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.