But it starts out on a Bruce Lee note. The opening credits have Brandon Lee in a white tank top like his dad sometimes wore, doing martial arts in front of a black void. His character is raised in Hong Kong, and sometimes speaks Chinese, and is living in the shadow of a father everyone admires. In an interview included on the DVD Lee mentions that the movie was written specifically for him, which isn’t surprising.

Lee’s character Jake Lo is introduced on a motorcycle, wearing a leather jacket, which means he’s an individualist and an American despite growing up in China. He was there when his father was run over by a tank in a pro-democracy demonstration. Now he’s an American college student and the Chinese political activists on campus try to drag him into their cause because of who his father was, but he’s not interested. You never really appreciate your father in the first half of your movie, do you?

Jake happens to witness a crime boss murdering somebody, and is witnessed witnessing it. So now a cop (Powers Boothe) wants him to be their star witness, some crooked cops and gangsters want him to be dead. The way the two leads meet is great. Lee gets stuck in a gigantic alley shootout, unloads multiple guns, dodges many different calibers of ammunition, jumps through garbage, does a bunch of somersaults. Suddenly Boothe drives up in a car and yells at him until he gets in. They’re being chased by another car so Boothe stops his, gets out and unloads a rifle into the enemy car. It catches on fire, then crashes, then flips and explodes, lands, burns some more, blows up some more. Boothe gets back in his car, peels out, and turns to Lee and says, “Hiya.”

The movie follows my theory of badass juxtaposition, because Jake is an artist. Okay, they don’t keep coming back to it to show his sensitive side, it’s not that big of a deal. But it allows him to flirt with the nude model from his class and also to make a sketch of the suspect for the police.

If you just know Lee from THE CROW you might not know how serious he was about action. This is a full-on martial arts movie, at least in the American sense of Seagal and Van Damme. Lee has lots of great moves flipping tables, doing somersaults, jumping over ledges, shooting, running away just before a bullet hits, ducking as he’s showered with debris from bullet hits, kicking doors into people’s faces, hitting people with freezer doors, kicking through walls, kicking out metal bars, stabbing a guy with a fork, breaking a stick in half to use as two clubs, knocking a column down with his shoulder so a balcony will collapse on a guy. In a tribute to shoeless John McClane he gets into trouble while not wearing a shirt, but in a testament to boy scout preparation he happens to be wearing the shirt tied around his waist so he can put it on later. (Remember in the ’90s how those dweebs would wear their flannel shirts tied around their waist? There was a guy on MTV who always did that and I thought Jesus, you can’t just put it down somewhere in the studio? What kind of security do they have in the MTV studio, a guy has to walk around clinging desperately to his shirt so nobody rips it off?) He drives a motorcycle the longest possible way through a glass cabinet. He does a move where a guy grabs one of his feet so he jumps up and kicks him in the head with the other foot, which I believe was one of his trademarks.

Best of all this is a more badass model of Brandon Lee. In THE CROW he’s the gothy weirdo ghost, in SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO he’s the straightlaced nerd, but in this one he’s the tough guy. I mean I already mentioned the motorcycle and it’s not a Kawasaki ninja or nothing. He gets to play brooding and cocky, and has a couple of badass lines. I like after witnessing the shooting, he’s being interrogated by the cops and not being very cooperative. One of the cops says “You know what I think? Maybe this is the guy that did it.”

Lee looks at him in disgust and says, “The guy that did it needed a gun.”

You get it? Because Brandon Lee is a lethal weapon. A rapid fire lethal weapon. He’s like a laser on a mission.

Another good one is at the end, he explains the fate of one of the bad guys by quipping, “He’s at one with his ancestors.” That could be a Seagal line come to think of it.

I remember this as being a pretty good movie when I saw it years ago, but to be honest there was exactly one thing I remembered about it: when the cops who are supposedly defending him try to kill him, he pulls out a drawer and tosses all the silverware into a crooked cop’s face. That is a great move that I recommend everybody remember just in case. The movie itself could never live up to the move, but it’s still pretty good.

It’s got some pretty standard action movie tropes. There’s a female cop who shows him her father’s file, teaches him what a great man his father was, and then they immediately have sex. It’s got Al Leong in it too. He’s the first bad guy you see, he’s by the villain’s side the whole time and never fights Lee until the last ten minutes. And he puts up a hell of a fight, he almost seems like he could beat him. In some cultures it’s considered a sign of good luck if Al Leong’s character survives even halfway through a movie.

