Broken Path (2007)

Broken Path (2007) Aka: Broken Fist; Attack of the Yakuza

Starring: Johnny Yong Bosch, Dan Southworth, Pamela Walworth, Motoko Nagino, Sonny Sison, Panuvat Anthony Nanakornpanom, Tadahiro Nakamura, Lanie Taylor

Director: Koichi Sakamoto

Action Directors: Alpha Team, Dan Southworth

What do you get when put a Power Rangers (or more specifically, Super Sentai) fight choreographer and a former Power Rangers actor in the same room? More Power Rangers tomfoolery, you say? Hell no. You get a bone-crunching action thriller fight fest called Broken Path, proving to the world that if you take some of these Power Rangers actors out of Angel Grove and put them in a serious film, they can perform to the level of Jackie Chan or Scott Adkins. That is the case with Johnny Yong Bosch, better known as the Adam Park, the second Black Ranger from the Power Rangers (and the first Power Rangers movie).

Broken Path builds its action upon an exceedingly simple premise: computer analyst Jack Ellis (Bosch) has moved with his wife, Lisa (From the Dark’s Pamela Walworth), and his little daughter, Maddie (Lanie Taylor), to Texas. When we meet them, they are enjoying a nice summer barbecue with the locals on the eve of sending Maddie off to summer camp. Jack appears to be an affectionate dad and loving husband, but there is a constant look of discomfort on his face. After everyone leaves, Jack and Lisa are enjoying an intimate moment when she brings up how they have moved four times in the past four years for…reasons. The conversation makes Jack visibly disturbed, but he tries his best to reassure Lisa that they’ll stay put from here on out. But a nightmare about a masked man in military fatigues slitting Lisa’s throat suggests that he’s hiding something. 

And what do you know, the next morning, a masked man in military fatigues (Tadahiro Nakamura, of Karate Kill and several Power Rangers incarnations) does show up and start hacking at both Jack and Lisa with a knife. He is soon joined by a second masked killer in camo pants (Sonny Sison, who choreographed Maria). They both beat the hell out of an apparently defenseless Jack. That is, until one of them tries to rape Lisa. At that point, Jack completely snaps and reveals that he is just the martial arts dynamo that these two nutcases are. A pitched fight ensues and the two are beaten to a retreat. But when they show up again in the dining room downstairs, they are now joined by a third killer (Anthony Nanakornpanom, whose stuntwork résumé has exceeded 240 credits in Hollywood movies, TV, and video games). And when Lisa tries to escape, a fourth killer, this one female (Kunoichi: Deadly Mirage’s Motoko Nagino, who is also married to the director), takes a particular interest in killing her. As we find out, Jack has not been particularly forthcoming about his past, and now it has caught up to him.

Broken Path is something of a martial arts chamber piece, with the entire film being one big action sequence broken up into smaller individual fights, all set on the Ellis homestead. Most of the fights occurs within the house itself, although a couple occur in the driveway or in front of a storage shed or garage. With the exception of the first ten minutes and a brief interval when the main characters hide in an attic—giving them a chance for some exposition—the entire movie is just a single chain of increasingly brutal fight sequences. And when I say “brutal,” I mean brutal. The fighting has the feel of a more-intense-than-usual Jackie Chan movie, but when it comes time for someone to die, they get it good. Without fail. The film can get extremely gory, including one death that feels like the inverse of a memorable one from Sister Street Fighter.

So, what do we know about Jack Ellis? The film reveals that he was originally named Hiroko and worked for an organization of assassins known as…well, they don’t say the name. We just know that they bought children, often of Japanese descent, and then trained them to be cold-hearted kung fu killers. My head canon theory is that the organization was just the 701 Squad from Black Mask. I mean, the imperviousness to pain that the characters demonstrate over the course of 80 minutes of non-stop fighting is just unreal. One guy gets repeatedly kicked in the nuts and does not flinch. Another character gets whacked in the head with a shovel, has their face covered in blood, and in the next scene is none the worse for wear and still fighting. Some of these characters get beaten, stabbed, hacked, and slashed so badly that I cannot imagine how they make it to the next fight scene. But there they are: must be some of the surviving members of Jet Li’s team from Black Mask.

The film was directed by Koichi Sakamoto, who spent the 1990s choreographing tokusatsu shows in the Japan and did some work in Hollywood, too. Notably, he helped choreographed the fights in Martial Outlaw and Mission of Justice, both starring Jeff Wincott, and the martial arts western Savate, starring Olivier Gruner. He is most famously renowned for his work on Drive starring Mark Dacascos, considered by many to be the best martial arts film to come out of the US, at least until Scott Adkins showed up.  Drive is certainly one of the best Jackie Chan movies to not star Jackie Chan, if you catch my drift. These days, Sakamoto focuses more on directing tokusatsu, with a filmography of more than 100 films and series of Ultraman, Super Sentai, and Kamen Rider. He also did the “hawt lesbian” MMA film Girl’s Blood, which I’ve heard a lot of good about. He has new film called Shogun’s Ninja coming out…today I think, so glad he’s keeping busy.

