Can the premise even be articulated?

Well, it begins in the 12th century, jumps to the 50�s and winds up with Chuck Norris fighting Demons in �Present Day Chicago� and then chasing them to Israel, so I guess the answer is no.

I can�t quite make out the tagline on the box cover�

I made sure it was small enough that it would be difficult to read, so that I could highlight it, as it is worth more than one look. A Chicago cop faces his worst nightmare� only this time it�s real�

Could I trouble you to take a dump on the direction?

Sure! I think the director is making reference to Rashomon with an early shot of medieval soldiers taken from behind some bushes. Perhaps he�d be glad that I noticed if not for the fact that I noticed with tearful, derisive laughter. Actually taking time to think about it, which I realize I shouldn�t really be doing, it�s worse than it seems because the scenes near the beginning of Rashomon establish obfuscation and doubt, whereas the primary message of Hellhound is that Satan is bad. So the reason for using the shot is� a dim hope that someone will spot the similarity, but not the pointlessness? The whole opening sequence is really very AK heavy, but it�s prefaced by these retarded titles. So, like, you can practically see the guy�s life laid out in the first 30 seconds. He watched the Star Wars movies hundreds of times, then read somewhere that Kurosawa was a primary influence on Lucus, so he�s trying to be influenced by Kurosawa too. How cute! Also, the director is Chuck�s brother. You think I�m taking this too far, I know. But look at the creative journey of Aaron Norris for yourself:

Hellbound

Star Wars:

Hellbound:

Rashomon:

Hellbound:

Kagemusha:

Who Produced the film?

What an odd thing to ask, unless you already knew that this was a later production from the 80�s Action conservatory that was Cannon Films.

Is the whole medieval segment scored with sinister, classicalish music with abrupt latin verses?

Ita vero.

Did the film lift any one liners from Crocodile Dundee?

It sure did. Norris, upon trading punches with a baddie. �Do you call that a hit? That�s a hit!� That is an actual line in a movie with five credited writers.

So this is a film from Chuck�s Christian period?

Yup.

How does it express the layers of depravity that underlay religious fundamentalism?

The most unintentionally profound scene comes when the Son of Satan emerges in Present Day Chicago. He turns up in a cheap motel with a hooker he has hired, though he is not interested in her sexually or in any other way whatsoever. She trots around the screen in some nice lingerie, she showers, she is hot. Her presence does nothing to advance the plot. Then she is righteously thrown out of the hotel window to her death, not by the agent of good (Norris) but by the agent of evil (the devil guy). It�s like Jimmy Swaggart on purpose. She is immoral, but the audience is invited to indulge in her immorality, though with plausible deniability, then to see her disposed of for the crime of arousing them. Yet, the agent of her demise is also evil. Enjoy the harlot, enjoy her punishment, but none of it is on your hands. The level of sickness here is akin to the mythical snuff film. I get my rocks off. She is dead and damned, and if it all blows up, the �evil� producer takes the fall while I remain clean and sanctimonious. Even though I just came in my sweatpants.

Aren�t you reading too much into this?

You said the same thing when I made the Kurosawa observation and you were wrong then. This is a movie made by fundamentalists meant to represent their agenda. It lingers on a hot hooker who is in the movie for absolutely no reason whatsoever. And I mean, like there is not even an ostensible purpose for her being there. Then she is thrown to her death by the spawn of Satan. Find some other way to make that all add up.

Post Mortem Exchange:

OK wiseguy, explain that over there.

Holy shit! His heart�s gone!

No it isn�t, it�s over there.

HOLY SHIT!

Was there a stupid Chief?

Yes. The casting call must have been for women who look like Jewish, lesbian college professors. They put her in a police uniform several sizes too big for her. All coincidence.

Exchange that Chuck actually has with his black sidekick:

Chuck: Do you know where the University is?

Black Sidekick: I don�t know, and I don�t give a shit.

Fashion Statements:

Not the kind of thing I�d normally chime in on.� However.

Novelty Death:

Chuck delivers a nice fatal backbreaker in silhouette. Otherwise, it�s pretty slim pickings. The son of Satan does throw a priest from a train, but it�s done in a lame, cut-away fashion because they blew their whole budget on Kurosawa allusions during the opening five minutes.

How bad was it really?

I mean� I was too drunk to really do a proper corpse count, but I wasn�t bored with the film. This is mostly due to the fact that it is unbelievably bad, but in the Cannon tradition, it�s also put together well enough to kind of hold your attention. So it�s not as arduous as some of Seagal�s 90�s Inaction, for example. The refusal to work with homosexuals hit the wardrobe and stylist departments pretty hard. That�s a pretty unconvincing beard�

�

�.

