

 

Whenever you make a movie, there’s always the off chance that the most popular character of the film will be not the main hero, but one of his supporting characters, perhaps even the villain. That makes things a little difficult, because people are going to want to see that character again, even if the story arc presents no reason for the hero to interact with him/her once more without the most convoluted of contrivances. There’s always the spin-off, much like how the “guest” villain Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns ended up getting his own series, where he played, well, a hero.  And just for the heck of it, don’t you just love how those Scorpion King movies can be described as “Sequels to spin-offs of the sequel to a remake”?

Something like the situation above happened with Undisputed 2. Michael Jai White’s character, a boxer, completed his character arc as he walked off into the sunset (so to speak) after besting Boyka in personal combat and getting released from the Russian prison. But people liked Boyka, as played by Scott Adkins. The role was an excellent showcase for Adkins’ dazzling martial arts and acrobatic abilities and genre fans wanted more of him. Obviously, they couldn’t really bring back Michael Jai White’s character for a rematch—by this point, I don’t think George Chambers will be able to read the name Tchaikovsky without shuttering, let alone take a plan back to Russia.

The easiest way around it would be to jettison the George Chambers story and focus on the Undisputed films on Boyka instead. Of course, that presents another problem. Boyka was the villain, plain and simple. How do you turn a villain into a hero without making him lose those personality traits that made him compelling in the first place? Most hack writers would shoot for the “tragic backstory”, “the child or lover he never talked about” or the “gradual softening of the heart after sharing a cell with a frail new inmate” in order to make him a likable (anti)hero. Thankfully, Isaac Florentine and his people make sure to keep Boyka largely the same, with the “redemption” aspect of the title focusing less on his humanity, and more on his quest to be the greatest fighter. 

Long story short, since his ignominious defeat at the hands of George Chambers, Boyka has isolated himself at the prison, spending his days mopping the dankest and foulest corners of the joint to pass the time. Meanwhile, fight promotor Gaga (a returning Mark Ivanir) is grooming another inmate, Sykov (Esteban Cueto, of Collateral Damage and The Scorpion King), to be the prison’s representative for a  huge tournament between inmates of different countries, which is to be held at a prison in Georgia (the country, not the state). Boyka wants to take part, and ultimately bests Sykov in a fight for the position.

Boyka is transferred to the prison outside of Tbilisi, where he meets the other fighters, including a loud-mouthed boxer-type from America named Turbo (character actor Mykel Shannon Jenkins) and the top fighter of the Georgian prison, a towering Colombian psycho-fighter named “Dolor” (Chilean bootmaster Marko Zaror, of Kiltro and Mandrill). Hindering Boyka on his quest for the best is not only his bad knee, but the fact that the Georgian prison officials are doing everything to stack the odds in Dolor’s favor, including limiting their training time, forcing them to do manual labor, and even distributing random beatings where they see fit.

My major qualm with this film is the dialog. There are far too many F-bombs in this movie and it gets annoying pretty quick. I don’t consider myself a prude, but having the characters curse like sailors at the slight provocation seems more like filler and desperation on the writers’ part, rather than an attempt to “sound realistic.” I mean, yes, people like Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson can get away with it, because they know how to swear (and write dialog) with nuance and style. In this movie, it exemplifies the negative stereotype that foreigners have of American action movies in terms of dialog.

Beyond that, I enjoyed the film and I like how it went against my expectations regarding the Turbo character. I thought they were setting up for a Bloodsport-esque tragedy during the semifinals, thus giving Boyka and more personal and less abstract reason to want to win, but they pulled a fast one on me and kudos to them for that.

The movie also benefits in having a coherent tournament structure, of which we see every match. There are eight participants, which would be structured with the first elimination round (or quarter-finals), two semi-final matches, and lastly, the final showdown. I think it goes without saying that we’ll be seeing Boyka facing off with Dolor, which is a stand-off between two of the great onscreen fighters of the last twenty years, a summit of martial arts talent.