The fight sequences were staged by his own team, Alpha Stunts, who have been around since at least the mid-1990s. The fights in this film are very similar to those in Drive, with a very obvious Hong Kong flavor to them. There are lots of flips, falls, and butterfly spins of the stuntmen and actors falling on top of furniture or landing in painful positions. And the exchanges are very much in the Hong Kong style that you would see in an 1980s Sammo Hung or Jackie Chan movie. Since the film was made on a cheap with a limited cast and one location, the fights may be repetitive to some. Johnny Yong fights two killers, and then three killers, and then three killers outside, and then he gets joined by an old friend (Dan Southworth, Blade of the 47 Ronin and Mortal Kombat: Legacy), and then they fight the same killers inside the house, and then outside the house, etc. etc. To the uninitiated, this may be boring and get old after the second fight. But for us fight fans, especially those of us who always lament how Hong Kong cinema hasn’t been the same since the mid/late 1990s, watching what amounts to be a single Jackie Chan fight expanded to feature length is a breath of fresh air.

And to be a successful Jackie Chan homage, you need an actor with a smorgasbord of different styles. A little bit of everything, y’know? Well, Johnny Yong Bosch has studied Shaolin Kung Fu, Muay Thai, Jeet Kune Do, Judo, Kick Boxing, Judo, Hapkido, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kali and Atillo Balintawak. Dan Southworth is a 5th degree black belt in Taekwondo. Sonny Sison studied a number of Filipino styles, like Escrima, Kali and Arnis. And you can see a smattering of everything. There are a moments when the characters are going nuts on the arm locks and joint manipulations, which bring to mind both hapkido and aikido. There is some limited ground fighting. Knife fighting? Lots of it here. You can even see Bosch performing some kung fu—wing chun—during the final part of the climax. Mix that with some solid stuntwork, painful falls, and finishing moves worthy of Mortal Kombat, and you have an action classic of the post-HK Golden Age era.

Contour (2006)

Contour (2006)

Starring: Eric Jacobus, Ed Kahana, Andy Leung, Tyler Wang, Dennis Ruel, Ray Carbonel, Stephen Reedy

Director: Eric Jacobus

Action Director: Eric Jacobus

The Stunt People.

I discovered them around 2000 through their old website, mainly because I was always looking for places that reviewed martial arts movies/Hong Kong action. Back in those days, I was an ardent follower of Dragon’s Den UK (now Far East Films), The Martial Artist’s Guide to Hong Kong Films, and lived in hopes that Teleport City and Stomp Tokyo would review a Hong Kong film on their next update. The Stunt People reviews broke the films down on a fight-by-fight basis, complete with multiple screenshots of each individual fight, and were extremely critical of every aspect of a fight. 

Assuming that it was Eric Jacobus who was reviewing those films, he was very much a purist and came down hard on almost anything to come out of the USA, even when it had a HK choreographer (like Bloodmoon). He even was extremely harsh on Cynthia Rothrock’s performances in HK films back in the day. So, I liked his reviews and the occasional video clips he included with them, but I found myself disagreeing with him…A LOT. I was also aware that he and his crew were in the business of making martial arts shorts, some of which I downloaded and watched back in the day. I think I saw one of the “Teamwork” videos—it had something to do with a car stopping in a parking garage and the guys getting out of the car and starting to fight.

In the mid-2000s, the Stunt People started making their own feature films. The first one appears to be Immortal, followed quickly by Contour. They went on to make other movies: Bound by Blood (2007); Detective Story (2010); Dogs of Chinatown (2010); Death Grip (2012); and Rope a Dope (2013). Eric Jacobus himself has done some stuntwork in Hollywood (A Good Day to Die Hard), a lot of motion capture/action direction work in video games (including several incarnations of Mortal Kombat); and even some action directing in Asia. So, good for them.

Contour is a martial arts comedy that is very much an homage to the sort of films that Sammo Hung made in the 1980s—if you read Jacobus’s old reviews, he seemed to respect Hung’s work the most. The film is a comedy, but the action is mostly played straight. And even when there is humor in the action, it is a bit more situational (i.e., a guy in forced to dress in drag ripping off his wig and dress before fighting) than simply choreographed goofing off.

The plot (such as it is) goes like this: Lawrence “Law” Young is a cynical, hard-smoking tour guide in San Francisco who owes a lot of money to a rich Vietnamese guy named Thuoc (Stephen Reedy, who does a lot of behind-the-scenes work in Hollywood). Thuoc has gotten rich selling self-defense videos for his own style called “Tae Phở”—with the running joke being that Thuoc is almost never seen without a bowl of phở (the Vietnamese soup) in front of him. Law occasionally goes in for different jobs, usually stealing money from thieves and drug dealers, in order to accelerate the payment progress. But after a few bad jobs, Law goes back to his dead-end tour guide job.

His latest batch of clients include a “teenager” named Alfonso de la Rosario (Ed Kahana, American Brawler and Unlucky Stars), the crown-prince of the obscure island nation of Uruvia; his Chinese bodyguard, Lei Tak (Andy Leung, Immortal and Bound by Blood); and some right-wing Christian missionary named Renee Wilder (Tyler Wang, who was in the Stunt People’s short “Undercut”). Long story short: the Uruvian government is at war with the United States, who wants to undercut the small country’s cheese production. And there is a video cassette with compromising information that may destroy the country. The tape has fallen into the hands of a criminal named Esteban (Dennis Ruel, of American Brawler and The Man from Death). Since there is a reward by Alfonso’s parents for the retrieval of the tape, Lawrence sees this as a means of getting the money to pay off his debts.