�

Undefeatable opens with orchestra music blaring on the soundtrack. Something dramatic is happening! We see a fuckable, redheaded housewife talking to her redheaded shrink, also fairly fuckable. It would be a great porn setup if the acting was better. The session pertains to the mean-spirited antics of Stingray, a cage fighter who likes fighting, but loves marital rape. In fact, Sting Ray is so into his redheaded wife that when he rapes her, he actually thinks of the black guy he just hammered in the ring. We see him passionately linger on the memory of a would-be death blow right before he drops his load. I guess it is little things like this that make Sting Ray’s wife go to counseling. Anyway, the shrink tells the wife to leave Sting Ray, so she does, so of course Stingray freaks out, breaks a table, and remembers his mother leaving him, to which he intones “Don’t leave me mommy, I’ll be good.” Stingray is crazy like… not so much a fox, as someone with an array of very serious psychological problems.

In case Stingray’s state of mind is still unclear to the viewer, we learn that he calls his wife “Mommy” during intercourse (or marital rape) and, even during non-rape moments, says things to her like, “I want to play, mommy!” This movie is psychologically deep. For example, we can tell that Stingray’s problems are getting worse because he begins throwing pop can tabs at people. Then poking their eyes out. Then kidnapping all women with red hair who wear flowered dresses, taking them back to his lair, beating them with a chain in some type of S&M ritual, raping them and then ripping their eyes out and storing the eyes in his fish tank. Because if Stingray can’t have Anna (his wife), he will kill anyone that reminds him of her. And all of this carnage could have been avoided if only Stingray’s mother had breast fed him.

Enter street fighter Cynthia Rothrock, a redhead who works as a waitress during the day but at night dukes it out with other street fighters so she can put her little sister, who has, you guessed it… red hair, through college. Anyway you can pretty much guess what happens next: how Rothrock’s sister will remind Stingray of his beloved and so will be murdered in the Stingray style; how this will piss off Cynthia Rothrock, in one of the worst acted scenes in the history of film; how� this will lead to a vengeful confrontation between Cynthia Rothrock and Stingray. This is also around the time we first meet John Miller, the cop who “knows his name,” according to the nonsensical trailer. He’s also a martial arts expert and the man on the case of Stingray’s serial killings. We are introduced to John as some guy swings a machete at him, bellowing, “Suck my dick!” to which our kung fu cop says, “Suck this, jerk-off!” and jams a gun into the perp’s special area. This establishes the fact that John is here to save the day. Because, professional fighter or not, would anyone find it believable if Cynthia Rothrock got her own vengeance? No, this film happened before J-Lo could take four cardio kickboxing classes and beat down her six-foot-four, abusive husband in Enough, changing the way we think about gender roles forever. And if there’s one thing Undefeatable strives for, it’s credibility. So as you might have guessed, the kung fu cop and Cynthia Rothrock join forces to bring Sting Ray to justice, which then leads to a ridiculous police investigation that wouldn’t pass muster on “The Andy Griffith Show,” and a legendary finale in which they blind and kill the villain.

Undefeatable is a movie that would have certainly offended women’s groups if more than 800 people had seen it. The movie often sides with the crazed, misogynistic killer, especially since he’s the only person who has a history about which the audience knows anything. It’s blatantly obvious that the filmmakers hold the women in Stingray’s life responsible for his violent actions. His wife is seen denying him sex, not having dinner ready after fight night and having the audacity to leave him over some incest-flavored rape. Stingray’s mother then is seen as real slut because she chose another man over her beloved son, whom she obviously molested. So, according to Undefeatable, the cunts in this film deserve what they get. If anything, they get off easy. Stingray’s wife even wants him to be more sensitive, kindhearted and work as a mechanic, rather than compete in a sport with no future, in which he risks death. The castrating bitch.

More telling is how, even though Stingray killed Cynthia Rothrock’s sister, Rothrock doesn’t even really get the revenge. In fact, Rothrock’s attempts at vengeance are clearly seen as a joke, as she confronts the wrong guys and indeed, is told by the kung fu cop that she knows absolutely nothing about how to exact biblical vengeance. After Miller’s lecture, Rothrock ceases to investigate her sister’s murder on her own, settling to be a sidekick/fuck-buddy to the kung fu cop trying to bring the killer to justice. John Miller delivers Stingray’s demise, but true to the 80s Action rule, only after his male cop partner is killed. By the end of the film, Cynthia’s sister is a mere footnote to all concerned. We’re still not done. Stingray dumps the women’s bodies in porta-potties, where the whores all belong. The film only regrets that there wasn’t a less dignified place. The guys that die in this film are left on streets, lawns and warehouses, but every woman that dies in this film is found in a porta-potty. What else can be said?

In the homoerotic arena we see Stingray and the kung fu cop engage in shirtless fisticuffs that involve close-up punches to the head (with mucus flying out of their mouths on contact) and shirts getting ripped. Obvious cock substitutes (in this case a Cobra Knife) are used to carve rippling torso flesh. Indeed, Stingray even licks the “blood” off his “knife” after cutting the cop. As mentioned earlier, we see him think of black guys during the rape of his wife, so there’s no reason to think black dick is far from his mind when he rapes women who look like his wife. A woman even hits on Stingray and he turns her down! So is it possible Stingray is the flipside of the killer in Cruising, in that instead of killing homosexuals, he kills women because he can’t come to terms with his gayness. I mean, Christ almighty, the man is rippled enough to force Fred Phelps out of the closet, and how much hair product was used to keep that Buttafuco mullet fluffed? Who on earth does Stingray think he’s fooling anyway with the name “Stingray”? Looking a lot like one of The Kids In The Hall doesn’t help his cause much either.