Fight choreographer Larnell Stovall does an even better job with the performers than veteran J.J. Perry did in the previous movie, which is saying a lot. I mean, he does some of the best work I’ve seen in an American film that didn’t import an Asian action director. He’s *that* good here. Being a 2010 film, there are all sorts of styles, plus take-downs, ground fighting, and the usual MMA rigmarole to complement the aerial kicks and showy moves on display. All of that looks fabulous, so let’s focus on the bootwork:

 

·         During Boyka’s fight with Sykov, Scott Adkins performs a move where he does a right roundhouse kick to his opponent’s left knee, pushes off the leg with that foot, lefts himself into the air, and does a left roundhouse to the side of his opponent’s face;

·         Lateef Crowder (the capoeira fighter in Tom Yum Goong) takes on a Greek fighter (Radoslav Parvanov, who recently choreographed the female empowerment fantasy The Princess) and does a nice handstand kick that is reminiscent of the one Jet Li does against Chin Siu-Ho in Fist of Legend;

·         Also, watch for Crowder doing one of his capoeira cartwheels, only to lock his leg around his opponent’s neck and change it into a takedown;

 

·         Marko Zaror’s signature move is a double butterfly spin followed by spinning heel kick (how does someone that big get so much airtime?);

 

·         The North Korean fighter, played by Ilram Choi (who choreographed Spider-Man: Homecoming), does a trademark Donnie Yen jumping back kick;

 

·         When Adkins faces off with Lateef Crowder, the latter does a nice move where he blocks a bunch with his leg, locks around the arm, and turns it into a takedown;

 

·         Scott Adkins does all sorts of crazy kicks in this. My personal favorite was watching him perform a jumping spin kick, land on his jumping foot (his kicking foot still in the air), pivoting in a circle and performing a standing spinning front kick with the original kicking foot. In films like Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars, we see the performer do a jumping spin kick and then follow it up with a grounded spin kick with the other foot. It’s nifty to see Adkins use the same foot twice in such a fluid series of movements.

 

·         Adkins also does a jumping side kick with both feet simultaneously (Donnie Yen does this in In the Line of Duty IV and Legend of the Wolf), a backflip kick that he has done in other films, and his infamous Pelé bicycle kick, too.

 

·         Zaror performs this really weird aerial spinning axe kick against Adkins during the final fight, which I’m still trying to figure what he actually did to perform it.

 

All things considered, I give the film a hearty recommendation, even if the dialog is a bit weak. There are some good character moments and awesomely-choreographed action to satisfy all but the stuffiest action fans.

The Tournament (2009)

The Tournament (2009)

 

Starring: Ving Rhames, Robert Carlyle, Kelly Hu, Ian Somerhalder, Liam Cunningham, Sebastien Foucan, Craig Conway, John Lynch
Director: Scott Mann
Action Director: J.J. Perry, Jon Valera

 

I think in recent years, Indonesia has become the paragon of violent action movies. In fact, I think they’ve held onto that title since the 1980s when Barry Prima was active. More recently, the works of Iko Uwais have been masterpieces of graphic violence and unrelenting brutality. The Raid speaks for itself. But it was trumped by its own sequel, which featured gory scenes of Julie Estelle mutilating multiple opponents with a claw hammer, Iko Uwais pushing a guy’s face against a stove until his face burned off, and a man getting decapitated with a shotgun, to name a few scenes. I’m not sure how, but Headshot felt even worse (or at least more mean spirited), what with its wanton slaughter of innocent bystanders and police officers,  not to mention the plot point of throwing kids into a dry well and having them fight each other to the death. And to think that The Night Comes For Us is even worse than those just makes me shutter.

So, what would be the most violent action movies outside of Indonesia? Well, Hong Kong has lots of violent movies, like the works of John Woo, Johnnie To and Ringo Lam. For example, Hard Boiled has a body count of about 300. Those movies tend to be stylized, however, and are often “poetic” in their presentation. One exception might be Daniel Lee’s Black Mask. Another, more notable one is Soi Cheang’s Dog Bite Dog, which is probably the bleakest, most unpleasant film to come out of Hong Kong. I’m sure that Japan, the land of the Rising Sun and blood geysers, has more than a few masterpieces of bloodletting that rise high on the chart. Thai action movies, especially those associated with the late Panna Rittikrai, were often brutal and full of bone-crunching action, albeit not always gory per se.

What about in the West? One film that comes to mind is Punisher: War Zone, which was extremely gory (and, surprisingly enough, directed by a woman). The Blade movies were also pretty hardcore for their time, even though some of the gore is lessened by the dated CGI, especially the first one. Kill Bill Vol. 1 was threatened with an NC-17 rating; Quentin Tarantino got around it by presenting one of the action set pieces in black and white. There are a number of others, which y’all can mention in the Comments. One contender for the “most violent film to not come out of Indonesia” would be The Tourament from 2009.