Let me start off with the bad: the length. I don’t see any reason for a film like this to be 100 minutes long. And the overlength of the move can be summed up in most of the footage “set” in Uruvia and the final brawl, which has some nice choreography, but draws out the denouement more than it should have. I didn’t find any of the scenes in Uruvia to be funny—Alfonso’s mother is a male actor (Jesse Traugot) in drag, har! I also thought they could have done more with the Renee character, like explain why a (supposedly) straight-arrow Christian right-winger instinctively knows how to use a sub-machine gun…I guess I answered my own question right there. She gets to throw down a little at the end, but she seems more there to provide a little bit of “romantic” “tension” and keep the film from becoming a total sausage fest.

The action was staged by Eric Jacobus himself, with help from his co-stars. There are several major fight sequences. The film starts with a fight at a warehouse when Law tries to steal a blue bag from the bad guys. There is some stylized gunplay in addition to some solid 1980s-Hong Kong-style choreography. The next big fight is between Law and Lei Tak inside of a Taekwondo school, and this is where things really get good. The two put on a kicking clinic with the sort of aerial boots that would make Scott Adkins proud. There are flip kicks, all sorts of nutty jump kicks, and just your garden-variety roundhouse and spin kicks. The two put in their repertoire, broken up by nice stretches of punch-and-block exchanges that remind me of Fan Siu-Wong vs. Billy Chow in The Death Games (a film Jacobus was a huge fan of).

The next set piece pits villains Dennis Ruel and Ray Carbonel against a roomful of baseball bat-wielding men (presumably the other main actors in ski masks). There is some nice weapons choreography as Carbonel is able to get a hold of the weapons and use them like escrima sticks. Ruel is a bootmaster supreme and does all sorts of neat work in this sequence. There is even an homage to Dragons Forever when one of the nameless fighters—Jacobus himself, I think—gets kicked and performs a fall where he hits neck on a ledge, similar to how Yuen Biao dispatches Billy Chow in that film. That is followed by a fight involving Alfonso (Ed Kahana) while on a sugar high—the gag is that his character is hypoglycemic and if he eats junk food, he goes into super kung fu mode, similar to Jackie Chan in Drunken Master II. This fight plays like a dream sequence as he has to beat up a series of enemies in different locations, including a guy in a bunny mask on a rooftop. The second part of his shtick is that Alfonso is a big fan of the “Tae Phở” videos, so his fights look a mixture of 1980s Jackie Chan and more old school kung fu.

The final fight runs for a good 20 minutes and is set in the same warehouse as the opening set piece. The fight is broken up into four different mini-fights. One of them has Ed Kahana going into his crazy “sugar fu” routine, which has some nice falls and kicks, plus some wicked chain whip work. There is an extended fight between Andy Leung and Ray Carbonel, which is a mixture of strong bootwork with lots of complex handwork and chin na, presumably taken from kung fu (wing chun?). Leung is joined by Vlad Rimburg, who plays the former owner of the warehouse who is forced to take on custodial duties after Esteban takes over. He gets his revenge and uses what appears to be more conventional Taekwondo or Karate in this sequence. But the meat of this martial arts smorgasbord is the fight between Eric Jacobus and Dennis Ruel, which is like the final fight of No Retreat, No Surrender 3 or any fight from In the Line of Duty IV just cranked out to 11. The entire sequence is several minutes of uninterrupted punch, kick, and block exchanges performed with speed, height and crispness. If you can sit through the comedy and corniness, you’ll surely enjoy the fight action on display. Then again, that’s more or less how we talk about our favorite 80s HK films, too.

Shin Kamen Rider (2023)

Shin Kamen Rider (2023)

Starring: Sôsuke Ikematsu, Minami Hamabe, Tasuku Emoto, Shin'ya Tsukamoto, Suzuki Matsuo, Tôru Tezuka, Nanase Nishino, Kanata Hongô, Shûhei Uesugi, Masami Nagasawa
Director: Hideaki Anno
Action Director: Yuki Yasutaka
Director of Special Effects: Shuncarlos Fukushima, Yusuki Matsui, Isao Morohoshi, Nishida Kiyofumi, Satoro Sasaki, etc.

Hideaki Anno’s “Shin” experiment was a noble one that sought to bring its respective properties back to their traditional roots. It started in 2014 after the release of Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla, when Anno and FX expert/director Shinji Higuchi quickly got the idea of bringing Godzilla back to his horror roots. The resulting film, Shin Godzilla (2016), was a huge success in Japan and despite not being particularly “horrific,” it worked as an update of the source material (moving the metaphor from the H-Bomb to Fukushima) and a social satire.

That was eventually followed by the announcement of Shin Ultraman, which was announced in 2019. That film was written by Hideaki Anno, based on a screenplay he had written back in 2013. Shinji Higuchi helmed the film, while Anno produced, and it didn’t reach Japanese theaters until 2022 (presumably because of the COVID pandemic). Once more, the film was made to return Ultraman to its 1960s roots, especially since the series had become increasingly “toy-etic” following the creation of Ultraman Zero and the ability for Ultraman to mix and match and join into one and all that. So yeah, a return to simplicity made some degree of sense.

Shin Kamen Rider was born in 2013 when Hideaki Anno proposed the idea to Toei Studios. They eventually greenlit the idea and pre-production started in 2015, with Anno onboard as director and screenwriter (Shinji Higuchi did not join him for this). The film was set for release in 2021, which was pushed back to 2023 thanks to the COVID pandemic. The movie (somehow) earned positive critical reviews and was the most successful live-action Kamen Rider film released to theaters, but was the least successful of Hideaki Anno’s “Shin Trilogy.” And really, it’s not hard to understand why.