Exploring more of the homoerotic agenda, Stingray kills an Asian kung fu master who is in process of getting it on in a parking lot with a red head. The guy is such a candy ass that, for him, heterosexual intercourse doesn’t involve rape. So Stingray kills him, and then does his thing with the lady. Stingray also kills a fat guy named “Bear” by breaking his neck and then killing his redheaded girlfriend. We also know she’s going to die because the director of this epic turd always lingers on redheaded women in flowered dresses in a hamfisted attempt at foreshadowing, but the message is simple, men that cannot protect their women die. Indeed this happens to Bear� after he gets his ass kicked by Cynthia Rothrock. If you cannot beat a woman in a street fight, you obviously are not much of a man and so a man of Stingray’s pedigree will kill you and take your woman and then kill her. In Stingray’s world, there is only room for hard men, pussy and pussies must be exterminated. Also the character named “Bear” is named “Bear.”

Tagline:

There is no substitute.

Can the premise even be articulated?

Oh my, yes.� It’s about a kickboxing fashion consultant trying to save the world from exploding jeans.� JCVD is a cheap knock-off artist in Hong Kong who tries to go legit as a jean manufacturer and unwittingly partners up with an undercover CIA agent.� There is a CIA agent undercover in the Hong Kong garment industry because Russians are planting “nano-bombs” in knock-off merchandise hoping to detonate them once they reach American consumers.� The Russians’ motivation for doing this is…� They’ve chosen to distribute the bombs via knock-offs manufactured in Hong Kong because… Well, look if I was the producer, it wouldn’t have gotten to that point of the pitch before giving a green light either.

“Well, I guess to start off, I’d say it’s Halloween III meets Red Dawn meets Bloodsport meets Pr�t-�-Porter.� But before you…”

“SOLD!!!!”

B -list costar

Rob Schneider, who according to my calculations was still fairly popular in 1998, plays the undercover CIA agent.� The atrocious dubbing detracts from the comic timing and boundless charm you are accustomed to, but he still wears Hawaiian shirts.� Seriously, he wasn’t bad.� Paul Sorvino plays his boss.

Homoeroticism:
It’s nice when we review one of these films and don’t have to embellish or creatively interpret anything to find homoeroticism.� Which is about 98% of the time.� During a rickshaw race, JCVD is pulling Schneider and they take a short cut through an alley fish market.� When they emerge, Schneider is holding an eel which he uses as a whip, flogging JCVD’s tightly clad posterior and shouting “Move that big beautiful ass of yours!”� Just the facts.

How Bad Was It Really?

Obviously it was atrocious, but it kept my attention.� I read a couple other reviews and it’s amazing how much people are willing to concede to HK flicks.� The Onion even talked about the contrast between exciting HK action and the dull JCVD.� The HK director has a POV of a stray bullet going through a roll of toilet paper for no reason… Genius!� Kevin Thomas of the LA Times who, admittedly, is grossly incompetent in general, claimed this was “one of Van Damme’s best movies ever.”� Again, it is about a kickboxing fashion consultant saving the world from exploding jeans.� The excess in aimless style does kind of make up for the ridiculous plot and terrible dialogue, in that it gives you something to look at, including cool stunts that would have no place in a rational storyline.� But let’s stop deluding ourselves into believing that the “electrifying” HK action is something other than an entertaining gimmick to cover up coarse scripts for internationally diverse audiences, many of whom can barely read.� There’s a reason that approach is terrible in Hollywood: because people are taking the films at least somewhat seriously.� But the approach does work here because the whole thing is so ridiculous that the pointless shot from the POV of a shoe fits, where it would just be a waste of time if you actually cared what was happening.

Corpse Count:

Um… not that many, but some are deaths by exploding jeans.� Also, the nano-bombs make green explosions for some reason.� Another guy has his safe booby trapped with some kind of rocket intended for shooting down helicopters.� A few other people are shot or crushed by cargo containers.� The total is probably about fifteen.

Novelty Death:

Somehow, JCVD winds up in a karate battle on a moving truck.� In Hong Kong they use huge bamboo chutes to make scaffolding for construction.� I know this because, being a world traveler, I have been to Hong Kong, where I saw this scaffolding all over the place.� I also dined at a Wendy’s.� Anyway, JCVD unleashes a wicked spin kick and knocks one of the Russians� off the truck and he is impaled on one of those bamboo chutes.

Post-Mortem One Liner:

“Yaaaarrrgggghhhhh!”

The unusual thing about this one is that Paul Sorvino screams after the toy dinosaur he is working on has already exploded and killed him.� HK action films are so dynamic and exhilarating!

Stupid Political Content:

The whole thing is set around the time of the handover of Hong Kong from England to China.� And… yeah.

