Trained to Kill (1989)

PLOT: Following the murder of their father, two brothers must combine their skills and train together to fight his killers. Aided only by dirtbikes, denim, and a single spiked fingerless glove, they must "prepare," "prevail," and "survive," as dictated by the rock song that plays during their training montage.

Director: H. Kaye Dyal
Writers: H. Kaye Dyal, Arthur Webb
Cast: Frank Zagarino, Glen Eaton, Robert Z’Dar, Marshall Teague, Harold Diamond, Henry Silva, Ron O’Neal, Lisa Aliff, Chuck Connors, Kane Hodder


PLOT THICKENER
About eight years ago, I went on vacation in the Caribbean and found myself toweling off on a beach in St. Thomas. It would have been easy enough to drip-dry, because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and it was at least 90 degrees. I observed a heavy-set man jogging back and forth along the shoreline for at least 45 minutes straight. He was sweating harder than Kobayashi speed-eating ghost peppers. Why exercise so rigorously out here? The lack of shade and the uneven ground of the sand seemed like a surefire recipe for ankle sprains and heat stroke.

Beach training has been a fixture in action cinema ever since Balboa and Creed sprinted and splashed and bro-hugged their way into our hearts back in Rocky III. We’ve actually seen it here at least once before and I have no doubt we’ll see it again, but 1989’s Trained to Kill beach training montage may have shattered the mold with a four-minute sequence focused on the film’s two half-brother heroes. It’s an exceptional mix of varied exercises like abdominal leg throws and push-ups, blatant shirtlessness, an upbeat 1980s rock song, and gripping dramatic heft. Director H. Kaye Dyal uses the song’s bridge not to show his heroes meditating, but rather to show one of the brothers sucking face with his girlfriend.

The brothers find themselves on said beach following their father’s death. Ed Cooper (Connors), fresh off covertly rescuing his twenty-something Cambodian-born son, Sam (Eaton) from the jungles of Southeast Asia, had brought his boy home to sunny California. The escape doesn’t go unnoticed, however, and enemies from Cooper’s past reconvene. Following a coordinated jailbreak from a prison van, drug traffickers Walter Majyk (Z’Dar) and Felix Brenner (Teague) are reunited with cohort Loc Syn (Diamond) and gang leader Ace Duran (Silva). Old military buddies with a shared interest in smuggling heroin back to the U.S. during the Vietnam War, they want to get revenge on the man who dropped a dime on them and got Majyk and Brenner imprisoned over a decade ago: Cooper. Their other objective is to steal a small statue believed to be in Sam’s possession -- Duran has it on good authority that it contains diamonds with a black market value of $5 million.

Sam is initially guarded due to his upbringing in a war-torn hellhole, and is just getting to know his new family members, including a brother named Matt (Zagarino). This process lasts all of about six hours before his parents are gunned down (Mrs. Cooper) and set ablaze (Mr. Cooper) during a night-time home invasion by a masked and heavily armed Duran gang. While Matt was busy necking with his girlfriend Jessie (Aliff) off in some dingy back-seat, Sam is knocked unconscious by Loc Syn, but not before revealing the location of the mysterious box he brought to the States.

An emotional funeral at sea finds the brothers at odds. Sam reveals that he vaguely remembers who assaulted the Cooper home, and Matt is pissed that he didn’t divulge this to the authorities. He believes the brothers should tell the cops what they know, let the system work and justice will prevail. Sam, however, convinces Matt that the only way to eliminate trained killers is to go on the attack and fight them like animals. The brothers enlist the help of their father’s alcoholic military buddy, George Shorter (O'Neal) and he promises to train them as quickly as he can, with no assurances of sobriety. Will the brothers be up to snuff the next time they tangle with Duran and his death squad?