The movie kicks off with a motorcycle chase between some SWAT-team looking guys driving heavy-duty trucks and motorcycle rider, played by Sosuke Ikematsu (Death Note: Light up the World and The Last Samurai). Accompanying the rider is a young woman, whom we’ll soon learn is named Ruriko Midorikawa (Minami Hamabe, of Godzilla Minus One). They are rammed off the cliff and a supervillain named Spider-Aug (Nao Omori, best known for playing Ichi the Killer) declares Ruriko to be a traitor. Suddenly, the motorcycle rider shows up and beats Spider-Aug’s henchmen into a bloody pulp and rescues Ruriko.

They flee to a cabin in the woods, where we learn that our hero, Takashi Hongo, had been subjected to a series of experiments by Ruriko’s dad, Dr. Hiroshi Midorikawa (Shin’ya Tsukamoto, of Shin Godzilla), to transform him into an insect-hybrid, specifically a grasshopper. He was supposedly the last of such experiments, as the previous insect-human hybrids, the “Augs,” had all gone power hungry. Thus, Midorikawa and his daughter had left the “Organization,” which we learn is named S.H.O.C.K.E.R. (Sustainable Happiness Organization with Computational Knowledge Embedded Remodeling). Before we can learn more about what’s going on, Spider-Aug shows up and kills Dr. Midorikawa and kidnaps Ruriko, He almost kills Takashi, who survives being blown up by transforming into the insect-helmeted superhero, Kamen Rider, at the last moment. Kamen Rider kills more henchmen before finishing off Spider-Aug with the infamous Rider Kick.

At that point, Takashi and Ruriko are picked up by the government, represented by Tachibana (Shin Godzilla’s Yutaka Takenouchi) and Taki (Takumi Saitoh, Shin Godzilla and 13 Assassins). At this point, we learn what’s really going on. You see, there was once a billionaire who wanted to end human suffering and sadness. So, he founded SHOCKER (see acronym above) and developed both an intelligent robot, K (Tori Matsuzaka), and a supercomputer, I, in order to study the world and find out how to end suffering and promote happiness. Don’t ask me how, but apparently creating human-insect hybrids as agents was part of the plan. But the agents started to go rogue and find morally unacceptable ways to promote happiness, which is what led Dr. Midorikawa and Ruriko to escape with Takashi Hongo in tow.

Both Takashi and Ruriko accept the invitation to assist the government in defeating the different Aug(mentation) agents, starting with Bat-Aug (Toru Tezuka, of Shin Godzilla and Doomsday: The Sinking of Japan). Bat-Aug has developed a virus that not only makes people easy to mind control but causes them to dissolve into soap suds at Bat-Aug’s command. After all, isn’t overcrowding a cause of unhappiness? Why don’t we just dissolve half of them, Thanos-style, and let the rest enjoy the remaining resources? Then, it’s onto Scorpion-Aug (Masami Nagasawa, of Shin Ultraman and Kingdom)…whose plan is…I dunno. After her, the next agent is Hiromi, aka Wasp-Aug (XxxHolic’s Nanase Nishino), who has perfected mind control. After all, if you can rob people of their moral agency, they can’t do anything that would make others unhappy? Anyway, all of that is a lead-up to the powerful agent, Butterfly-Aug, who happens to be Ruriko’s brother, Ichiro (Mirai Moriyama, of Seven Souls in the Skull Castle and 20th Century Boys 3: Redemption).

When Hideaki Anno wanted to return Kamen Rider to its early 70s roots, he was quite literal in it. I’m guessing the origins of SHOCKER were updated: it is no longer founded by former Nazis, so no Starfish Hitler (sorry, fans). The film plays like condensation of the original series, but sadly, the script is episodic to the point that it feels like those old Tokusatsu films that were actually just multiple episodes of X show edited together for that year’s edition of the Toei Cartoon Festival (or Toho Champion Festival). This is especially true for the first half of this two-hour film, which feels like three separate 20-minute episodes edited into a single narrative. For each 20 minute-block, Kamen Rider has to fight a different Aug with a different plan for world domination (or happiness dissemination).

That might be fine if each of their plans led into the other, but they don’t. So, there is no real flowing narrative to follow, just Kamen Rider fighting a different villain with a different EVIL PLOT. We never get enough time to grow to hate the villain and the stakes never feel that high because we start expecting Kamen Rider to dispatch the villain and move onto the next. And two of the villains--Scorpion-Aug and K the robot--really do not do much. The former just shows up, kills a bunch of SWAT team members, and then is dispatched offscreen. She could have been removed from the film without affecting the narrative at all. The latter watches what's going on, but doesn't really participate in the film's plot, so I'm still not sure what his point was.

Things start to improve in the second half when Butterfly-Aug (aka Ichiro Midorikawa) steps into the limelight. At least the film has settled on a final villain to focus on with a single specific EVIL PLOT to execute. The second half does have an episodic quality to it, although it is less apparent. This time, it feels like two thirty-minute episodes, one of which introduces Kamen Rider V. 2, aka Hayato Ichimonji (Tasuku Emoto)—another character from the original series. But his introduction as an adversary and switch to being an ally is rushed, having been handled in a single 30-minute block.

The film’s episodic structure guarantees lots of action, but never allows us to really get to know the characters. It doesn’t help that the main characters—Takashi Hongo and Ruriko Midorikawa—play the proceedings so seriously that the film stops being fun whenever they’re not punching monsters or shooting robots. We get to know a little about their backstories, but like a tokusatsu show, twenty minutes only gives you so much time to introduce the villain monster, establish the fiendish plan, offer some basic character development, and give us an action scene or two. If I’m watching an original film, I want the qualities of a film, not six theoretical episodes stitched together.