What You Learned:

Even when it’s done by the original actors, who were originally speaking English, Asians will find a way to fuck up the dubbing.

Also, “Counterfeiting happens to be a federal crime.� Whether it’s clothing or whether it’s money, it doesn’t matter.”

Is it even possible to articulate the premise?

Unfortunately, it is. Seagal is “the most distinguished academic”
at Yale, because it would be a bit of a stretch for him to be the most
distinguished academic at Harvard. He’s so smart that he becomes a
patsy for a Chinese drug ring who try to smuggle drugs by hiding them
inside of the artifacts he is collecting for his research. The plan is
to slip them into some sculptures when he isn’t looking, even though
doing so entails breaking the customs seal. Why would the film actually
go out of it’s way to show us how the smugglers must break the customs
seal to get the drugs in the sculptures? Running time? “We need 4 more
minutes. Stop me if this seems like a bad idea, but let’s just insert a
couple of scenes that have no other purpose than creating a plot hole.”
Anyway, the Chinese try to kill SS and fail when he gets back to the
US, so they offer a peace proposal. It is simply, “if you leave us
alone, we will leave you alone.” Seagal accepts and is warned that his
wife will be murdered if he violates the terms of the agreement. This
makes him angry, so he immediately violates the terms of the agreement
and his wife is murdered. It’s hard not to side with the Chinese on
this one. It’s not often that a massive organized crime family holds
out the olive branch like that, and once Seagal slapped it out of their
hands, they had no choice but to follow through on their threats.
Anyway, Seagal spends the rest of the film hunting down and killing
Chinese crime bosses in impossibly boring fashion.

Evidence That The Script Was Written With The Aid of Fortune Cookies:

While the script is awful in every respect, one of the more
persistent annoyances is the dialog of the Chinese bosses, who sit
around a meeting table discussing Seagal and keep calling him “gweilo.”
‘Gweilo’ is generally a pejorative term for foreigners, especially
whites, which is fine and dandy like sour candy. The problem is that
I’ve never seen a word used as such a crutch, in nearly every sentence
and to the exclusion of other insults, nouns or pronouns. They
seriously will not refer to Seagal by any other word. Sample dialog:

Boss A: This gweilo professor is becoming a problem. No longer do
we have among us Mr. Lu of New York and Mr. Ping of Los Angeles

Boss B: Yes, the gweilo is causing trouble in Chinatown.

Boss A: Have we found out more about this gweilo?

A few meetings later and an hour further into the film, when Seagal
has killed more than half of the men who once sat around the table, the
scene begins with the exact same line:

Boss A: This gweilo professor is becoming a problem.

“Becoming?”

Another recurring embarrassment is the propensity of the characters
to speak in, what I can only hope are inauthentic Chinese proverbs.

Seagal confronts one of the bosses and asks where he can find the man who killed his wife. The response?

Boss: Distant waters cannot quench your thirst. Better to light a candle for the curse of darkness.

Seagal chases him upstars.

Seagal: Where is Sai Lo?

Boss: Crows everywhere, equally black!

This leads to one of the film’s few satisfying moments when Seagal throws the man out a window.

Bargain Bin Quality:

The makers of this film decided to go in the direction of
attempting overly stylized, trendy garbage. They failed to make
garbage. There are elements of garbage action, like when things slow
down and we see bullets flying in the air. Or how every thing
deliberately looks artificial. There’s also a soundtrack comprised of
musicians failing to make trendy garbage, some trendy faux lesbos and
so forth. Seagal is the worst actor imaginable to cast in such a film
because he thrives on realism. It’s like asking Millet to paint a mural
at Disneyland. The result is a boring mess of pointlessly stylized, and
therefore hallow action centered around a deadpan star.

Tagline:

Out for revenge. Out for payback.

Corpse Count: 44

That’s a guess, as the opening scene is a nightclub massacre and an
abomination of editing. I know at least some of the same killings were
shown twice in the scene, and I think some were shown three times.
Really, as far as I could tell, nobody died at all because before the
editor dropped the film into a blender, it was a scene in which the
social mores of wealthy society were called into question at tea party.
Whatever was supposed to have been depicted, I just guessed that 20
people died.

What You Learned:

Chinese prison isn’t that bad.� It looks far more pleasant than, say, camping.� I’m assuming, of course, that they don’t show Out For a Kill on movie night.

Premortem One Liner:

“I think I’ll watch Out For A Kill.”

Can the premise even be articulated?

Sort of. Mix Robocop with The Terminator and cast the robot with a big bald fucker that looks like Steve Wilkos. Add a real life kickboxer Don “The Dragon” Wilson as a human who is targeted by the Steve Wilkos which is controlled by his former employers (a senator and some other miscellaneous trash) and you basically have a movie where a guy beats the crap out of robots and Australians while proving his innocence with kickboxing. All you need to know is that the film has a wannabe Sasha Mitchell that makes Van Damme seem like the next coming of George C. Scott.