The set-up is simple. Every few years, a tournament is staged in which 30 of the world’s greatest assassins are let loose in a small town and have to kill each other until only one is left standing. The winner gets both the prestige of being the best and a ten-million-dollar reward for his (or her) efforts. At the beginning of the movie, we are placed in the final minutes of one such Tournament, set in the city of Shirão, Brazil[1]. The combatants have been whittled down to Joshua Harlow (Ving Rhames, of Pulp Fiction and The Undisputed), some expendable meat, and a lunatic named Gene Walker (Alien Hunter’s John Lynch). Harlow is able to use some sort of gun-like slaughterhouse tool to literally blow Walker’s head off, after which he offs the Expendable Meat, who’s already bleeding out. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

Seven years later, it’s time for the next tournament. This time around, the carnage is to take place in small town in Ireland. We follow the steps of Lai Lai Zhen (Kelly Hu, of Cradle 2 the Grave and X2: X-Men United), a Triad hitwoman who’s competing in the Tournament. She heads over to her hotel, where she gets all showered up and drinks a liquid from a mysterious beaker (as instructed by the contest organizers). She passes out and a clandestine medical team shows up to surgically implant a tracking device in one of her love handles. The same happens to all of the combatants.

As soon as she wakes up the next day, the Tournament begins. Lai Lai narrowly misses being strangled to death in her hotel room by a nutcase named Steve Tomko (Doomsday’s Craig Conway). After dispatching of him, she takes to the streets to track down the other contestants. Meanwhile, some of the richest men and most powerful crime bosses in the world are watching the spectacle somewhere in the vicinity, placing bets every time the tracking radar shows that two targets are about to meet. At the same time, a pair of tech nerds have hacked all of the security cameras in the city—plus have installed numerous more in the locale’s blindspots—so that the betters can watch the Tournament unfold. All of this is overseen by the mind behind the Tournament, an enigmatic man named Powers (Liam Cunningham, whom I recognized from Afonso Cuarón’s The Little Princess).

Thanks to a clever subterfuge of a French assassin named Anton Bogart (Sebastien Foucard, the parkour guy from Casino Royale), one of the trackers endings up in the digestive system of a drunken priest, Father MacAvoy (Robert Carlyle, of The World is Not Enough). When the good Father goes to his parish to pray to the Virgin Mary, he’s set upon by a Russian assassin, Yuri Petrov (Scott Adkins). Only the timely intervention by Lai Lai Zhen saves MacAvoy from becoming one more innocent bystander. As soon as she realizes that MacAvoy isn’t a competitor, she has him tag along with her so she can protect him from the others.

While all that is going on, we see two other contestants in action. One of them is a sadistic basket case named Miles Slade (Ian Somerhalder, of “The Vampire Diaries” and “Lost”). When we meet Slade, he’s slicing the finger off a guy he’s just offed…and then kills a stray dog in the area just for fun. Yes, he’s Eeeeeevil! The other contestant is Joshua Harlow, who is back in action, looking for the assassin who murdered his pregnant wife. One of the contestants claims it was Slade who did it, so Harlow now has a score to settle.

The Tournament is, for the most part, a non-stop action ride full of gunplay, martial arts, explosions and even some car stunts. The filmmakers made the most of their nine-million-dollar budget and the film looks great for a low-budget action flick. The film has a solid cast of mainstream actors we’ve seen in other, bigger movies and seasoned character actors. Ving Rhames and especially Robert Carlyle offer genuine performances, and even the ice-cold Kelly Hu has an opportunity to emote at one point. I also really liked the general premise of the movie; it’s something you could see happening in the world of John Wick at some point. I would have liked to have seen more action from the unnamed, “minor” competitors and maybe a little bit more on the background of the Tournament itself, but for the most part, I was satisfied.

Now, I have to say that this film was violent. I mean, ultraviolent. I mean, gory violent. This film was hardcore. We have lots of body parts getting severed, especially fingers. Some characters get their heads blown off in the most literal way possible. More than a few characters go out in what Rose Harper would refer to as “meat explosions.” I mean, people blow up something fierce in this movie. You also have your requisite shootings, stabbings, and even someone performing surgery on himself. Plus, you know, RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A DOG!