Shin Kamen Rider feels a lot like Godzilla Final Wars, although the latter was a lot better than this. Both films were a return to the old 1970s tokusatsu aesthetic and used some modern effects techniques to give the film an old school look. Godzilla Final Wars pulled it off a lot better, because despite its everything-but-the-kitchen sink approach and purposely kitschy effects, they were both consistent and in service of a single narrative. A cluttered narrative, but a single one, nonetheless. The effects in this film range between silly costumes for most of the Aug agents to really bad CGI, especially for Bat-Aug. That was awful.

While Godzilla Final Wars returned to the 70s in terms of special effects—at least with the kaiju, the spaceship stuff was a little more modern (for its time)—it at least kept the action itself firmly in the 2000s. Being a Ryuhei Kitamura film, that meant that it spent a lot of time aping The Matrix, but the fights had their moments. In Shin Kamen Rider, Hideaki Anno keeps the action in the 1970s, too. It feels like he asked action director Yuki Yasutaka (Dead Sushi and Bloody Chainsaw Girl) to make the fights feel like the sort of thing you’d see in a 70s episode of a tokusatsu show, too. There are a few moments here or there, but the choreography is largely pretty sloppy, covered up by a thin veneer of CGI and wirework and coated with a lot of unnecessary blood (including some horrendous CGI blood splatter). Most fights start with an exchange of blows and quickly moves to Kamen Rider finishing off his opponent with a Rider Kick. Even the final showdown with Butterfly-Aug, which should be an awesome two-on-one, is mainly a few CGI moves and then two guys awkwardly wrestling on the ground.

So, Shin Godzilla brought Godzilla back to his 1950s roots, or at least tried to. It doesn’t replicate that feeling but is a great film in its own right. Shin Ultraman tried to bring that series back to its 1960s roots and seemed to do a good job at it. Shin Kamen Rider tries to be a 1970s throwback, but in my opinion, just fails at it. As I said before, Godzilla Final Wars did a better job with it and viewers should stick to that.

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) French Title: Le Pacte des Loups

Starring: Samuel Le Bihan, Mark Dacascos, Jérémie Renier, Vincent Cassel, Émilie Dequenne, Monica Bellucci, Jacques Perrin, Christian Marc, Karin Kriström, Philippe Nahon, Virginie Darmon, Vincent Céspedes, Hans Meyer, Jean-Paul Farré

Director: Christophe Gans

Action Director: Phillip Kwok

France, 1764. Almost thirty years before the French Revolution, the province of Gévaudan is having a pest control problem. A “beast” has been praying on women and children, mainly those belonging to the peasantry. The locals now live in fear of the beast and news of the attacks have reached the Court of Louis XV. This has been compounded by the circulation of a book that claims that the attacks are God’s retribution for the moral decay of the French Court, further stoking the fires that will erupt into outright bloodshed and mass executions in a quarter decade.

The Court thus sends one of their “naturalists,” Sir Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), a veteran of the French-Indian Wars in the New World, to investigate. Accompanying him is his blood-brother, an Iroquois Indian named Mani (Mark Dacascos, of Drive and Cradle 2 the Grave). They are received by the Marquis d’Apcher (Hans Meyer) and his son, Tomas (Jérémie Renier). Tomas quickly takes to Gregoire, mainly on account of the former’s fascination with what life in the New World was like. Gregoire is introduced to a bunch of people from the local nobility, including Jean-Francois de Morangias (Vincent Cassel, of Ocean’s Twelve) and his hot sister, Marianne (Émilie Dequenne).

Popular sentiment attributes the attacks to an especially large wolf, although both Mani and Gregoire doubt that. The latter does so on account of the bite structure of the wounds found on a naked woman lying in a pond, which doesn’t correspond to that of a common Eurasian wolf. Mani, on the other hand, is as spiritual as we assume most Native Americans are and since the wolf is his totem animal, he cannot identify the beast among the local wolf population. Not that the locals, who all assume that American Indians are ignorant savages, really care what Mani thinks.

The hunt for the beast is initially spearheaded by Captain Duhamel (Eric Prat), whose band of bumbling guards are more effective in harassing the local peasantry than they are in finding the monster. Meanwhile, Gregoire splits his time between trying to court Marianne and enjoying nights of pleasure with an Italian prostitute named Sylvia (Monica Bellucci, of The Matrix Reloaded and Shoot’em Up). Eventually, the Court sends the king’s Bearer of Arms, Antoine de Beauterne (Johan Leysen), to relieve Captain Duhamel and assume responsibility for hunting the beast. Gregoire quickly learns that Beauterne’s presence is strictly political: the circulation of the aforementioned book is really starting to cause problems among the general public and decisive action needs to be taken to show them that the king has hardly “fallen from grace.”  So, Beauterne kills a wolf and brow-beats Gregoire, also an accomplished taxidermist, into making the wolf “into the beast.” You know, so the King has something to show his people and allay their fears.

After his visit to Paris, Gregoire and Mani quickly return to Gédauvan to find the real beast. And that is where our two heroes, assisted by Tomas d’Apcher, will find themselves knee-deep in a conspiracy that goes beyond the local wildlife running amok…

The Beast of Gévaudan is an actual piece of French History, almost comparable to England’s Jack the Ripper in that we’re still not quite sure who (or what, in this case) the culprit is. The beast terrorized the countryside of the Gévaudan province between 1764 and 1767, ultimately taking the lives of about 113 people (according to a 1987 study). The creature was apparently shot and killed by a wolf hunter named Jean Chastel, who appears in this film as a minor character (played by the late Phillippe Nahon). To this day, scholars are still not sure what animal the Beast was, with hypthoses ranging from a larger-than-average wolf, a particularly pesky pack of them, to an escaped lion or hyena that would have been brought back from French colonies in Africa.

