Video Game

TEKKEN-2010-Corporations run the world in this futuristic martial arts science fiction Japan/US co-production based on the popular video game series. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (in cartoon make up) is Mishima, head of the Tekken corporation, the most powerful, cruelest, crummiest, not nice corporation of them all. Jon Foo is Jun, a smart ass who's mother (Tamlyn Tomita) is killed by Tekken so he vows revenge. Inside a steel cage death match the skinny boy somehow beats champion Marshall Law (real life MMA fighter Cung Le) so he can compete in Tekken's Iron Fist tournament although his mom told him never to do it. 

TEKKEN mostly plays like the video game it's based on but I'm sure gamers don't like it as it is just fight after fight like any other of it's kind. 

Ian Antony Dale is Mishima's real and arrogant son, Luke Goss is Jun's trainer, Kelly Overton is a female fighter and direct to video martial arts veteran Gary Daniels is a fighter named Bryan Fury. The director Dwight Little was doing mainly TV at the time he made this but in the past made HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MEYERS, a version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with Robert Englund, MARKED FOR DEATH with Steven Seagal and RAPID FIRE with Brandon Lee.

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Crazy Chan

CITY HUNTER-1993- is Jackie Chan's slapstick martial arts taken to the max. Nearly every scene is comical with a character spouting some dumb dialogue and/or joke and making funny faces. Director Jing Wong loads the film with gags and there's this weird "Streetfighter" video game parody near the end! It's based on a Japanese manga.

Chan plays Ryu, a womanizing detective trying to rescue his late partner's daughter from a cruise ship taken over by terrorists led by Australian martial arts vet Richard Norton (but he's suppose be American) and Gary Daniels (a local kickboxing champ who's starred in his own movies including a live action version of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR). It's a little annoying at times but it's never dull (despite a very long musical number). Norton was later in MR. NICE GUY with Chan.

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Tiger, Tiger, Burning Multi-Colored.....

Oh yeah, WHITE TIGER was a 1995 production featuring former kick boxing champ and direct to video martial arts specialist Gary Daniels (from FIST OF THE NORTH STAR) battling Japanese American gangster Victor Chow (the always excellent Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa) and his designer drug gang after his brother (Matt Craven) is killed. Chow likes to brand people and kind of acts like Dennis Hopper in BLUE VELVET toward the end!

Eventually, Daniels gets help from the Japanese Yakuza! Julie Nickson plays an assassin who provides a topless sex scene. There's the usual explosions, car chases and hand to hand combat but the direction is well done and Tagawa makes a great villain and should be in better movies!

Director Richard Martin is the son of comedian Dick Martin and directed episodes of TV's HIGHLANDER as well as the big screen movie AIR BUD. It seems like it takes place on the West Coast but it was filmed in Vancouver, BC. B movie vet Lisa Longois has a small role.



And then there's BLUE TIGER from 1994. A single mother named Gina (Virginia Madsen) gets caught in the middle of a shootout between The Mob and The Yakuza. Her young son gets killed accidently by a Japanese assassin (Toru Nakamura). She goes nuts and is put away but eventually comes back to seek revenge. She gets a tattoo (from Harry Dean Stanton), a gun and learns Japanese. Through a strange series of events she and the assassin become lovers! She points a gun at him a lot but never has the nerve to shoot him. This is not a half bad action film featuring John Woo inspired shootouts and a surprise ending. The director, Norberto Barba later did a lot of TV programs.

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Short But Not Sweet

RAGE-(1995)-is an ok martial arts-action film with kick-boxing champ Gary Daniels (the same year he was in the live action version of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR) as a school teacher who becomes an experiment for some mad scientists (who previously had only used illegal immigrants as guinea pigs) and spends the rest of the movie kicking, shooting and crashing. A lot of glass is broken and Daniels has a fight with an S & M couple! A news reporter tries to help clear him. Director Joseph Merhi is an old hand at this sort of thing.



THE INVADER-(1996)-is a weird but ultimately dumb sci-fi time waster with a bevy of unemployable has-beens. Sean Young plays an infertile woman who mysteriously becomes pregnant after being kissed by Ben Cross. Turns out he's an alien and the two run away so she can have his baby. Daniel Baldwin is Young's sheriff-boyfriend who's in hot pursuit of the them. Nick Mancuso is the bad guy alien who also wants the baby.

The director, Mark Rosman later did some kids TV shows and the Hilary Duff movie A CINDERELLA STORY."

"Without fools there would be no wisdom"-character in THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON

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