Drive (1997)

PLOT: A Chinese corporation implants a man with a synthetic “bio-engine” that gives him enhanced reaction time, speed, and fighting ability. When he flees to California, the group scrambles to prevent him from delivering the device to a competitor. This is why it’s important to require your cyborg prototypes to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Director: Steve Wang
Writer: Scott Phillips
Cast: Mark Dacascos, Kadeem Hardison, John Pyper-Ferguson, Brittany Murphy, Tracey Walter, James Shigeta, Masaya Kato, Ron Yuan, David Hayter

PLOT THICKENER

In a 2010 article for Wired, comedian Patton Oswalt articulated the idea, “Everything that ever was, available forever” (ETEWAF) as a way of framing geek culture in the era of high-speed Internet and on-demand content. In some ways, this idea also extends to our current film geek landscape, where dozens of boutique genre film distribution labels are dedicated to the high-resolution restoration of obscure films that were only ever released to the VHS rental market (if that!) The horror and exploitation genres have been the primary beneficiaries of this technological wave, resulting in the mass availability of films that few saw during their initial home video runs. Unfortunately, the vast majority of cult action films have been orphaned as undeserving of this same glossy treatment. That said, if I were to start my own prestige action movie label tomorrow, and I was forced to pick one movie as the flagship release, it would be Steve Wang’s 1997 film, Drive.

Toby Wong (Dacascos) is a walking, talking science experiment, implanted by the nefarious Leung Corporation with an experimental “turbo drive” device that gives him borderline superhuman physical abilities. When things go sideways, Wong flees to the American West Coast, hoping to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles to a more benevolent tech company that will uninstall the device and pay him a hefty sum of money for the technological advances that it yields. Unfortunately, Leung Corporation’s head honcho, Mr. Lau (Shigeta) has outsourced the apprehension of Wong (the “object”) to a group of violent and savvy American mercenaries led by Vic Madison (Pyper-Ferguson) and Hedgehog (Walter), and they’re hot on Wong’s trail.

Mere moments after pulling up a stool at a Bay Area bar to drink some five-hop hipster brew, Toby is forced to fight and flee again, this time with the help (however coerced) of a struggling and divorced songwriter, Malik Brody (Hardison) and his 1973 Dodge Challenger. After Toby shares the reasons for his actions and offers Malik half of his money once they get to L.A., the pair joins together for a high-paced chase from a dangerous group of men. Will they make it to Los Angeles in one piece? Can they trust each other, let alone the people they meet along the way? And is it elephant seal mating season at this time of year? Because I’ve heard there are some good stops along the Pacific Coast Highway to watch them on the beach.

THIS MOVIE IS INSANE. I’ve been banging this drum for a long time, and I haven’t seen everything, but Drive has the best fight choreography of any American action b-movie I’ve ever seen. You can certainly make arguments for both of the Undisputed sequels, a few other Scott Adkins movies, or perhaps 2008’s Broken Path (directed by Koichi Sakamoto, who did choreography in this film), but for me, this is still tops. The differences in environment, the use of weapons (e.g., guns, “stun rods,” boots, and even dirtbikes), and the consideration of impediments (e.g., Toby handcuffed to Malik), are all deployed logically and effectively. The fight scenes scale well, they’re shot and edited competently, and they escalate appropriately toward a truly bonkers climax where Toby fights a more advanced model of himself (Kato) in an Apollo-themed night club. The filmmakers, comprised of a Taiwan-born American director and an action team of primarily Japanese and American performers, managed to approximate the look and feel of classic Hong Kong fight choreography (specifically, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung) during just a six-week production schedule. Is it *as good* as the best from Hong Kong’s golden era? No, but it’s in the conversation. That alone is a major feat for a low-budget direct-to-video action film made in the States.