The film does include a lot of historical personages in the story: Yes, the initial hunt for the beast was supervised by Captain Duhamel, who proved to be incompetent at his job. At one point, the Court did send François Antoine (along with his son, Antoine de Beauterne), a royal arms bearer, to hunt the beast. There was indeed a young Marquis d’Apcher who tried to catch the beast using traps—there is a sequence like this near the end. And yes, the Bishop of Mende, renamed Father Sardis (Jean-Paul Farré) for the film, did preach from the pulpit that the Beast of Gévaudan was indeed a scourge sent from God.

So, does that make Brotherhood of the Wolf a historical film? Sort of. Kinda. The thing with unsolved mysteries is that filmmakers have the creative license to tell whatever story they wish that fits into the scant facts available. The final explanation for the Beast of Gévaudan is probably a bit more plausible than the portrayal of the Beast itself, although I won’t explain why in order to avoid spoilers (on a 24-year-old film). That said, there are A LOT of characters to keep track of, all of whom have their own agendas and secrets. Although the explanation of the beast is sort of plausible, there are details to the story that are a bit out there, like the Vatican’s answer to MI6 getting involved in the mix.

The film is actually a multi-genre concoction mixing elements of history, horror and action, more specifically martial arts. Yes, the ethnically-fluid Mark Dacascos is playing another nationality for the umpteenth time: he has played Chinese (Cradle 2 the Grave and China Strike Force); Japanese (American Samurai and Crying Freeman); Mongolian (Nomad); Thai (The Legend of Bruce Lee); and this time he’s playing Native American. A Native American played by a Filipino actor trained in Chinese martial arts. There is even a smidgen of eroticism, thanks to Monica Bellucci, one of the world’s most beautiful women. In other words, Brotherhood of the Wolf offers a little something for all viewers.

Of course, since I’m reviewing it for this site, my own focus will be on the martial arts content. This is one of two films that former Venom Mob troupe member Phillip Kwok did in France, the other being Les Samourais, starring Yasuaki Kurata. He has stated in interviews that when he went to Hollywood to work on Tomorrow Never Dies, he was given very little elbow room to show off his creativity. He then remarked that for Brotherhood of the Wolf, director Christophe Gans gave him more free reign over the action. You see this a lot with the weapons the characters use, which range from standard quarterstaffs to iron claws (think The Owl from the Daredevil comics) to tomahawks to a bone sword that functions like Ivy’s whip-sword from Soul Calibre. 

Mark Dacascos fans will like that he gets three fight sequences to demonstrate his skills. The first is a fight in the rain against Captain Duhamel’s thuggish guards, who are picking on a woman they accuse of being a witch. The fight is a mixture of his kicks and some staff work. The next fight, where he fights a bunch of gypsy hunters at the registration for a big hunt, is probably his best. Lots of good bootwork from both sides—I assume the stuntmen were trained in Savate and Asian martial arts themselves--and a nice length. The third fight has him fighting those same gypsy hunters, this time with a tomahawk. The choreography is even better here, though the fight is a lot shorter than the previous one. Actor Samuel Le Bihan, whose character has largely been an observer and thinker, steps up in the last thirty minutes, showing us that his character did learn more than a thing or two about combat during his tenure in the New World. Lots of stylish knife and sword action in two major set pieces at the end. Great stuff all around, especially by 2001 non-Hong Kong standards. And even then, Hong Kong was suffering a massive decline in quality of their action films at the time.

I think most viewers will take exception to the film’s length, as it runs close to two and a half hours. Although that is the standard running time for most Marvel films since Civil War, this is a French film and the pacing is a bit more languid outside of the action sequences. Director Gans takes time to have the characters interact and develop a complex web of relationships between all of them. For the most part, the investment pays off, but it takes it sweet time to do so. But the film is interesting enough to keep most viewers involved, even during its lulls.

Capsule Reviews - Brucesploitation Movies

The Dragon Lives (1976)
aka King of Kung Fu; He's a Legend, He's a Hero 
Chinese Title: 詠春大兄
Translation: Wing Chun Brother

Starring: Bruce Li, Betty Chen Pei-Zhen, Su Hsiang, Hsueh Han, Yam Ho, Lee Wan-Chung, Han Su, Hu Chi
Director: Wang Hsing-Lei
Action Director: Huang Kuo-Chu

Strange biopic from Bruce Li--one of five he made between 1974 and 1976--that jumps around tonally. Bruce heads to San Francisco as a young man and then hitches a ride, hobo-style, to Long Beach for the infamous Long Beach International Karate Championships, which is portrayed like the tournament scene in Master of the Flying Guillotine. Bruce takes on the heavyweight boxing champion and wins, which earns him a place on "The Green Hornet." When Bruce has a dispute with the director of the latter's insistence that he wear a queue, Bruce heads back to Hong Kong and becomes a movie star. He has an affair with Betty Ting Pei (Chen Su-Chen) and starts training himself to death, especially when he gets invited to work on a (fictitious) film co-starring the aforementioned boxer.