Director Dwight Little is the guy who did HALLOWEEN 4 and FREE WILLY 2. So I’m not gonna build a statue of him yet. But I do think he’s a pretty good action director. Of course I could (and did) write a whole chapter about his MARKED FOR DEATH, a great golden age Seagal picture that many of my fellow Seagalogists consider the big man’s best. If I had to find a common motif between the movies it would be the delight in destruction of rich people’s elegant crap. I believe it’s a Tiffany’s that gets torn to shreds in MARKED FOR DEATH, here it’s somebody’s mansion or something, but in both cases it’s enjoyable to watch. RAPID FIRE  also shares with MARKED FOR DEATH a performance by Basil Wallace (he played the villain Screwface in MARKED, a cop in this one) and a healthy respect for setting up and paying off. For example when Lee goes into a restaraunt as part of an undercover operation the first thing he does is glance around, checking out the layout of the place, where the stairs are, the balcony. And he uses all of these things when the shit goes down. There’s a shot of the bartender using a library-style wheeled ladder to get to his vast collection of alcohol, and later on this same ladder hits Lee in the face (possibly cinema history’s first ladder POV shot).

I’m gonna have to re-watch a couple other Lee movies but so far I’m thinking this is his best.

[ratings]

I have a hard time reviewing this picture since it is an unofficial sequel to Die Hard. For those of you who don’t know I am a HUGE fan of the Die Hard pictures (starring Bruce Willis, look it up if you haven’t seen it) because, as a fan do I want to support this as part of the die hard mythos or should I not support it since it is unofficial, it is hard to say.

For legal reasons, McClane’s name has been changed to McCord, and he is being played by Van Damme instead of Bruce. He is now a fire marshall and instead of saving Hollie he has two kids going to the hockey game while he’s on duty. Hans Grueber (now played by a different guy) has planted bombs in the arena and has taken over the vice president’s VIP box seats. He’s gonna blow up the whole arena with everybody in it if the feds don’t transfer a whole assload of money to his bank accounts and what not.

Van Damme does not do the smartass oneliners that Bruce does, but he does a pretty decent job and he wears an undershirt like Bruce does. One complaint I think they should have shaved his hairline to make him look more like Bruce.

Now at the beginning I didn’t think I was gonna like this picture because it was too cutesy to be believed. For cryin out loud the guy sign languages “I love you” to his kids before he goes on his shift. When he’s gone the kids have an argument about whether or not their dad is brave. And before there’s any sign of danger he tells his son to stay in his seat no matter what, “even if the building is falling down around you, stay in your seat.” Well gee willikers I wonder where this one is going.

There are some good tricks though, like they introduce this chef character who impresses the kids with a meat cleaver trick, and you’re thinking, “Gee, I wonder if that’s gonna come up later.” But about three minutes later the guy gets shot and you never see the cleaver again. Good stuff.

In the beginning of a die hard picture what you gotta do is establish how organized and how vicious these terrorist bastards are. So one technique they use on this one is where Hans shoots a secret service agent and the vice president says, “That agent was named so-and-so, he has a five year old son, a three year old daughter, and his wife is pregnant.” So that way you know that it is so bad that they killed him.

Of course McCord quickly finds out about the terrorist plot going on and it turns out he knows alot of karate for a fire marshall, and doesn’t have a problem beating people to death. Right away there is a good scene where he savagely murders a gal in a penguin costume. His daughter becomes one of the hostages and this time it’s personal. He doesn’t try to pick the terrorists off one by one like McClane usually does, but if they try to stop him from defusing the bombs, he kills them using kitchen supplies, hockey gear, fire, or what have you.

One of the best parts is when he’s running from some dudes, and he has no choice but to steal a guy’s hockey uniform and go out on the ice and be goalie in the big game. It is a great way to hide but also I’m thinking wow, this is a good twist, now the movie’s gonna be about will they win the game or not.

But again, the movie is not going where you think it is, actually it goes back to the terrorist story when the dudes notice him out on the ice. So then I’m thinking maybe they’ll have to disguise themselves as players from the other team so they can get out on the ice and shoot him. But no, the dumbass gets kicked out of the game for a flagrant foul and has to fight them in the locker room where it is more difficult to wear skates, because there is no ice.

There is a really cool and ridiculous stunt that I won’t give away, where McCord gets his daughter back and saves all the hostages. Hans has his perfect chance to run off and go collect his money. But instead he puts on an elaborate disguise with fake mustache and blond hair and kidnaps McCord’s daughter, forcing McCord to come after him. It’s just one of those stupid mistakes you make, you get nervous and you slip up you know. There is always some little way to drop the ball… the closer you get, the farther you are in some ways. I mean if I had a nickel for every stupid motherfucker that made it to the home stretch and then crashed into a parked car or got his pants stuck on a fence or dropped the money down a sewer or slipped on a pile of wet leaves and broke his tailbone or, as in this case, put on a fake mustache and kidnapped the daughter of an over zealous fire marshall, I would be able to drop these reel.com banners that’s for sure.