As good as the fight scenes are, you have to also consider what’s happening during the downtime. The plot is silly but fairly simple, with elements of a road movie, a reluctant partner buddy-cop dynamic, and the man-as-machine territory Wang previously explored with the Guyver films. Hardison and Dacascos forge an easygoing chemistry together over the course of the film; the early bits feel a little forced but Hardison’s light demeanor makes their conversations interesting and at the mid-way point, they started to play better off each other. Their counterparts on the other side of the moral spectrum, John Pyper-Ferguson and Tracey Walter, have a more consistent and natural vibe, along with quirkier character ticks. Walter’s Hedgehog is into bad American television programming (e.g., Walter the Einstein Frog, more on that here) and a junk food intake bemoaned by his partner, Madison. In creating the look for his country-fried hitman, Pyper-Ferguson seems to be channeling equal parts Clint Eastwood in Coogan’s Bluff and Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula with his bolo ties, tinted glasses, and manicured facial hair. It’s an odd, entertaining performance and he delivers some of the best lines of dialogue in the film (on Toby, he remarks that “the son of a bitch could eat flour and shit cupcakes.”)

Brittany Murphy’s performance as the flaky, motel heir, Deliverance Bodine is alternately grating and colorful. At times, she lays on the crazy vibe too thick, and combined with her exposition-laden dialogue, it makes the character feel one-dimensional. (We’ve all met people who come on too strong too quickly, so it’s still believable). It’s only through Deliverance’s continuing interactions with Malik and Toby that we see Murphy peel away the additional layers -- she knows a ton about cars and handles automatic weapons with the glee of a kid in a water balloon fight -- and by the end of the trio’s time together, I was actually looking forward to more. I may be alone on that, and I’m fine with it. 

In terms of overall performance, Dacascos may be the biggest revelation of them all. As the action star and focal point of some fast and complex fight choreography, he’s already carrying a heavy load. He surprised me with his ability to handle comedy, though, from his timely facial expressions to a bizarre singing scene that precedes the climax. Very few action stars have the will and self-awareness to try some of that stuff, let alone make it work. This sort of rare and multi-faceted performance will only reinforce the notion that Dacascos should have been a much, much bigger star. (Iron Chef America ain't a bad place to unwind, I suppose.)

If there’s one big critique I have of this film, it’s the pacing and padding. The version of the film I watched was the 117-minute director’s cut. That’s a bit long for this sort of movie, and you really notice the length during several scenes with expository dialogue that don’t move the story forward. According to one of the special features on the disc, Dacascos’s singing scene at the Apollo 14 Club -- he serenades Malik with a song about Malik’s own dysfunctional romantic relationship with his ex-wife -- was only supposed to show three verses. With this version of the film, we get the whole shebang, and while it’s kinda funny and a great example of Dacascos’s charisma, it’s endemic of the sort of bloat that occasionally dogs the movie. Because the action scenes are so frequent and so good, this film gets away with it, but a lesser action film might not. Similar to Guyver: Dark Hero, it seems that Wang either fell in love with too much of the footage, or couldn’t determine how to streamline the story in the editing room.

When Seasonal Films started their run of English-language productions back in the mid-1980s, they infused those films with varying versions of Hong Kong style action choreography. They recognized that good fight scenes took time, but the process was a worthy investment. The blueprint had been translated and was demonstrated to work for the American market. So many American b-movies that came afterward were either unable or unwilling to follow that model, though, and you’ve been reading about those movies for years on this very platform. Drive is something a perfect storm, though. It had a great action star, with a great stunt team, along with a director with unique visual sensibilities, and just enough money to make it all work. But it also came at a time when American audiences, especially those consuming DTV action films, had more and more Hong Kong film directly at its fingertips. Drive was able to cater directly to that appetite in a way that its DTV brethren of the decade prior probably ignored. 

VERDICT

Generally speaking, Drive is not a perfect film, but its strengths are so off-the-charts exceptional, that it would be ridiculous of me to dock it points for the absence of silly DTV genre markers like Zubaz pants or bad line delivery. After all, shouldn’t fight films be about the fighting itself? If your answer is no, quit being a smart-ass. If your answer is yes, there is no finer or more convincing example of an English-language movie executing Hong Kong-style action choreography during this era than Drive. The Seasonal Films Corporation’s “Super 7” set the bar, and this film just about jumps over it. Strongly recommended. 

