40 - City Hunter

Connection To FIREPOWER - Gary Daniels

City Hunter stands out from the usual Jackie Chan films of this time period - and I don't necessarily mean that in a good way - the comedy is more broader then usual and the violence is is stronger - the Chan classics often get a fairer mix of the two...

I think this is a lot to do with the director Wong Jing - known as Hong Kong's Roger Corman - from other Jing films feature a similar violence/comedy tone which doesn't always sit well - this must also be the only film where Chan is also an out-and-out lecherous perv.

Ryo (Chan) and Kaori (Joey Wang) are assigned to locate the runaway daughter of a prominent CEO, Kaori leaves partway through this search because he is not returning the romantic feelings for her - this iffy for one reason, Kaori is the daughter of Ryo's ex partner who he raised from a child... so yeah - the runaway daughter end sup boarding a luxury cruise liner with a ticket she found and Kaori also boards with her horny cousin as Ryo sneaks on board. At the same time a terrorist group led by Donald Mac (Richard Norton) plan to hijack the ship and take rich passengers hostage.

Yeah, that plot doesn't do it justice in how goofy as hell it is - Chan spends part of the film absolutely starving and imagines female body parts as food, there's also 2 goofs in the movie - DJ's Soft and Hard who are bearable and if they had more screen time could have certainly being annoying.

There is some course being a Jackie Chan film some excellent action scenes, a stand out is in the ship's movie theatre while Game Of Death is playing, Chan getting help using Lee moves from the screen he is watching and excellent.

But perhaps the most famous scene is in the ship's arcade, where the characters became characters from Street Fighter II, we get Gary Daniels making a good ken but we get Jackie Chan as first Honda but then an amazing Chun Li (he's still third best in pretty Chun Li's on the big screen though), it's a very cool scene, the only sad thing is really that Chan and Daniels only on screen fight scene is here and that they didn't get a chance to do a proper one.

Director Wong Jing later did the movie High Risk, which starred Jet Li and Jacky Cheung in which Li played a stuntman for the phoney action hero Cheung, who is a thinly veiled take on Chan, guess there experiences with working with each other where bad and at one point it even insinuates that the Cheung character as a child's penis.

Overall it's such fun so the positives outweigh the negatives for me so it's worth... (puts on shades)... giving it a Chance

39 - Firepower

Connection To SPY HARD - Hulk Hogan appeared (briefly) in Spy Hard, Firepower stars another wrestler The Ultimate Warrior - the two fought in the main event of Wrestlemania VI, I'm not allowed to use a wrestler to wrestler link from now on.

This past Tuesday, The Ultimate Warrior (Jim Hellwig) walking to his car suffered an heart attack and passed away at the all too young age of 54. This was shocking for a number reasons... The Ultimate Warrior had not appeared for the WWE (then WWF) since 1996, it was only that Saturday UW accepted and was inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame marking his first appearence with the company in 18 years, the day after he appeared on stage at Wrestlemania and on the Monday on RAW he came to the ring and delivered a speech even eerily talking about a heart beating a last beat, the positive is a long-standing gripe was eradicated and UW died in a good place with the company.

Firepower I watch in tribute to a guy though I disagreed with his politics (a lot), was entertaining has a wrestler (technical skill give way to intensity - but he had more then one great match in his career) and marks the only film role he took.

Released in 1993 and set in the then way off future of 2007! though to be fair there is nothing futuristic, I think it was set 14 years so the world could go to crap a bit more and the LA of this film as an extremely high crime rate and even as an area in the city called the "Hell Zone" which is just a place from criminals to do the criminal stuff with no police and is also home to a place called The Death Ring (which is more violent then usual MMA) in which Braniff (Chad McQueen) and Sledge (Gary Daniels) go undercover in to bring down the corrupt who have a role in the production of AIDS vaccines on the black market.

This is DTV cheese no doubt about it and with McQueen and Daniels in the leads it felt like they couldn't scream more DTV action if they tried. The performances are... well... I'm sure Gary Daniels would tell you himself he is not the best actor in the world, his appeal his what he can do physically (hello ladies) but he does appear to be having fun with the cheese of this film (which by extension so do you) and despite their acting talents, he and McQueen do actually have good chemistry.

This is the sort of DTV action that wants to keep outdoing itself set piece wise because plot is just an excuse, how would I put it, it's the sort of film that flings everything at a wall and just see what sticks. It seems to owe stuff to a number of films that went before but it's got it's charm.

Ultimate Warrior as The Swordsman actually brings good intensity to his role, which is not a surprise really if you ever watched one of his wrestling promos - which where never of the sane variety - perfect casting as far as I'm concerned.

Overall, it's never boring and it's a pretty cool DTV action flick, it never takes itself too seriously and it recommended for connoisseurs of this type of movie.