The action scenes were staged by J.J. Perry and Jon Valera. The latter is credited as having choreographed the fight between Kelly Hu and Craig Conway, in which the two trade blows while he tries to strangle/slit her throat with a garotte. Valera is a Hollywood veteran, best known for choreographing films like Birds of Prey and Hitman: Agent 47. He also assisted in staging the fights in the John Wick movies. This fight is a little chaotic, but has some decent work from Kelly Hu.

Meanwhile, J.J. Perry is a long-time Hollywood stuntman, most famous working with hard hitters Michael Jai White and Scott Adkins for the likes of Undisputed 2 and Blood and Bone. Obviously, the best fight is when Kelly Hu throwdown with Scott Adkins inside the church. Perry said that he drew inspiration from Jackie Chan movies in how the scene was shot and edited. Adkins gets to throw his trademark kicks, namely a nice combo of a false jumping crescent kick, followed by a standing crescent kick, ending in a front kick. Meanwhile, Hu uses some nice jiu-jitsu moves against him. Hu’s stunt double, Kimberly Chiang (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Pacific Rim) gets banged up good as Adkins throws her against stone columns and stuff like that. It all ends with a meat explosion.

Also adding to the martial arts quotient is Sebastien Foucan, best known for being one of the founding fathers of parkour. He gets to do plenty of free running and jumping in this movie, so parkour fans will have their fill. He also faces off against Kelly Hu at the climax, in a gonzo action sequence set inside a moving double-decker bus. Hu and Foucan are trading blows while Ving Rhames, driving a truck, is constantly ramming into them. Foucan shows off some nice footwork in this part and ultimately gives the movie’s best overall physical performance.

If you want a large helping of action and some nice ultraviolence, The Tournament will scratch your itch. Fans of Scott Adkins might be disappointed that his role amounts to little more than a cameo, but at least he gets a good fight out of the exercise. With a game cast and overall good direction, The Tournament is surely worth a view.

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[1] - As far as I know, there is no city or town in Brazil named Shirão. There is a ceramic store in the city of São Caetano do Sul, right next to São Paulo, that is called “Casa do Shirão,” however.

Nocturnity P.I. by Scott Blasingame

 Nocturnity P.I. by Scott Blasingame

Scott Blasingame back with fight-filled stories set in the fictional city of Nocturnity, California. Instead of the NightDragon, however, we follow the adventures of a ex-MMA fighter/policeman named Parker Cassidy , now working as a private investigator. Instead of a single narrative, we have a collection of stories in which Parker has to throwdown with almost ever case he accepts.

For example, in "The Kempo Kid," Cassidy takes on some mobsters in a chop shop. In "The Dynamic Temple," Parker visits the vast estate belonging to a New Age religious movement that may be more than just meditating. Finally, in "Sparring Partners", we get a heart-to-heart between Parker and police detective Keith "Clubfoot" Cunningham, a minor supporting character from Blasingame's own "NightDragon" series. That story helps fill out some details not only on Parker's character, but on the "NightDragon" books as well.

As usual, one can count on a number of exciting and extremely detailed fight scenes, as is Blasingame's forté. However, where this book really stands out is the Parker Cassidy character. Cassidy is a perpetually jokey, sarcastic punster, but with a strong sense of justice and integrity. To him, it's better to do the right thing and sleep well each night, than to compromise his values. This obvious has numerous financial setbacks--which he takes in stride--but it makes him a compelling blue-collar hero. The dialog is always fun to read and his interactions with everyone he meets will surely elicit lots of chuckles, plus the occasional belly laugh. The short stories never outstay their welcome and introduce us to all sorts of criminal elements that the NightDragon himself hasn't gotten around to dealing with yet. Between the great dialog, the likeable (but relatable) hero, and the fight scenes, this is a must for fans of action literature.

Legendary (2013)

 Legendary (2013)
aka: Legendary: Tomb of the Dragon

Starring: Scott Adkins, Dolph Lundgren, Yi Huang, Nathan Lee, James Lance, Lydia Leonard, Le Geng
Director: Eric Styles

Scott Adkins? In a movie without martial arts? Where scenes that would lead into a fight end with him running away? Has the world gone topsy-turvy? It apparently has. So yeah, Adkins was a film that Adkins made while recovering from a back injury and looking for roles that didn’t require him to perform aerial kicks. To quote Maria Pitillo from Godzilla (1998): Where’s the fun in that? Well, the fun is in his other movies. Legendary is mainly a film for those most die-hard of Adkins and Lundgren completists, or more appropriately, movies about killer animals.