Bruce Lee - A Dragon Story was more accurate, but had so little action that American distributors had to splice in fights from Superior Youngster and Little Superman. Young Bruce Lee really just did its own thing. This one pays lip service to events in Bruce Lee's life, and jumps back and forth in tone between happy-go-lucky, somber (whenever he's pondering the treatment of Asians in Hollywood), and even dark (whenever he's over-training himself). The recreations of fights from his movies are better than those in Dragon Story, especially the Fist of Fury dojo scene. Strangely enough, the movie ends with him having sex with Betty Ting Pei: Yep, a kung fu movie whose climax is also the lead actress's.

All that said, you're better off sticking with Bruce Lee's Secret and Bruce Lee - The Man, the Myth.

Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu (1977)
Aka: Ching Wu & Shaolin Kung Fu; Fist and Fury Part 2; Bruce and Shao-Lin Kung Fu
Chinese Title: 達魔鐵指功
Translation: Demonic Iron Finger

Starring: Bruce Le, Chan Sing, James Nam Seok-hoon, Kim Jeong-ran, Bae Soo-cheon, Chiang Tao, Bolo Yeung Sze, Jang Il-shik, Lee Hang, Nick Cheung Lik
Director: James Nam, Cho Seok
Action Director: Tang Tak-Cheung

I think some consider this one of the better Bruce Le films out there, alongside Enter the Game of Death and Clones of Bruce Lee. This is arguably one of the more competent films he made, sticking with the familiar Fist of Fury template. In some territories, the film is known as Fist of Fury Part 2 and is presumably set at a time after the events of the original in which the Ching Woo school has spread beyond Shanghai and is actually doing quite well for itself. Le plays Ching Ling, one of the top students of the Ching Woo School, who has been up in the mountains practicing kung fu with a Shaolin master (Chan Sing, in an extended came). Upon finishing up his training, Ching Ling and his friend, Kang Jin (Nick Cheung Lik), return to Shanghai, where things are heating up under the command of Japanese General Yae Ho (Bae Soo-cheon, in yet another scenery-chewing performance). Yae Ho and his advisors want to eliminate kung fu schools in China in order to put down any possible rebellion. The General has his son, a lieutenant in the Japanese army and a karate master, is tasked with defeating Chinese martial arts.

When Ching Ling comes back to Ching Woo, he finds the school in shambles. He challenges the Lieutenant to a duel and humiliates him, resulting in the latter committing hara-kiri. Now a persona non grata in Shanghai, Ching Ling departs for Korea, which is already a Japanese colony. He hooks up with Master Po Sai Lam (James Nam), a martial brother of Ching Ling’s master. He starts learning Taekwondo and a special fist style. Meanwhile, the Japanese send a group of killers (including Chiang Tao and Bolo Yeung) to Korea to look for Ching Ling. Lots of fights break out. When the General arrives in Korea for a military conference, Ching Ling and Master Po’s daughter (Kim Jeong-ran), try to assassinate him.

There is quite a bit of fighting, staged by Tang Tak-Cheung (best known for Tiger Over Wall and Kung Fu Zombie). As usual, Bruce Le tries to mix his Bruce Lee impression with his own hung gar training. I don’t know why, but his shtick in movies often grows old very quickly. He’s a decent athlete, but if he doesn’t have a good choreographer, his fights easily get repetitive. I think it has to do with the fights themselves often about dodging and evading, instead of complex exchanges of techniques. Obviously, a style like hung gar lends itself out to elaborates shapes fighting, but Le tries to do something a little more “Bruce-y” with it and it just doesn’t work.

Bolo Yeung fights with a strange gorilla style (which I assume is the inspiration for the German title, “Die Gelbe Gorila” – The Yellow Gorilla), but it’s not particularly interesting. Kim Jeon-ran, best known for playing Jackie’s tomboy friend in Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin, does some good fighting, especially when she’s trying to murder a room full of military officials. Nick Cheung Lik’s talents are completely wasted, unfortunately. Chan Sing fares better, getting a fight with Chiang Tao and his goons and showing off both his signature tiger style and a smattering of crane, too. Too bad he didn’t get more fight time in the film.

The penultimate fight pits Bruce Le in a lengthy duel with Chiang Tao, which is broken up by frequent running (almost more than Little Godfather from Hong Kong). He finally defeats him by attacking a bunch of pressure points, which was the basis for his training at the beginning of the movie. His final match is with a pair of white-haired fighters armed with metal poles with detachable claws at the end. It’s at this point that Bruce gets to use nunchaku as we expect in this sort of film. In one loopy moment, the two fighters (I think they’re father and son) stand behind one another and start waving their arms and ducking and weaving in an attempt to confuse Bruce. Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu is a pretty decent, if unoriginal film. On a sliding scale of Bruce Le films, that would put it somewhere as a three (out of five). The film ends in an obvious nod to the original Fist of Fury, but a sequel was made the following year.

Return of the Tiger (1977)
Chinese Title: 大圈套
Translation: Big Trap

Starring: Bruce Li, Angela Mao Ying, Chang Yi, Blacky Ko, Lung Fei, Hsueh Han, Cheng Fu-Hung, Wang Chi-Sheng, Wang Yung-Sheng, Hsieh Hsing
Director: Jimmy Shaw
Action Director: Hsieh Hsing

The film starts off promisingly: the credits are set over the training regimen of a bunch of men inside of a gym. Angela Mao then enters the place and beats everyone up for several minutes, Hapkido-style. We then learn that she's working for Chang Hung (Bruce Li), who has a beef with the owner of the gym, Paul (Paul L. Smith). He says that Paul killed his dad and he wants him to shut down his gym and film studio. Paul has his number one flunkie, Peter Chan (Chang Yi), talk to Chang Hung into switching sides, but to no avail. Chang Hung gets the attention of Paul's rival, the crime boss Sing (Lung Fei), who tries to woo Chang Hung to his side.