The span of film genres represented by this cast is nothing short of incredible. In no particular order, we’re gifted with The Rifleman (American Western TV), Super Fly (blaxploitation), Johnny Cool (crime), Maniac Cop (horror), Jimmy from Road House (action), and even Jason Voorhees (musical romantic comedy). Everyone plays their part to perfection. The brothers are convincing as fiery upstarts hell-bent on vengeance, and Eaton in particular is a lot of fun as Sam. While older brother Matt opts for denim and Hawaiian shirts or no shirt at all, Sam is fond of what appears to be a Members Only jacket and a single, spiked fingerless glove. Homeboy won’t even take it off when he’s prepping root veggies for dinner!

The action in this film is diverse and well-executed with a romping brand of energy. We get stalking night-time action, a Japanese-influenced sword fight, wild shoot-outs, rocket launcher attacks, dirtbike chases, dirtbike crashes into cardboard, carsplosions, hand-to-hand fights, throat rips, and shark tooth slashes. During a scene in a Las Vegas casino, Loc Syn gets so lathered up by the appearance of the brothers that he pushes a waitress, knocks out two security guards, and then throws himself off a balcony and goes crashing through a poker table just because it’s more fun than taking the stairs. The climax finds the brothers baited into a complex where Jessie is adorned in ragged clothing, chained to a post-apocalyptic jungle gym, and surrounded by flames. It’s epic on a budget, but epic nonetheless.

It’s impossible to discuss this film without highlighting Loc Syn, played by former Floridian kickboxing champion and Andy Sidaris favorite, Harold Diamond. A former military man by the name of Andrew Wilson, he went insane during his service, fell under the tutelage of Duran, and started calling himself Loc Syn for no reason other than it sounded cool and provided a 50% savings in syllables over his birth name. According to George, Syn’s mind “went south” and he started killing for the pure fun of it. He’ll fill both hands with wakizashis while grinning madly, but would rather rip out your larynx barehanded or clench a shark tooth in his front teeth and slash your throat up close. To his credit, Loc Syn refuses to let his sociopathic tendencies dictate his sartorial choices. He wears an array of threads -- fedoras, steel-tipped cowboy boots, dark shades, and tank tops with designer blazers -- in letting his fashionable freak flag fly. That he has virtually no lines in the movie makes him all the more intimidating; he’s seated between diabetes and high-blood pressure at the table of silent killers.

The rest of the villains are up to the task of providing both comic relief and teeming mounds of exposition. As military major and gang leader Ace Duran, Henry Silva showed up for probably no more than two days of shooting, but spouts enjoyable lines and appears to be having fun with the material. Other than a climactic scene where he rides the skies in a helicopter and rains shotgun blasts down on our heroes, he tends not to get his hands dirty, leaving that work to the aforementioned Loc Syn, and Brenner and Majyk. The latter pair have fantastic chemistry on screen, cracking jokes when they’re not talking shop in the goofiest terms possible. While hatching their plan to take out the Cooper brothers, Majyk strokes his machine gun and coos, “I love this piece, this baby’s real hard,” to which Brenner replies, “All right, let’s rock.” Did I mention that Majyk is stroking said firearm at a strip club in the middle of the day? That the onstage stripper is dancing like she’s at a family member’s wedding and “Don’t Stop Believin’” just came on? And that Kane fucking Hodder is working the door as a mulleted bodyguard?

VERDICT
I can’t say it any more plainly: if you love weird and wild action cinema of the 1980s, you owe it to yourself to find a copy of this film. It falls into that elusive category of “films that must be rewatched dozens of times until your eyes fall out” to gain an appreciation for all the weird character ticks, imperfectly hilarious action scenes, and preposterous situations it has to offer. The cast alone might be the genre movie fan’s wet dream but the movie overall delivers in spades. Highly recommended.

AVAILABILITY
Difficult but not impossible. The film never made the leap to DVD, but VHS copies (and rips, certainly) are out there.