 Akins plays Travis Preston, a famous Cryptozoologist who’s leading an expedition into Western Russia in search of an honest-to-god cave bear. He and his team, including wealthy big game hunter Harker (Dolph Lundgren, who also doesn’t fight in this one), run afoul of the monster, who ends up killing a member of their team. Some time later, Preston, now disgraced, is being sued by Harker and several other entities, and is on his way out, professionally. He’s visited by the lawyer for a wealthy admirer of Preston’s work who wants him to investigate a large reptilian cryptid who has been attacking the construction site of a dam in China.

Preston and some members of his old team arrive in China, only to discover that Harker has been officially hired to off the creature, whatever it is. Since Preston’s presence is as an observer, he doesn’t have access to the more official info about what’s going on. So he and his team start sneaking into Harker’s base to find out what’s really going. And then there’s the creature, who continues to attack and mutilate construction workers at random. Just what is it? Perhaps a dragon, as the various titles—the Portuguese title is A Tumba do Dragão, or The Dragon’s Tomb—would suggest?

 The answer is “nah”. It’s just a giant CGI lizard.

The monster doesn’t show itself until the last 20 minutes, so until then, we mainly have characters talking at their base camp, talking at Harker’s base camp, talking on boats, and just talking at places in general. There’s the occasionally glimpse of a CGI monster, which *might* be a dragon, but in the end, isn’t. That is, unless, you recall that some lizard species have “dragon” in their names, like the Soa-Soa Water Dragon, the Bearded Dragon, and the Komodo Dragon. I suppose a giant lizard is a fine killer animal for a film like this; we’ve gotten far too many giant snakes and sharks, let the lizards reign!

But yeah, there isn’t much to recommend this British-Chinese co-production. The Portuguese and French titles suggest a Tomb Raider-esque adventure with a monster waiting at the end, but that doesn’t happen. The American title and box art suggest a dragon-dragon, but that doesn’t happen either.  The cast suggests a martial arts-gunplay bloodbath, but there’s absolutely none of that here. Just a bunch of people talking until the end, when a twenty-foot gecko starts killing off the major supporting characters in a large cave. Meh.

The September of Scott

 

The Baron of British Bootwork.

The King Kicker of the Kingdom.

The Artist of Action from Angle-Land.

Scott Edward Adkins.

Born in Sutton Coldfield, England. Trained in Tae Kwon Do and Kickboxing, with additional training in Ninjutsu, Krav Maga, Karate, Wushu, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Jujutsu, Muay Thai, Capoeira and Gymnastics.

With now more than 20 years of experience in the action/martial arts genres, Scott Adkins has simultaneously become the successor to the Western martial arts actors like Jean-Claude Van Damme (the two have worked together on multiple occasions) and the great bootmasters of old, like Yuen Biao, Tan Tao-Liang and Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee. Much like how Donnie Yen has largely kept martial arts movies in Hong Kong alive since 2005, Adkins has become the face of Western martial arts movies over the past 15 years.

This month, we celebrate the man's career with a series of reviews of his films. Join us here at It's a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For for the September of Scott, a marathon in which we celebrate the works of the most complete fighter ever!

New reviews:

Legendary (2013)
The Tournament (2009)
Undisputed III: Redemption (2010)
Assassination Games (2011)
Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013)
Eliminators (2016)
Abduction (2019)
Castle Falls (2021)

Updated reviews:

Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing (2006)

Old reviews:

Ninja (2009)
Hard Target 2 (2016)
Triple Threat (2019)

Operation Scorpio (1992)

Operation Scorpio (1992)
Aka: The Scorpion King
Chinese Title: 蠍子戰士
Translation: Scorpion Warrior

 

Starring: Chin Kar-Lok, Lau Kar-Leung, May Lo Mei-Mei, Kim Won-Jin, Wu Fung, Victor Hon Kwan, David Lo Dai-Wai, Frankie Chan Chi-Leung, Yuen Shun-Yi
Director: David Lai Dai-Wai
Action Directors: Yuen Tak, Corey Yuen Kwai, Lau Kar-Leung

