Rapid Fire (1992)

Brandon Lee plays Jake Lo, a pissed off art student studying in L.A. The source of his anger? He watched his father get flattened by a tank in Tiananmen Square. The last thing he wants to talk about is what happened to his dad that night, so when he is asked by a fellow student to attend a Tiananmen benefit dinner to share his story and raise awareness of what happened there, he declines. It seems that all he wants to do is draw and maybe find a nice girl and it looks like things are going his way when the nude model from his drawing class asks him out on a date. When he goes to meet her that night, he realizes that this girl tricked him and he's actually at the Tiananmen benefit. What a bitch.

At the benefit Jake witnesses a murder and starts his long series of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If ever there were a film genre "wrong place, wrong time" this movie would be the poster child. They even say it a few times. Anyway, the murder is committed by one of our two major villains, Tony Serrano (played by Nick Mancuso who plays a dirty DEA agent in Today You Die. Tony is an Italian American (they make this clear by showing him eating pasta constantly and saying things like "bada bing") The murder starts a war between him and his former friend Tommy, an Asian drug lord who refuses to give Tony a bigger cut of his heroin business.  Now Tony wants the witness, Jake, dead and the Feds want to bring Jake to Chicago, Tony's home base,  to help take Tony down.

 When I bought this movie, I had never seen it, but was wishing for a non stop action ride. Wish granted. The action is easy to come by and really well done. Brandon Lee is excellent in the fight scenes and not too bad when required to act. I especially like his relationship with ultra good cop Mace Ryan, played by Powers Boothe. Boothe delivers every line as if he were a 1930's hard boiled detective, but he makes it work. He's as tough as nails, but has a heart of gold and is more worried about getting the job done than his own health.

The film's tag line is "Unarmed And Extremely Dangerous", but this isn't entirely true. There are plenty of instances where Jake has either a gun or knife or metal rod, but something happens to him every time he uses one of these things. Jake seems to be disgusted by weapons and always throws them away after using them even when he needs them most (this is usually done in slow motion). Perhaps Jake prefers to fight hand-to-hand. We already know he is highly trained in martial arts as we are shown in the the slow motion fighting scene in the opening that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.

Overall the movie is a lot of fun and the acting is decent all around. The plot isn't anything new, but the film makers at least do a decent job of making it somewhat logical, unlike most action movies I've watched recently. It has its cheesy moments and over the top scenes, but for me, those are things that make these kinds of movies so entertaining.

It's worth mentioning that this film, like Death Warrant (see Mark's review from 1/4/10) also features Al Leong. I never knew his name until Mark mentioned it, but I recognized him as that guy that was in some movie, or was it some other movie? Turns out he's both "some movie" and "some other movie" and about 100 others.

Included on the DVD is a short promo shot by Fox during the making of this movie that starts out introducing Brandon Lee as "The Action Hero of the 90's". Unfortunately Lee died soon after this during the making of "The Crow", but had he lived, he would definitely have been at least as big as Van Damme or Seagal and I would most likely be collecting his Direct to Video releases.

Body Count: 34

People who have been on "Lost": 2
Raymond J. Barry who played Ray Shephard (Jack's uncle) and  Francois Chau, who plays Dr. Pierre Chang aka Dr. Marvin Candle (Miles' dad)

References to Bruce Lee: 1
Boothe says to Lee "Why don't you take those Fists of Fury outside?"

-By Ben Stumpf

Today You Die (2005)

There is a fine truck stop off the highway in Connecticut just before you enter Massachusetts where you can find everything you could ever want, as long as you only want bad action movies and Wolf T-shirts. This magical place is where I came across the DVD "Today You Die" starring the pony tailed prince of action films, Steven Seagal and his newest hip-hop pal Treach of Naughty By Nature. (Seagal has also starred alongside DMX, Ja Rule and Nas.) I had my choice of many Seagal straight to video releases, but what attracted me to this particular film was the tag line "What Seagal Does in Vegas, Nearly Destroys It". Sounds promising, right?