C-List Costars:

Well there is Richard Norton, who plays the Aussie martial artist who takes on Don “The Dragon” Wilson in the climax. Apparently Richard Norton was a bodyguard for some music stars and was in Gymkata and a whole slew of 90s Inaction flicks. This guy is also much bigger in Hong Kong where he’s been a villain in Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung flicks. He’s also a better actor than The Dragon and much sexier.

Evidence That The Script was written by a robot that looks like Guy Ritchie:

The movie rips off so many other movies it’s not even funny. No wait, it’s actually very funny. You have a rebel underground opposing the totalitarian corporation running the world (Max Headroom). You have a robot that is used for law enforcement to execute without prejudice (Robocop or Universal Soldier) a hero that finds out that his employer is corrupt (any conspiracy movie) and faces an enemy that can’t be stopped with bullets and is merciless, invincible and emotionless (The Terminator). Cyber Tracker also borrows thematically from Bergman’s Faith Trilogy without contributing additional insight.

Bargain Bin Quality:

Again, the funniest thing about the movie is that the robot looks identical to Steve Wilkos, without the bowling shirts. Seriously the way the robot walks, talks and fights reminds one of Steve Wilkos so much that I half expected him to throw a fucking chair. Also our hero is so lame and boring that he actually gets drunk with the A.I housekeeper he lives with. That’s the state of action. Our heroes can’t find a man, or even a woman to bond with so they program a robot to get drunk with them. Sad. (Note to self: program robot to be drinking buddy.)

Redeeming Qualities:

We do have lots of explosions and fight sequences but let’s be candid. This movie is so fucking bored with itself that its tired plot threads weave into a moronic and boring knot. An underground rebellion, boring bad guys (Steve Wilkos aside) and a lead performance delivered by Wilson, possibly the worst actor to ever recite from cue cards. The film has cars flipping over, apparently has a decent budget for explosions, but isn’t gay enough, dumb enough or fun enough to be anything but a mindless curiosity to 80s action fans.

Vestiges Of Glory

Corpse Count:

I counted 31 but most of it is routine, though the special effects regarding the Wilkos robot are so blatantly unconvincing and cheap that the fight sequence is laughable instead of awe-inspiring. That being said I always love it when cars do flips do somersaults like 20 times before easing to a stop and then exploding on contact.

Homoeroticism:

The film sort of has the gayness going on, but is really an example of the decline of homoreoticism in the genre rather than anything genuinely arousing. There’s a hot blonde love interest and, while she doesn’t have sex with our hero, she is seen kissing him and it’s clear Donny-Boy wants a piece of her action. Of course it’s probably because he’s just happy for any human interaction that doesn’t involve DVDs, credit card numbers or drinking with tameguchis. Richard Norton, Steve Wilkos-Droid and Don Wilson are all shirtless in battle but it strikes one as a hollow act of obligation. It’s as if 80s Action hero were forced to go to the straight camp that worked so well for Ted Haggard.

Novelty Death:

Dragon reaches inside the Steve Wilkos-droid, put a bomb in his abdomen and blows him in half and we can see his legs spark before it falls down and circuits out dead.

Pre-Mortem One-Liner:

“You are to be executed NOW!” said over and over again by the Steve Wilkos droid.

Can the premise even be articulated?

Easily. Dolph Lundgren is a maverick air force pilot who is shitcanned by the military for the heinous crime of bombing Iraq with rice and winds up guarding President Chief Brody’s personal belongings. However even this most simple of assignments is beyond Lundgren’s meager capabilities as he manages to lose the briefcase containing the doodah that sets of Word War III sometime within the first five minutes of being chained to it. The thief is a stroppy, one eyed CIA assassin who in turn wishes to nuke America for roughly the same vague reason that Tommy Lee Jones did in Under Siege. All of this takes place on the set of Moonraker. Just as well there’s a valid excuse really, as its all too easy to imagine a shamefaced Dolph dolefully explaining to a nonplussed Prez that he’d only gone and left his Lordships suitcases on the airport bus. Again.

C List Co-stars

The late Roy Scheider quite understandably looks a sad and broken man throughout this movie, but sterling work in all time classics like Jaws and the French Connection means he could never be considered a true second tier celebrity. Not even in porno.
Fortunately, we have TV’s own Montell Williams at hand. Seeing as he ranks somewhere below Ricki Lake in the daytime chatshow pecking order, the C-List baton is his to pick up and run with.

Any similarities to Showdown in Little Tokyo?

No.

Boo!

There’s nary a hint of a well oiled Swedish pec in this. Dolph ends up in his T Shirt by the end but that’s not the sort of thing that’d have your average red blooded male questioning on which side their bread was buttered. Instead of buying more awesome missiles with which to keep Boris at bay, the Americans are intent on dismantling their precious nuclear arsenal thereby robbing hardworking American citizens such as Falling Downs’ Derek Fens of useful purpose. To make things worse, all this whiny liberalism is seen by all, as a �good thing�. No wonder Clinton was impeached. On this evidence, Congress was right to do it.

Redeeming Qualities.

To my mind this is the third best Dolph Lundgren film ever made.