 

In my Dragon Inn (1992) review, I mentioned the rules of wuxia pian for the early 90s. Mainly that they had to be based on a wuxia novel and/or a remake of a Shaw Brothers movie. When it came to kung fu movies, the criteria was a little broader, albeit simultaneously more limiting: the movie had to be about a Chinese folk hero. Thus, the 90s saw numerous films made about Wong Fei-Hung, Fong Sai-Yuk and Hong Xiguan. Even a few lesser-known heroes, like “Iron Bridge” Saam, Beggar So, and Zhang Sanfeng (the fabled founder of Taiqi Quan) had their stories told.

The most notable exception to any of these rules was the 1991 production[1] Operation Scorpio. Unlike Once Upon a Time in China and that film’s clones, there is no message of Chinese nationalism and evil foreigners here. Nor are there any Chinese girls in Western garb. And the villains aren’t those dastardly opium dealers, either. Instead, we get something of an update of the late 70s-early 80s Seasonal formula, with Korean bootmaster Kim Won-Jin standing in for Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee, and Chin Kar-Lok standing in for Jackie Chan. That last bit only makes sense, as Chin occasionally did stand in for Jackie when it came to executing some of the more advance aerial kicks in his movies.

Chin plays Fei Yuk-Shu, a student with natural drawing abilities who’d prefer to idle his time away drawing superhero comics than study. For the record, the film is set in 1920, predating Superman by 18 years and Batman, the Human Torch, and Sub-Mariner by 19. His dad (Wu Fung, of Skinny Tiger, Fatty Dragon and City Cops) is sacrificing a lot just so his son can get a good education and honor the memory of Yuk-Shu’s deceased mother. It thus irks him to no end that Yuk-Shu is always getting into fights with the school’s jocks, who, in his defense, are a bunch of buttholes.

One evening, Yuk-Shu is out and about for some reason when he comes across a servant girl, Jade (Lady Supercop’s May Lo, who often found herself playing characters named “May” in her movies). Jade works for a crime boss named Mr. Wang (Victor Hon Kwan, of City on Fire and Prison on Fire), who’s heavily invested in the human trafficking business. Wang is blessed with a super-kicking son, Sonny (Kim Won-Jin, of No Problem 2 and China Strike Force), who acts as his bodyguard. Wang also has the police in his pocket, in the form of Inspector Hua (Yuen Shun-Yee, of Dreadnought and Shaolin Drunkard). Yuk-Shu is snooping around the house for whatever reason when he overhears Mr. Wang offering to hand Jade over to Inspector Hua for his personal enjoyment.

Yuk-Shu tells Jade what’s happening and helps her to escape. Although he is ultimately able to escape—thanks to the assistance to a Western-style fitness club of bodybuilders—Wang and his men don’t give up so easily. An altercation on the street results in Yuk-Shu being expelled from school and Wang’s men attack his dad, injuring his leg with bamboo poles. Unable to return home, Yuk-Shu, his dad, and Jade take refuge in a restaurant ran by Master Lo (Lau Kar-Leung, of My Young Auntie and Mad Monkey Kung Fu). Lo offers to teach Yuk-Shu a vocation: making noodles in giant woks. Although Yuk-Shu initially balks at it, he does start picking up some pointers. But he also finds himself sneaking out of the house to practice weightlifting at the club with Bull, the instructor (Full Contact’s Frankie Chan Chi-Leung). Of course, Yuk-Shu will eventually discover that Master Lo is a kung fu master himself and that his noodle-making routine was just a clever ruse for teaching him kung fu. That might come in handy when Yuk-Shu crosses path with the Wang family again.

As you read the synopsis above, did you not get flashbacks to any one of a number of kung fu comedies from the late 70s? A good-hearted protagonist who doesn’t know kung fu? Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow. The hero’s family being dragged into the conflict? You can see that in Snake Fist Fighter and The Fearless Hyena. Kung fu through cooking? There’s a bit of that in The Incredible Kung Fu Master and The Mystery of Chess Boxing. The hero learning at least two styles in order to defeat the villain? Try Daggers 8; Buddha Assassinator; Snake in the Monkey’s Shadow; and numerous others will give you that. The hero creating a style of his own? Once more, that’s Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Goose Boxer right there. The only thing that really sets this apart from those movies is the slightly-more modern subplot involving Yuk-Shu’s artistry and some more complex wirework from action director Yuen Tak.