Seagal plays Harlan Banks, who after giving up his life as a cat burglar who robs from scumbags and gives to the helpless, decides to go straight and get himself a real job.  He and his girlfriend Jada go to Las Vegas where Harlan is hired by the over-the-top Max to drive an armored car. Max is played by Kevin Tighe and better known as John Locke's dad on "Lost" (I'm pretty sure he's playing John Locke's dad in this too).  During a routine money pick up, Harlan's partner Bruno shoots some armed guards and then holds a gun to Harlan's head, forcing him to drive through the streets of Vegas while being chased by the police. Three cops are killed in the process. He's able to knock Bruno out with some bad driving, but injures himself in the process and has just enough time to stash the money ($20 million) before he is caught by the police. Even though they never show him taking the money and he is caught almost immediately.

This gets him sent straight to prison, no trial needed. While there, he makes friends with fellow convict, Ice Kool (Anthony 'Treach' Criss) by informing Ice that someone is out to shank him. (shanks are easy to come by in this place as we see at least three of them within ten minutes). Having gained Ice's trust, Harlan agrees to cut him in on a piece of the $20 million. Now all they need to do is get out of jail.

Well, the getting out of jail part is easy. Apparently all you need to do is take footage from the Wesley Snipes movie "Undisputed". Understanding what's going on in the rest of the movie? That's where it gets hard. There are a lot of characters here, most of them could go, including Harlan's girlfriend. The movie actually starts with her having Tarrot cards read and about five poorly timed freeze frames of the cards, usually when a hand is covering most of them. From then on, she has dreams of Harlan dying and a bunch of other crap that is completely meaningless and never comes into play. The relationship between the two is more like a brother and sister. A brother and a sister who have never met each other.

Don't look at me.

However, the relationship between Harlan and his new pal Ice is remarkable. After just one day in prison, Harlan is speaking jive and has not only Ice's trust, but his complete respect. They even kind of look alike...

You know, I almost bought the brown one

The "plot" with Max is never made clear. In fact, for some reason everyone thinks that Max is dead, but the viewer is never lead to believe that. This storyline comes to a conclusion that is maybe the least climactic part of the whole movie. I think that Jada discovering a Mandala on the floor when she wakes up is more exciting than that whole part of the movie. Someone either came into her room and painted that Mandala, or that girl is so psychic that she just makes things happen. Either way, it means NOTHING!

There is another sub plot with DEA agents. This just adds more names and faces to an already overcrowded cast. Agent Rachel Knowles is on Harlan's side and wants to help him find the money. Her shady boss, Agent Saunders (played by Nick Mancuso), may not be. Throw everyone in a warehouse and add in an Asian gang and see what happens.

There is a great deal of stock footage used throughout the movie and plenty of repeated shots. They use the same two close-ups of Seagal about twenty times during all the fight scenes. I don't know where these shots came from, but they are not from this movie. He's not even wearing the right clothes or in the right atmosphere. All stunts are performed by other people, including the very dangerous "walking past a fence at night" stunt. This may be because Seagal is very overweight and they do a poor job of trying to hide his stomach by placing things in front of him, putting him in giant coats, and rarely using  full body shots.

One of the nicer touches to this film is Harlan's devotion to people in need. In the beginning of the film while driving into Vegas, he passes a Children's hospital that is...going out of business? We see a sick little girl in a wheelchair being pushed by a Nun. He never stops at this hospital, but somehow makes a psychic connection with the girl because he comes back at the end of the film just to give her a hug. That's two psychic connections with little girls in two separate movies (see Mark's review for "Out of Reach")

Half off our already low prices!

All that said, is it a good move? Definitely not, but it is somewhat entertaining and I'll probably watch it a few more times in this lifetime. 

Body Count : 29

Freeze Frames: at least 10

Today you live

-By Ben Stumpf