He has Chang Hung fight Paul's bodyguard, Tom (Cheng Fu-Hung, who spends the film wearing a sweatshirt with 'TOM' embroidered on it), in order to prove his worth. He sort of joins Sing's gang, but we find out that he is actually a hitman hired by Paul to eliminate Sing, and so the blood vendetta with Paul is just a ruse. But both sides, who turn out to be rival heroin dealers, start to get suspicious of Chang Hung. And Paul tries to sell his unsold heroin stash (to quote Chris Rock: "People don't sell drugs, drugs sell themselves") to Sing, leading in a huge brawl. And then it turns out that Chang Hung and Angela are actually working for the law. A big brawl, replete with double crosses, ensues.

Compared to a lot of kung fu films from the period, it is interesting that there isn't a whole lot of action in this. There is a Yojimbo quality to the plot, with Chang Hung kinda-sorta playing both groups against each other, although even if Chang Hung didn't get involved, both sides would've suffered mutually-assured destruction by the end. It takes about 30 minutes for Bruce Li to have his first fight scene. There was a nice dojo sequence, with Huang Kuo-Chu doing some great kicks. Bruce Li has a brief scuffle with choreographer Hsieh Hsing, who plays an assassin hired by Sing. He then fights some would-be motorcycle assassins, led by Blackie Ko in a mullet. The finale is a huge free-for-all. It is interesting watching Chang Yi, always the intimidating villain, getting manhandled by a burly white guy. Bruce Li's scuffle with Paul L. Smith is long and brutal, full of found objects being used as weapons. Angela Mao is wasted in the finale, unfortunately. She should've gotten a good throwdown with Hsieh Hsing and Lung Fei.

Edge of Fury (1978) 
Aka: Blood on His Hands
Chinese Title: 撈家撈女撈上撈
Translation: Fishing for the family, fishing for the daughter, fishing for the top

Starring: Bruce Li, Michelle Yim, Gam Ming, Dana, Yasuaki Kurata, David Cheng Dai-Wai, Wai Lit, Kao Yuen, Ng Tung
Director: Lee Tso-Nam
Action Director: Gam Ming (Tommy Lee)

One of Bruce Li's lesser films, mainly because the film is kind of dull. There is fighting to be had, thanks to Tommy Lee, but much less of it than your average Brucesploitation potboiler, and of a lesser quality than one might expect. We do get a brief glimpse of Dana's tits, if that's any sort of consolation. Between this, Storming Attacks, Bruce Li in New Guinea, and his sex scene with a hot gwailo chick in Dynamo, Ho Chung-Tao must have been the happiest man working in 1978.

Bruce Li plays Fong Pao (or Ah Fong), a kung fu expert and chaffeur for a tycoon named Mr. Chun (Pak Man-Biu, of The Blade Spares None). One day, Fong is at work when he is visited by the police. Chun has been arrested in Thailand for drug smuggling and the police need to question Fong to see how much he knows about his boss's activities. The answer is "Very little." However, that doesn't stop the neighbors from talking smack about Fong and mistreating his mother, those lazy talebearing bitches. Fong is assaulted by Gau Jai (Tommy Lee), who was Chun's second-in-command. Initially, the question revolves around "What do you know and how much did you tell the police?"

At this point, the film breaks off into three stories. One of them revolves around Fong Pao's travails as people turn their backs on him because he worked for a criminal. A second subplot revolves around Chun's widow (Dana, of Inframan and Storming Attacks)--the guy is eventually executed--and her attempts to get her hands on her husband's will. She wants all of his assets to share with her lover, played by Wai Lit. Finally, Gau Jai and Chun's business partner, Mr. King (Yasuaki Kurata, of Win Them All and The Angry Guest), are trying to find where Chun used to hide "the stuff." They are convinced that Fong Pao knows and Mr. King even goes so far as to employ Ah Fong in order to get the information out of him. When he insists that he doesn't know, Gau Jai kidnaps Ah Fong's girlfriend (Michelle Yim) in order to force him to talk.

Edge of Fury is a very talky film. And there is no real interaction between the two main story threads of the missing "stuff" and Dana trying to get her hands on her husband's wealth. I think most viewers will be impatiently counting down to the next fight scene or wondering if Dana will doff the duds--there is a shot of her from behind a shower box and later where she tries to seduce the guy administering her husband's estate (Kao Yuen, of Fingers that Kill and The Blind Boxer).

The action is just okay. Lee Tso-Nam and Tommy Lee had obviously done some great work together: The Hot, the Cool, and the Vicious and Challenge of Death, to name two. Tommy Lee and Lee Tso- had worked with Bruce Li on Fist of Fury, Part II and did a pretty good job there. Edge of Fury is all three men working below their respective potential. Li's fighting is in Bruce Lee imitation mode, but the way he maintains a pose after punching or kicking someone is just distracting here. Tommy Lee can't seem to decide if he wants to choreograph a Bruce Lee imitation, traditional shapes, or early 70s basher style. His work is all over the place here. The finale with Yasuaki Kurata is brutal, but sloppy. Both men have done far better work in other movies. The entire film consists of talented people working at their most mediocre...not their worst, but their most average.