Vestiges of Glory

There’s an atomic blast!!!

Mount Rushmore is blown to smithereens, which according to the movie adds around 3000 South Dakotans to the corpse count.
Sadly the on screen corpsing is far more restrained and only two of those would count as memorable.

And they are?

A waiter taking a fire axe to the gut and the moronic death of a white Samurai who figured that fighting Dolph Lundgren underneath the blast radius of an ignited rocket at take off was preferable to running away down a corridor.

Bargain Bin Quality

Make sure you check that bin thoroughly for a Seagal you’ve yet to see before settling on this rum old toot for your evenings entertainment.
The fight scenes are glacial, and Dolphs post mortem one liners are too incomprehensible to bother remembering for the purposes of this review. Reagan must be spinning in his grave.

Can the premise even be articulated?

With some difficulty.� This script had been in circulation for ten years and was being changed a bit with every producer, so there’s kind of a Chinese Democracy effect.� Essentially, Chuck is a private eye who is hired to find this old jeweler who has been kidnapped.� Some interpol guy sneaks into the house of the missing man and ambushes Chuck with a taser for no reason and quickly leaves.� The interpol guy is then is killed and has no other role in the story.� But it turns out the jeweler has been kidnapped to cut truly outrageous gems stolen from a Hebrew artifact, which gives Chuck a chance to show of his knowledge of the Old Testament to the Jews while he imagines them burning in hell.� A lot of other factors are involved, but if I try to explain, I’ll sound like a schizophrenic.� Let’s just say, a PI tries to find missing man under extremely convoluted circumstances and the movie sends secret messages to my brain.

Evidence That The Script Was Written by Kenny Bania:

Chuck:� Where’s Isaac Teller, or do I have to beat it out of you?

Villain:� That’s what I like about you. You’re worried about Isaac when you should be worried about yourself.

Chuck:� Should I take that as a threat?

Villian:� No. As your last will and testament.
Uptight Cop: You think you’re real funny.

Chuck:� About as funny as your questions are stupid.
Uptight Cop:� Did you know the guy who got his throat slashed from ear to ear?

Chuck:� No, did you?

Uptight Cop:� No, but we’re running him.

Non-Uptight Cop: Speaking of which, you’re running out of lives, Shep.

Bargain Bin Quality

The main villain Chuck is pursuing is billed as a “chameleon” who “speaks foreign languages” and is a “master of disguise.”� Lord knows, you would never guess that this file photo is of a man in disguise.� One of the other photos of his disguises features him wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat with the brim pulled down.

Another amusing scene takes place a while after Chuck has found the interpol guy dying.� The man whispered his last words into Chuck’s ear.� Chuck has just completely written off the event, but his companion, the niece of the Jewish jeweler they are looking for, is curious.

Niece: The guy told you something before he died.

Chuck (dismissively): Yeah but it didn’t make any sense.

Niece: What did he say?

Chuck:� First he said “Hebrew,” then he said “Hoshen mishpat.”

So, Chuck has dismissed this as the nonsensical sputtering of a dying man because he doesn’t understand or recognize Hebrew.� Even though the man prefaced the Hebrew by saying “Hebrew.”

I have to throw in my favorite scene in the film as well.� It’s a montage of Norris banging the heavy bag to let off some steam after he tracked down a kidnapping victim, only to find her already dead. The scene is pretty bad to begin with. Then Norris WHISPERS in voice over, “I’m sorry I was too late–too late. Toooooo laaaaaate.”

Redeeming Qualities:

Christ.� Well, Chuck drives this beat up, blue van which for some reason struck me as awesome, especially since he uses it in a high speed chase.� I miss vans.

VESTIGES OF GLORY

Tagline:

The past holds the key.

Homoeroticism:

You probably know that Chuck is a religious nut and that at some point, he decided to incorporate his beliefs into his work.� Being a devout Christian is pretty much the same thing as being gay.� There are a couple of nice looking, older women dying for his touch, but to the extent that he even notices, he abstains.� However, he has never seemed more at home in the violent embrace of another man.

Corpse Count:

17 dead is not an embarrassing total, especially as so much time is wasted trying to make this into an archeological themed thriller, but it’s nothing to crow about either.� The closest we come to a novelty death is a guy getting his throat slit.

Postmortem One Liner:

Did you have to throw him through the window?

I needed some air.

What You Learned:

Chuck Norris counted to infinity.� Twice.� It was during a screening of this movie.

Can the premise even be articulated?

Sure.� Seagal is some mysterious spook type whose cop son appears to have been gunned down by� mysterious spook types in a random gang shooting.� After murdering and beating every ganger banger he can find, he discovers that it was a bad cop who pulled the trigger.� Oh well.