6 / 7

American Ninja 2: The Confrontation (1987)

PLOT: When Marines go missing from a military base in the Caribbean, two Army Rangers are brought in as reinforcements. Before they can help in the investigation, however, they must plaster the neighborhood with "LOST MARINES" posters and raise enough money for a $10,000 reward to incentivize the local population.

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writers: Gary Conway, James Booth
Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, Larry Poindexter, Michelle Botes, Gary Conway, Jeff Celentano, Mike Stone, Ralph Draper

PLOT THICKENER
When I publicly acknowledged in my review of the first American Ninja movie that the entire series was a shameful blind spot, it felt as if a huge Dudikoff-sized weight had been lifted off my chest. Without any fears of sentimentality coloring my critique, I could enjoy these classic films on their own merits: the limp grasp of ninja mythology, the whiteboy-in-Eastern-philosophy adventuring, the frequent fight scenes, and the lasers -- my god, the lasers. I was apprehensive, still; to break the seal of reviewing the first film was daunting considering the sequels to come. As a general cinematic rule, sequels tend to diminish in quality, but as evidenced by franchises like No Retreat, No Surrender and Ring of Fire, that rule goes out the window with martial arts b-movies. More accurately, it gets jump-kicked through the window during a bar fight.

In this case, on the other side of that newly broken window is Steve James, and he's laughing and flexing all the while. Returning to the fray as Army Ranger Sgt. Curtis Jackson, he and Sgt. Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff) have recently been assigned to a Marine base to help protect the American embassy on an island in the Caribbean. Life is good for the local Marines. They surf, chase girls, get hammered, and due to some anti-American elements on the island, must rock Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts instead of their standard uniforms to blend in. Even the base's brash commanding officer, Capt. "Wild Bill" Woodward (Celentano) is dressed for a Jimmy Buffett concert.

Because of his culturally appropriated ninja-sense, Armstrong knows something is fishy right off the bat, and it's not the local shrimp tacos. (Shrimp are technically decapod crustaceans, not fish). Jackson and Armstrong are first invited to go water-skiing by a few of the dudes from the base. Guess what? There's no fucking life jackets. The boat mysteriously breaks down and drifts ashore to an isolated island beach. The shifty Marine is all, "oh, how strange... let's go swimming everybody" and Armstrong says "I'm afraid of sharks, I'll stay with the boat." Within moments, he's attacked by a gang of ninjas who throw every manner of ninja  weapon cliche at him: the spears, the confounding net, the stars, the swords. Even while dressed in a three-quarter-length wetsuit and white cross-trainers instead of his normal ninja gear, Armstrong prevails and the gang makes it safely back to base.

Even though Woodward has no idea what ninjas are (how typical), he grants Armstrong and Jackson a week to investigate further. They have a hunch that these ninjas may be related to a spate of kidnappings of Marines. Really, Joe? You think the random beach ninjas, kidnapped Marines, and shifty Marine who ran the boat ashore and into a sabotage might be connected? As it turns out, all of these things were mere coincidences and the kidnapped Marines were actually just busy with a bunch of sex workers, the ninjas were a local indigenous culture hostile to outsiders, and the shifty Marine was actually just a terrible driver. Kidding! Joe was totally right. A local heroin kingpin called The Lion (Conway) has been using a kidnapped biological engineer to create an army of ninjas out of kidnapped Marine DNA to protect his vast drug empire. Do you see why pro-lifers are so concerned about stem cell research? This is the shit that happens.

After exploring some super-serious dramatic territory with the first American Ninja, it was interesting to see that director Sam Firstenberg could lighten the tone with the second installment. The movie is zany throughout, and pretty much everyone got the memo. Dudikoff seems a little detached -- there's only so many Blue Steel glares I can tolerate -- and he makes some odd wardrobe choices like a leather jacket and jeans tucked into his boots. (We're in the Caribbean, mind you). James pretty much steals the show once again as Sgt. Curtis Jackson, so no surprises there. Mike Stone is pretty enjoyable as Lion's main muscle, Tojo Ken, and his build-up as the most threatening physical match for the heroes is well done, if completely illogical. (During quality assurance testing, he kills about 20 of the gang's own GMO ninjas). Jeff Celentano is a little stiff as Capt. Woodward, but sports a fine moustache and owns the best line of the film: "What is this? Ninjas? Drug pushers? My men getting kidnapped and murdered? This is really beginning to get on my tits." It's funny, because he doesn't actually have tits. If he does, they're pretty small.