AVAILABILITY

Your best bets are Amazon or eBay on DVD. Be mindful that there's a few different versions floating around, including the aforementioned "Director's Cut" with lots of bonus features.

7 / 7

Only the Strong (1993)

PLOT: A former military man returns to his old high school to find that teen delinquents reign supreme. He hopes to transform a dozen of the school’s worst offenders with an experimental class in the Brazilian martial art of capoeira. If that doesn’t work? Jazzercise.

Director: Sheldon Lettich
Writer: Sheldon Lettich, Luis Esteban
Cast: Mark Dacascos, Geoffrey Lewis, Paco Christian Prieto, Stacey Travis, Richard Coca, Roman Cardwell, Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter



PLOT THICKENER
There’s a moment in 1999’s Zoolander where fashion designer Mugatu, played by Will Ferrell, leans towards a colleague during a climactic (and cheesy) showdown and blurts, “they’re break-dance fighting.” As performance elements, dancing and fighting for the screen are more closely related than at first glance. Dance-like rhythm was a style marker in Chang Cheh’s fight choreography for his Shaw Bros. films. (And Jackie Chan might say the same about his own work). Revered action stars from Cheng Pei Pei to Michelle Yeoh and Moon Lee relied on their years of dance training in lieu of formal martial arts experience to perform their early action film roles. Regardless of whether “dance fighting” is an actual thing -- it’s not! -- those who lurk in the DTV shadows most likely got their introduction to it with 1993’s Only the Strong.

Following a tour of duty in Brazil, a United States Green Beret named Lewis Stevens (Dacascos) is honorably discharged, and then returns to his hometown of Miami, Florida. As one is want to do after a few years of military service, he visits his former high school teacher and mentor, Mr. Kerrigan (Lewis) on the job. What he sees shocks him: kids are carrying weapons, ignoring authority, getting into fights, and even dealing that sweet Bolivian marching powder. When he encounters an escalating conflict between a student and his drug-dealing older sibling (Anderson-Gunter) on school grounds, Lewis is prodded into action and shows off capoeira skills that both astound and intrigue.

Following the incident, Kerrigan goes to his peers during a teachers meeting with a proposal. Since none of their efforts to discipline or teach the students has worked, he wants to hand over the classroom reigns to Lewis for an off-campus course in capoeira. Despite some initial hesitation among the group, Kerrigan wins their approval and is cleaning up a shithole firehouse with Lewis before you can say, “weird subject matter for a montage.”

The dozen students assigned to the course are as bad as their reputations. They blare music from ghetto blasters, they wield furious mullets, and they even wear baggy pants! After a short period of adjustment, though, they’ve gone from scowling to dancing (in capoeira, the ginga). From pulling knives, to pulling each other off the ground without further incident after accidentally kicking each other in the face. From dressing like punks to dressing like male models in a Banana Republic catalog photo for casual beach wear. (Capri pants will never look tough, but at least the students look comfortable wearing them). For the moment, Lewis’s methods are working.

Old habits die hard, though. The most unpredictable of the students, Orlando (Coca), is having a difficult time walking away from the easy money that his uncle, Silverio (Prieto) provides to him through work at the local chop shop. Try as he might, Lewis has no luck in talking sense into Silverio either, despite the slumlord’s admiration for his capoeira skills. As posturing turns to violence, how will Lewis protect his new students? What about his old high school flame turned forward-thinking teacher, Dianna (Travis)? Or his mentor, Kerrigan, who’s a tough old bastard, but let’s face it, shouldn’t be messing with gangbangers? Better yet, how will Lewis protect the sanctity of the classroom and alternative teaching methods for future generations? Yes -- there’s that much riding on this.

Few chopsocky villains have taken so much interest in accelerating urban decay in his city as the treacherous Silverio. A cross between Vega from Street Fighter II and pro wrestling’s Razor Ramon (even down to the colorful vests), he’s a despicable gang leader and capoeira badass without any redeemable qualities. Prieto didn’t do much after this other than a role in Street Law (we’ll cover it), but he’s terrific here. The character of Silverio is pretty much exactly what you want in a good b-movie chopsocky villain: he says ridiculous things, acts like a prick all the time, and dresses like a total asshole. Great hair, too!