Evidence That The Script Was Written by Paddy Chayefsky:

Compared to other Seagal 90′s Inaction, this is a gem.� It plays to Seagal’s strengths, which is smart on a low budget, because it doesn’t cost anything extra for Seagal to push one of his son’s killers against a wall and just kick him in the balls over and over again.� There is probably the worst car chase scene I’ve ever seen, but that’s not the script’s fault and the dialog is largely pain free.� Probably the worst written part is that, although he kills over 40 people, Seagal keeps saying “I don’t care who ordered the hit, I just want the shooter.”� Why wouldn’t he care who ordered the hit?� I mean, if it were me, and I had to pick one of the two, I’d kill the guy who pushed the button rather than the drone who pulled the trigger.� Still, I actually enjoyed this one.� If you really want a good cringe, here are a couple of quotes attributed to Seagal on his Wikipedia page:

“I was born very different, clairvoyant and a healer.”� (2006)

“I am hoping that I can be known as a great writer and actor some day, rather than a sex symbol.”� (2006)

C List Costar:

Eddie Griffin?� I didn’t know he’d fallen so far.� In any case, his career problems are a blessing unto me, because Griffin is the deciding factor that pushes this film into being a worthwhile addition to the Seagal cannon.� All of the best lines are his.

Expressing disappointment in his crew’s inability to eliminate Seagal:

“Do I have to buy you dresses? Ya’ll want mini skirts, tutus? Dip your motherfucking ass in hot olive oil, put you in roller skates?”

Frustrated and no longer feeling amorous, he tells the young women he has been hosting that he no longer desires their company:

“I haven’t killed a bitch in a week, goddamnit.” (Cocks gun, walks of screen, we here the sound of a gunshot.)

“Fuck Santa Claus. He never got me shit. That’s why I sell dope”

Redeeming Qualities:

At long last I’ve found a DTV Seagal flick without a shit tornado for a plot, that’s not trying to ape the aesthetic of Kill Bill and that has no zombies other than Seagal himself.� Someone kills his son and he spends the whole film beating and killing anybody between him and finding the shooter.� Was that so hard?

VESTIGES OF GLORY

(Elements of 80′s Action)

Tagline:

When revenge is personal, justice can be brutal.� (What?)

Corpse Count:

48, a lofty total for Seagal. And yet he beats and cripples as many people as ever. I have to ask again, don’t the producers know that this is all we want and is it so hard to deliver it?

Novelty Death:

This is one of my favorites, for personal reasons. In fact, it was kind of a comfort kill for me. Seagal’s beaten his man into a stupor. Then he slaps on the Camel Clutch, which happened to be my go-to finishing move when wrestling my friends. Here’s a hint. If one of your friends is a bull necked football player who would rather die than lose to your Hessian ass, a few chops to the back of the neck will soften him up. Another tip, if you’re wrestling with friends, don’t pull back so hard that you break the guy’s neck, as Seagal does here, even though it is awesome and would probably be the highlight of your life.

What You Learned:

Seagal regards himself primarily as a sex symbol. And deep down, you know he’s right.

Can the premise even be articulated?

Easily, but it can never be played out in too many films.� JCVD is a shady club owner and his wife is an INS social worker who takes in a Chinese refugee girl.� The girl turns out to be the daughter of a Triad.� The Triad comes for the girl, butchers the wife and her parents and later abducts ‘son.� JCVD and his seedy pals carve up every member of the gang like hams.

C-List Costars:

As far as I can tell, none of the people in this film are there for a little added celebrity, though many have long resumes.� One of these is Anthony Fridjohn, who plays Max: JCVD’s boss or uncle or something along those lines.� The important thing is that he becomes a sadistic maniac once the rat in the INS who set up JCVDs wife, who Max somehow regards as his niece, is discovered.� The range of malevolent faces that this guy comes up with surpasses the full range of any other actor in the film.� He and his buddy from France, who doesn’t speak English, have the guy chained down and take turns unleashing torrents of ridicule, disdain and profanity on him while they use an industrial drill on his knee caps and other parts.� So the dialog looks something like

Gigantic Drill: BZZZZZZZZZ
INS Guy:� Ohhh God… Jesusssss� Ahhhhafuuhh!!
Max: Good boy!� You enjoying that?� It’s TERRIFIC!
Raymond: Ou es fruits de mer!!� Je ne sais pas!!

Evidence That The Script Was Written by A Guy Who Works On “Days of Our Lives:”

The dialog is certainly coherent and at times even good.� Unfortunately the influence of HK action seeps into what could have been an ice cold story of revenge.� That means pointless directoral flourishes, violence carried out over opera because it’s such a contrast… but wait, no it’s not because there’s some real tragedy going on here!� and plenty of schmaltz.� The primary vehicle for the schmaltz is the overlapping images of JCVD and his memories of his family.� There’s also a deeply embarrassing scene in which we hear a voice over of JCVD’s son begging him not to leave and JCVD telling the little fruit to be brave as we see their silhouettes intermittently appear on fluttering curtains, with still more opera.

Redeeming Qualities:

Redeemed from what?� The Hong Kong shit aside, I’d recommend this film.� It’s one of the better revenge flicks I’ve seen and a well shot one too.� You can also see JCVD coming into his own as an actor.� Critics, being a heard of gazelle, would never have acknowledged a JCVD performance on a direct to video release.� But now we are to believe he’s become a good actor overnight because he’s good in JCVD.� Kill everyone now.