While the movie treads a lot of the same action territory as the first installment -- heroes get jumped by ninjas, defeat ninjas handily, rinse, repeat -- there are some distinct differences. The most egregious is that Michael Dudikoff looks pretty awful in his fight scenes. A successful fight scene, in this humble writer’s opinion, requires that the stuntman act as if he’s getting hit, but also that the principal act as if he’s hitting him. Dudikoff acts like an interpretive dancer trying to complete a field sobriety test after a dozen Pina Coladas. When he’s not flailing, or throwing a weak kick, he’s doing movements without any regard for how the stuntman is moving with him. I counted at least three instances where he “threw” an opponent despite having no grip whatsoever on them. None of this is helped by the fact that Steve James brings intensity to his fight scenes, is deliberate but not stilted in his movements, and genuinely appears to be having a good time beating up those around him. It would be easy to point the finger at Dudikoff as a non-martial artist, but I think blame should be laid at the feet of Sam Firstenberg. The Koff looked passable in the first film, so what changed? One has to assume that director was lazy with the coverage and was forced to edit his way out of it.

VERDICT
Let’s recount: decent fights, a silly story, mostly unremarkable characters, and a lead actor who I may forever refuse to embrace as a martial arts action star. When all the critical elements are sort of neutral, your film would appear to be dead in the water, but you can still win a ton of points on overall form and pacing. I ultimately enjoyed the breezy runtime because there was always *something* happening: either a fight scene, a ridiculous plot point that moved the story forward, or some display of dated fashion sense out of a modern Williamsburg farmers market. While this film seemed to signal Dudikoff's waning interest in the franchise, the rest of the crew picks up the slack. Solid.

AVAILABILITY
Wide and salty, like the Caribbean Sea. Amazon, Netflix, EBay.

4.5 / 7

TC 2000 (1993)

PLOT: The earth is dying a slow and terrible atmospheric death. The elite have retreated underground, leaving the rest of us to choke on the aftermath. The inconvenient truth is that this is the straight-to-video martial arts movie Al Gore wishes he had invented.

Director: T.J. Scott
Writers: J. Stephen Maunder, Richard M. Samuels, T.J. Scott
Cast: Billy Blanks, Bolo Yeung, Bobbie Phillips, Jalal Merhi, Matthias Hues, Kelly Gallant, Harry Mok, Ramsay Smith, Bill Pickells

PLOT THICKENER:
While many will knock the glory days of straight-to-video American martial arts films as inconsistent, campy, or mostly bad, no one can say there was a lack of variety in the genre’s stars. You had the quick and kicky fighters like Jerry Trimble, Cynthia Rothrock, and Loren Avedon, wily workhorses such as Don Wilson, and underutilized talents like Keith Cooke and Kathy Long. Another prevalent subset of talents were oft-glistening strongmen such as Matthias Hues and Billy Blanks. Throw in the original Chinese Hercules, Bolo Yeung, and you’ve got yourself a party with 1993’s TC 2000. Someone definitely spiked the punch with whey protein.

Through narration that recalls equal parts Peter Falk in The Princess Bride and Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, we learn the lay of the land from Jason Storm (Blanks). In the not-so distant future, the earth’s atmosphere has rebelled after years of abuse and pollution. The rich have moved underground and safeguarded their resources with high-tech security, while the less fortunate scrap away for survival on the surface world. These poor souls huddle around oil drum fires, refuse to brush their teeth, and battle over bags of drinking water in underground fights held above-ground. It’s best not to figure out the logic there.