While I’ll stop short of calling Lewis Stevens dry toast, he’s surprisingly wholesome despite a few allusions to a troubled past. The educational-do-gooder-as-action-hero isn’t yet a tried and true formula and I wasn’t totally convinced by the cultural sea change illustrated here. That’s not to say that I find selfless people insufferable, but as someone who spends too much time drinking really good scotch and making poor life decisions, I sometimes have difficulty relating to them. Dacascos still gives it his all, playing the hard-ass when the kids need it, dispensing humor where appropriate, and showing off excellent form in every fight scene.

At the helm is frequent Jean-Claude Van Damme collaborator, Sheldon Lettich. I’ve always found his technique to be solid but unremarkable, and his third film is no different. He gives the fight choregraphy space to breathe and mixes in cool camera angles, overuses montages (including the requisite “progress through cartwheels” one), and juggles a lot of characters and plot points. Where he really succeeds is in the pace. I recall being underwhelmed when I first saw this movie as a teenager, but I was struck by his observance of one of the great unspoken “rules” of action cinema where something compelling -- plot development, humorous moment, fight scene, etc. -- happens every 15 minutes.

(Author’s Note: This review was finalized before learning of the passing of actor Geoffrey Lewis. He was great in this film, just as he was in so many other movies. I really do love him in everything and will miss his presence on the screen).

VERDICT
As Dacascos’s first real lead role, it’s easy to see why he’s had such a long and prolific career. On the same token, it’s a bit puzzling to me why he didn’t become a bigger star -- he’s charismatic, humorous, and a terrific on-screen fighter. All of those traits are on various degrees of display in Only the Strong, and despite the Disney-esque saccharine moments and plenty of 90s cliches, it’s an enjoyable film with interesting characters and a good redemption story. Recommended.

AVAILABILITY
DVD on Amazon and eBay.

4 / 7

When B-List Goes Hollywood: Part 2

The last time we scoured the earth for martial arts b-film actors in mainstream film and television productions, we found nearly a dozen offbeat appearances. Billy Blanks celebrated a touchdown in a Bruce Willis movie by offing himself, Don Wilson nearly kicked Tom Green in the face, and Jerry Trimble acted alongside Al Pacino in an overstuffed Michael Mann crime film. By no means was that list comprehensive though; our team of researchers* has uncovered a group of eight more.

* Me

Jeff Wincott - Prom Night (1980)
Before he was beating up on Dave Matthews in Lake City or playing undercover cops pretending to be homeless on The Wire, Jeff Wincott was fighting the likes of Matthias Hues and starring in a barrage of PM Entertainment releases. Before *that* however, he was rocking a blonde moptop and tuxedo shirt as a rapey meathead in Paul Lynch’s 1980 Canadian slasher Prom Night.

Chuck Jeffreys - Ghost Dog (1990)
Including Chuck Jeffreys again might be a little obvious considering his prolific career as both Hollywood stunt coordinator and performer. But I chose to list this one because even though Jeffreys’s appearance as a mugger is fleeting and he gets his ass kicked by an old man carrying groceries, I do love Henry Silva making elk noises, and I dig the work of Jim Jarmusch. A personal favorite.

Billy Blanks - Kiss the Girls (1997)
Plays a kickboxing instructor, surprises no one.

Rion Hunter? - The Doors (1991)
I can't confirm this appearance at all. It’s a total shot in the dark and I'm only going by the listed IMDb credit. Given that the NRNS3 super-villain is credited as "Indian in the desert," I watched The Doors with particular attention paid to the desert scenes, with especially close attention paid to the desert scenes involving Native Americans. Hunter was not the dying old Native American man near the beginning of the film. He was not the Native American man with the hat played by Wes Studi. He was also not the Native American man in the cave. I can only conclude then, that Rion Hunter played the naked blurry Indian on horseback on a distant sand dune during the peyote trip scene.