Filmed in 1991, Operation Scorpio came out at a time when Chin Kar-Lok was making an earnest effort to come out on his own as a legitimate action star. Although he’d been working with Sammo Hung since the early 80s, it was usually as a stuntman and fight choreographer. His first real opportunity to show off his skills came in 1988 when he played Anthony Chan’s assistant in Mr. Vampire IV. Golden Harvest invested in him for the big-budget action blowout Bury Me High (1991) and this, but both movies flopped at the local box office. This year also saw Chin Kar-Kok starring alongside his brother, Chin Siu-Ho, in the quasi-porno film Hero Dream. Chin kept on making martial arts movies up through 2000, which saw him fighting Billy Chow in King Boxer, produced by Yuen Woo-Ping’s studio. By that point, it was clear that Chin was going to be neither the next Jet Li nor the next Jackie Chan—despite having doubled him on numerous occasions—and Chin focused his energy on action direction. To this day, Chin has racked up numerous Best Action Choreography nominations, albeit no trophies, for his contributions to Hong Kong action cinema.

As it is, Operation Scorpio is not the best showcase for Chin’s acrobatic skills. While he does show off some of his flexibility at the climax with his made-up “Eel Style,” he spends most of the movie as the shlub who simply doesn’t know how to fight well. That’s unfortunate, as Chin was blessed with a kicking talent that resembles Jet Li on his best, non-wired days and, like many actors from that time, was trained in Peking Opera, different Southern styles (Wing Chun, Hung Gar), and probably tae kwon do, too. Chin gave a much better showcase for his abilities that same year in Martial Arts Master Wong Fei Hung, probably the first movie outside of Jet Li’s Once Upon a Time in China to feature that character.

Stealing the show from Chin Kar-Lok is newcomer Kim Won-Jin, who plays Sonny. Sonny practices a “Scorpion Style” of kicking. Unlike Sun Chien’s Scorpion style in The Five Deadly Venoms, Kim took things several steps further and created his own style. This includes a stance where Kim crouches down on all four, and then lifts his leg over his back, making it resemble a scorpion’s tail. The man is insanely flexible and pulls off some impressive kicks, from spin kicks to jumping spin kicks. Moreover, sometimes he performs a jumping spin kick, only to fall backward and kick out with his other foot to hit his opponent on the way down. That requires some excellent timing. Some of Kim’s movements are enhanced by wires, as was the style of the time. Most aficionados, however, will note the man’s raw talent that shines past the special effects.

Although Yuen Tak is credited as the main action director at the HKMDB, the English-language credits of the international dub also state that Lau Kar-Leung and a “Yuen Fu” were fight choreographers, too. I’m guessing that “Yuen Fu” refers to Corey Yuen Kuei, who worked extensively with Yuen Tak during the 1990s. Tak shows up as one of the villain’s main henchmen, fighting our heroes in the last two set pieces. There is some Superman-esque wirework in the opening fight sequence that is very similar to Saviour of the Soul, which Tak had worked on the year before. Lau Kar-Leung most likely choreographed his own fights, which is him doing his usual hung gar shtick with a heavy emphasis on martial philosophy. This includes Master Lo’s ability to defend himself against Sonny’s kicks by observing the movement of his shoulders. Lau also does a bit more kicking, using the infamous Mo Ying Geuk, or No-Shadow Kick. Unlike that year’s Once Upon a Time in China 2, where the No-Shadow Kick is portrayed as a flying side kick carried out by wires, the kick here is closer to the real thing (also portrayed in Master of Kung Fu and The Magnificent Kick): a very powerful (and fast, obviously) front kick.

Martial arts fans should watch this on the basis of Kim Won-Jin’s physical performance and Lau Kar-Leung’s application of martial philosophy, which he’d been doing since the late 70s. That’s worth the rental (or purchase) price alone. However, given that Tsui Hark and company were giving audiences spectacle, great acting, epic production values, and Jet Li at the time, some may find Operation Scorpio lacking in those regards.

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[1] - The ending credits of the international English dub show a 1991 date, although according to the HKMDB, the film wasn’t actually released until November of 1992.