I think McCord is the real jackass in this situation, though. He also has the chance to get away, he has his kids with him, he saved all the hostages, and the building is evacuated. But I guess it just chaps his ass to think he’s busting his balls every day as this hockey arena fire marshall, changing light bulbs and what not, trying to raise two kids on his own on this measly salary, I mean really WORKING for a good honest living – and then here’s this German fuckhead Hans Grueber getting all these billions of dollars for one day of work. And I mean he wasn’t even planting the bombs or anything, he was just sitting on his ass up there in the box seats. He killed a few people but big deal, it was a gun and they weren’t armed, it wasn’t like hand to hand or anything. I mean if anyone deserves this money it’s the blue collar terrorists, the guys who put their blood sweat and tears into chasing McCord around the arena, the guys who ended up set on fire or blown up or steam pressed because this fire marshall happens to be so god damned ingenuitive.

I think this must be what McCord was thinking when he chased after Grueber and climbed onto his helicopter and made sure to kill the bastard. (The big surprise here is that even though McCord refers to the situation as a “game” throughout the movie, he doesn’t say “I win” or “game over” when he kills him. Good restraint there bud, seriously.)

But I don’t think this is good judgment on McCord’s part and I think he should be ashamed of himself and so should the whole fire department. I mean maybe if he was a security guard he should chase the guy down, it would be his job. But he’s a fire marshall, his job is to prevent fires which means he should NOT be blowing up helicopters while he’s on the clock. I hope if there is another sequel it will start out with him fired and disgraced or at least on suspension like McClane in the beginning of Die Hard: With A Vengeance. If he gets away with this then I can only say that this kind of lenience by employers is the reason why the american work ethic is often so shoddy, they can get away with this kinda crap.

[ratings]

And then they get to some water, and they realize either they’re reading the map wrong or the water has shifted and the chunk of land they’re supposed to find is now a chunk of underwater.

They come across somebody’s camp site, where there’s some flayed animals hanging around, and a couple of canoes. And after some debate they decide, against Peter Coyote’s better judgment, to borrow the canoes. But they leave a note.

When they’re out in the water they look back and see some “indigenous” Cajun dudes on the shore, apparently the owners of the canoes. While they’re trying to yell to them to read the note, one of these soldiers decides to be a wiseguy, shoots a bunch of blanks in the Cajuns’ direction with a machine gun. Ha ha, very funny.

So then the Cajuns fire back with real bullets, and blow Peter Coyote’s damn head off. And you can imagine where the movie would go from there. Directed by Walter Hill, this disturbing swampland war story is, I’m sure, supposed to be about Vietnam. But there is no way to watch it today without thinking about Iraq.

I mean here you got this group of americans, some of them acting like knuckleheads. They come in this place and they don’t understand the culture, they sort of look down on them. They don’t speak the language or understand the way of life. They borrow people’s property without permission, figuring it’s not a big deal. And inevitably the people whose land they’re intruding on take it the wrong way. They fight back. They set up booby traps. And they know the land better. They know where to hide and how to track them.

Eventually the soldiers get a prisoner (the late great Brion James). Because he’s Cajun, they lump him in with the people who killed Peter Coyote, even though they really have no idea if he’s connected or not. Some of them treat him badly, punch him in the face, start talking about revenge. One of them starts acting completely insane, runs around with a cross painted on his chest, setting off dynamite. And the others aren’t really sure what to say about it. Kind of like, “Uh, boss, are you sure we should be stacking up naked people and taking novelty pictures of them?” Things get out of control in these situations.

And then when the last survivors make it into town, they have no idea who are the “good Cajuns” and who are trying to kill them. That’s how it works in Vietnam or Iraq or Louisiana. We’re not talking shirts and skins here, it’s hard to tell who’s who. (Luckily, they don’t kill any civilians in the movie. If only reality could be so lucky.)

This is a good movie, but right now it’s impossible to separate the story from reality. It’s just such a perfect symbol for the inevitable failure of this type of business. It doesn’t matter that the soldiers really didn’t do anything worse than borrow a canoe without permission and then act like a jackass. A clash is gonna happen. They’re barging in where they’re not wanted, they don’t understand who they are dealing with, and who they are dealing with don’t understand them. They are outsiders who are trampling and threatening. And they don’t even understand the type of impression they are making. It’s not really their fault. It’s the situation they’ve been put in. There’s just no winning.

I don’t know much about Cajuns but in the case of the soldiers, the movie just has a real ring of truth to it. You just know, from knowing people, that this is how it really is. It’s human nature. You throw some guys into a strange land with guns, at least a couple of them are gonna be assholes and gonna ruin it for everybody else. I mean, REALLY fuckin ruin it. That’s what happens. That’s war. That’s southern comfort.

[ratings]