Don Wilson - Batman Forever (1995)
Under a mask of glow-in-the-dark face-paint, Don Wilson is virtually unrecognizable as a gang leader in Batman Forever. This role was historically significant for three main reasons: 1) this is the only film I can recall where Wilson actually plays a villain; 2) this is the film where the first Batman franchise officially went off the rails; and 3) you can observe the exact moment where Chris O’Donnell’s film career peaked upon beating Wilson in a hand-to-hand fight.

Matthias Hues - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Hues plays a hulking Klingon general alongside British heavyweight actors Christopher Plummer and David Warner. While a cool role, this wasn’t exactly new territory for Hues; he played an alien drug dealer two years earlier in the Dolph Lundgren actioner I Come in Peace.

Loren Avedon - Baywatch (1993)
Failing to ask Loren Avedon in two consecutive interviews about his guest appearance on Baywatch as the evil underground fighter Michael Branson will go down as one of my great regrets in life. How many performers in Hollywood can claim that they got paid to pretend to kick and punch The Hoff in the face? Of those performers, how many can also say that they got to engage in fisticuffs with the innovator of a cash-printing fitness craze? Only one: Loren Avedon.

Mark Dacascos - Iron Chef America (2004-2013)
Whether or not he ever tops the high watermark achieved in 1997’s Drive, Mark Dacascos will also forever be known to mainstream audiences as the wild-eyed dude shouting “SECRET INGREDIENT: ______!” in every episode of Iron Chef America. There’s a possibility that Dacascos is prohibited from munching down on the chefs’ creations and forced to eat mayonnaise sandwiches from catering, but he still has the cushiest and most regular mainstream acting gig of anything we’ve listed here.

Any others come to mind? Leave them in a comment below!

American Samurai (1992)

PLOT: Years after learning the ways of the samurai as an orphan in Japan, an American journalist travels to Turkey to investigate a murder. To add to the international intrigue, he occasionally wears a Canadian tuxedo and his favorite snack food is Swedish fish.

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writer: John Corcoran
Starring: David Bradley, Mark Dacascos, Valarie Trapp, Rex Ryon, Melissa Hellman, John Fujioka, Douvi Cohen



PLOT THICKENER:
Charlie and Donald Kaufman. Michael and Fredo Corleone. Alex and Chad Wagner. No, these aren’t the names of recently married couples in Maine and Maryland. They’re a few examples of cinematic sibling rivalries arranged in ascending order of fight scene quantity. And what better example of this convention than a film where the brothers in conflict share a pittance of screen time and aren’t even biologically related? Nearly 20 years before Warrior made “brother vs. brother” cool again, director Sam Firstenberg made it tepid and really bloody with 1992’s American Samurai.

Following the success of the American Ninja franchise, Firstenberg focused on another combative member of feudal Japanese society to Americanize without shame. He narrowed it down to two choices: the samurai warrior class ("bushi") and belligerent street merchants yelling at passerbys about tea. Fortunately for star David Bradley, Firstenberg went with the first idea. The duo would go on to make three more films together -- Cyborg Cop, Cyborg Cop 2, and Blood Warriors -- and Bradley starred in three American Ninja sequels after Firstenberg handed over the keys to director Cedric Sundstrom. If Firstenberg was Scorcese, one might say that Bradley was his De Niro.

The film begins as most critical masterpieces do: with a violent plane crash in the Japanese countryside. There's only one survivor, and wouldn't you know it, it's the most physically fragile and adorably squishy thing on the plane: a baby named Andrew. The unbreakable boy is raised and trained by a Japanese man (Fujioka) skilled in both the ways of the samurai and speaking impeccable English. Over time, the samurai master's own son, Kenjiro, grows envious of the skill of his adopted step-brother, who eventually achieves the elusive "sixth sense." In the world of the samurai, this means being able to cut air-born apples in half with a sword while blindfolded. It's great at parties too. When his father passes down the family sword to Andrew, Kenjiro loses his shit and reveals his awesome Yakuza tattoo before vowing vengeance and leaving home for good.