Vestiges of Glory

(Elements of 80′s Action)

Corpse Count:

23 homicides, nearly every one an act of loving brutality.� The reason the movie hovers around plausibility is that JCVD and his crew combat the Triad by being even more brutal and indiscriminate than they are. Yes the Triad have remarkably bad aim and seem prepared only for hand to hand combat whenever guns would have meant easy victory.� Still, a lot of the time JCVD and friends simply have the drop on them, like when they raid a Triad whorehouse and JCVD ducks behind a hooker, fires between her legs to disable a guy, then throws him off a balcony.� That wasn’t the novelty death, though.

Novelty Death:

Not an easy choice, but I think you have to go with JCVD’s pal, Tony.� Tony gets jumped by this Triad knife expert who systematically cuts him to ribbons, passing up a half dozen opportunities to close the deal, just to toy with and torture Tony further.� The Triad decides to finish it with a flourish and rears back for the kill, giving Tony the opportunity to pull a blade from his own leg and drive it up and into the Triad’s junk.� This is another great performance, because the sounds the Triad makes are absolutely priceless.

What you learned:

John Woo is history’s greatest monster.

Can the premise even be articulated?

Well, I guess I can try.� The main thing to understand about this film is that it’s kind of an 80′s Action fairytale.�� Isn’t this 90′s Inaction?� Well, yes, and the film came out in ’99, but everything in the film looks like the ’80s.� The weapons, the vehicles,� the fonts in the credits, even Dolph himself looks to be right in his prime.� However, this film is set in a kingdom and the female lead is a princess.� Warchild (Dolph) must rescue her and, in so doing, betray his mentor, Ruechang, who turns out to be evil.� Meanwhile, everyone is either dressed in something like medieval garb and riding horses, in which case they will have a WWII style rifle, or they dress like it’s ’86 and roll in the aforementioned vehicles from the ’80s.� It’s kind of a kung fu movie too, because when someone gets kicked, they do that thing where they suddenly become Brian Boitano and spin like five times before they hit the ground.� The kingdom is also multi-ethnic and multi-accented, so one guy is English, the next guy’s Chinese and the next guy’s American.� It seems like everyone is represented except the Blacks and Latinos.� Utopia!

Evidence That The Script Was Written by Anne Rice:

It’s more just the fact that everyone is always speaking in clear but stilted English than that there are any individual pieces of dialog that don’t make sense.� Pretty much everything sounds like this:� “I’m leaving.� And you can tell Ruechang that when I return I will have an army of rebel soldiers with me.”� Or, “If I make one move toward you, one thousand bullets will cut me to pieces.”

C-list Co-Stars:

The tasty, Valerie Chow.� You might know Chow from the great, Chungking Express.� Apparently she’s more famous in Hong Kong as a TV actress and the spokesmodel for a cosmetic product called a “whitening mask,” which I’m sure is exactly what it sounds like.� Oh, those Asians and their hi-larious self-hatred!

Bargain Bin Quality:

It’s not enough to make an 80′s action, fairytale, Kung Fu movie that takes place in a multi-ethnic, timeless, imaginary kingdom.� It must also be implied that Ruechang is the anti-Christ.� On the other hand, this shot reminds me of the upcoming Iron Maiden movie.

Redeeming Qualities:

Supposedly this film was made for $4 million in Bulgaria.� They certainly got their money’s worth as this seems more like a $10 million film.� If you’re an 80′s action aficionado, and given that you are reading a review of Bridge of Dragons, you probably are, this is worth seeing for sheer novelty.� The above pic sums it all up nicely.� There’s Dolph the officer gentleman, carrying his princess bride-to-be in the romantic tradition… as a fuel truck explosion erupts into the sky.� Then there’s the preposterou-tastic scene in which Dolph jumps off of a three story building and into the seat of a Jeep with someone in the jeep shooting at him the whole time.

Vestiges of Glory
(Elements of 80′s Action)

Homoeroticism:

If wanting to see Dolph Lundgren, stripped to the waist, hands tied behind his back, forcibly marched up a hill by a man on steed somehow makes you gay, well then I guess I’m gay.

Corpse Count:

As it happens, my count landed right on 99.� I didn’t count everyone who leaped out of an exploding structure though, because I have some standards.� Moreover, it’s hard to come up with more than a guestimate when most of the people being mowed down are in large groups that are identically dressed.� Give or take a few, and you still have an impressive total.� On the downside, almost all of these are people who simply get shot and fall over or are blown up in battle.� The killing is rarely personal or graphic.

Novelty Death:

Ruechang challenges a gigantic, captured rebel to a one on one fight.� He kicks the shit out of the guy with some hot kung fu, and with the rebel incapacitated, steps on his throat until he is nearly passed out.� Ruechang gives up his sword to the rebel, gets it back and slits his throat.

Postmortem One Liner:

After the above Ruechang sneers and says, “perfect wedding gift.”

What you learned:

Always take the advise of your lady-in-waiting.