Storm and his partner, Zoey Kinsella (Phillips), are security officers called trackers who respond to security breaks in the ruling class’s underworld emporium of food storage and boiler rooms. As of late, sabotages have skyrocketed and the head of operations, the Controller (Smith) is none too pleased with the attacks. Zoey suspects that the tracker patrol schedules are being fed to the aggressors, The Controller’s right-hand man Bigalow (Hues) thinks that Jason is a punk bitch, and Jason thinks that the recipe for mussels and pasta he got from Epicurious is absolutely delish.

Meanwhile, The Controller and his head scientist are working on a secret cyborg prototype called the TC-2000 X, but they need a dead body to get the project rolling. Where the fuck are they going to get one of those with so many healthy, breathing people walking around? As they say, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade and mix it with Robitussin and Jolly Ranchers, then set up a lethal hit on one of your own people.

The cyborg born out of the Controller’s scheme immediately makes contact with the recent saboteurs, the Picasso Gang, led by Niki Picasso (Merhi). A clunky alliance is forged and Picasso has designs on a full-scale overthrow of the underworld. Only after listening to some vinyl, though, because his crew is comprised of high-fashion hipsters dressed to the nines in leather berets and faux furs. Admirably, Jason strikes out on his own to put a stop to the hipster takeover, but discovers that he alone can’t compete with their knowledge of obscure post-punk and ironic facial hair. Teaming with a surface world martial arts master named Sumai (Yeung) is the only chance he has to squash their ambitions.

Technically speaking, this is one of Film One’s slickest productions given the limited budget. The trackers wield laser stunners which exhaust both enemies and 90% of the post-production budget with electrocution effects. During chase scenes, viewers are treated to intense close-ups of Billy Blanks’s face, intercut with Terminator-esque first-person perspective utilizing “tracker view” overlay graphics. The locations are mostly well-scouted and integrated, and the film is thankfully short on generic warehouse scenes. To compensate, it beats you over the head with “people in lab coats frantically pushing buttons in a control room” scenes. Last, it was nice to see some thought and care went into the costume designs for the Picasso gang, even if they look the same as every other post-apocalyptic gang of thugs trotted out in leather, fur, and unnecessary face paint.

What would an early 90s DTV martial arts flick be without some hilarious missteps? There’s visible boom mics and crash mats aplenty, an incredible man-on-fire scene, and heaps of awful dialogue. Just when you thought you’d seen the last of villains consulting a watch before telling the heroes, “it’s time to die,” along comes TC 2000 to get your leather pants all swampy with cliches. Worse yet, Jalal Merhi gets not one, but two scenes where he makes out with the beautiful Bobbie Phillips, because mashing tongue with the female lead is in his contract. Cue the jealous angry fist-shaking now.

We’ve been harsh on the way fight scenes are often handled in Film One productions, but this film gets the viewing angles and editing correct more often than not. First-person and over-the-shoulder perspectives are used sparingly and fights are well-paced without too much reliance on fighters standing around while huffing and furrowing their brows at each other. The choreography is mostly substandard, but there are plenty of funny fight screams, grimaces, and sweaty embraces mid-battle between Yeung, Hues, and Blanks.

VERDICT:
TC 2000 cribs freely from the buddy-cop formula, Demolition Man’s reanimated-corpse-as-troublemaker, and science-fiction film’s general fascination with cyborgs. These elements alone are cause for concern. However, the story keeps its focus on the right elements for the most part. In stepping to the side as a supporting player, Jalal Merhi manages to deliver what is arguably his best (or least wooden) performance. While TC 2000 isn’t fantastic by any objective stretch of the imagination, it’s a pretty serviceable 90 minutes of goofy sci-fi action fun, and an upper-tier entry in the leg-sweeps-and-lasers subgenre.

4.5 / 7