Only five years later, older Andrew (Bradley) is working as a successful journalist in Los Angeles. Not so successful that he's able to afford an adequate home security system though, because burglars break into his apartment in the middle of the night, steal his sword, shoot him in the stomach, and leave him for dead. Having the "sixth sense" also includes the ability to extract bullets with your fingers and just sleeping it off, because Andrew is feeling fine the next day. Who knew gunshot wounds to the abdomen were so treatable? If Mr. Orange had trained as a samurai, Reservoir Dogs would have been 20 minutes long.

After his boss assigns him to investigate a murder in Turkey, fast-healing Andrew and a sassy photographer named Janet (Trapp) are on a plane. If you guessed that their relationship goes from frosty and contentious to naked and sexual at some point during the film, give yourself an oversized plush pink gorilla. If you also guessed that Andrew’s investigation pulls him into an underground death match tournament that eventually leads to a confrontation with a key figure from his past, give the oversized plush pink gorilla back. There are no winners in the carnival game that is poorly conceived tournament subplots.

American Samurai is a film marked by odd choices. What could have been an interesting intersection of investigative journalism and martial arts action -- something like The Mean Season by way of  American Ninja -- instead devolves into a tired exercise in cliches and genre conventions. To his credit, Firstenberg tries to color the tournament participants with unique strokes -- one competitor has a blade hidden in his ponytail, another dresses like a goddamn viking -- but it all comes off as gimmicky artifice and only serves as a distraction from what the film’s characters probably should be doing. Andrew could have followed clues and chased leads and fought his way out of run-ins, while Kenjiro, as the villain, might have had more than 20 total minutes of screen time.

Firstenberg uses some trippy dream sequences to periodically illustrate Andrew's anxiety about his step-brother, which, for the sake of convenience, leads to Janet inviting him to sleep with her. You know where it goes from there, but it was interesting to note that the filmmakers used a noticeably doughier and hairy-legged double to pair with Valarie Trapp during the love scene. If this was by her request, we are left to conclude that Bradley hit the catering line a bit too hard while filming in Turkey and loaded up on extra garlic sauce with his manti and lamb kebab.

Despite the meager screen time, Mark Dacascos is enjoyable in his first major film role. His martial arts skills are muted substantially by the fight choreography, but he has the wild-eyed samurai face down cold. It could be described as either Toshiro Mifune by way of Carrie, or Zoolander's Blue Steel on cocaine and Kurosawa movies. It's steely and over-the-top, indicative of an actor still feeling out the dramatic ground beneath him, but it's a memorable element of performance for a sadly underwritten villain. It took a while to finally touch ground on a Dacascos joint, and it should be mentioned that this isn’t the best place to start with his filmography. Seeing as though the non-Gosling Drive is in the top three American martial arts films of all-time, we’ll certainly be returning to his work in the future.

The film's fight scenes are passable, and made slightly more memorable by liberal amounts of blood and gore. We get arm dismemberment, cheek biting, knife throwing, ponytail cutting, and at least one decapitation. There are apparently several versions of the movie floating around, one of which was heavily edited to remove this type of fun, so be mindful of what you're acquiring. Unfortunately, what should have been the best fight scene in the film was one of the worst; the climax is marred by poor choices in camera angles and rough editing. If you see a few cuts from completely different fights during this stretch, your eyes have not deceived you. Either Firstenberg failed to get the proper shot coverage for transitions, or the editor was lazy, drunk, or an unpaid intern. Possibly all three.


VERDICT:
Dropping American orphans into martial arts training in the Far East was all the rage back in the 1980s and early 1990s, and American Samurai is yet another example of what was, by this point, a tired trope. Maybe Firstenberg thought lightning would strike twice after the success of the American Ninja franchise, but Americanizing this particular archetype failed to stir audiences in quite the same way. The rivalry between Bradley and Dacascos is underwritten, the fight scenes aren't shot particularly well, and the tournament set-up felt like a diversion from what could have been a really entertaining film. Still, it offers a nice cinematic touchpoint for fans of Mark Dacascos and David Bradley and will please those who like their fight scenes gory.

AVAILABILITY:
Wide! Amazon, Netflix, EBay.

4 / 7