Posts Tagged ‘Sheldon Lettich’

Only the Strong

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

tn_onlythestrongLadies and gentlemen, I present to you the best find of my Back To School Special. Maybe THE SUBSTITUTE is better, but I’d already seen that one before so I knew what to expect. This is a surprisingly natural hybrid of the inspirational teacher movie with the American martial arts star vehicle. It embraces the necessary corniness of both genres and seems a little more sincere about the turning kids around aspect than THE SUBSTITUTE does. And it came out in ‘93, three years earlier.

It stars American IRON CHEF host Mark Dacascos and it’s directed by long-time Van Damme collaborator Sheldon Lettich. This is his third directational work after LIONHEART and DOUBLE IMPACT. Dacascos plays Louis Stevens, a peace time Green Beret who fell in love with the martial art capoeira while stationed in Brazil. He was apparently some kind of troublemaking kid until a good teacher named Mr. Kerrigan (EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE sidekick Geoffrey Lewis) turned him around and convinced him to join the military. Once he gets out he returns to the school to see if there’s any way he can work there and try to make a difference in other young people’s lives. The school is a hellhole and he pretty much gets tossed out on his ass. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 34 Comments »

Lionheart

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

LIONHEART is Van Damme circa 1991, and his best up to that point if you ask me, which by reading this you agree to do. As a matter of personal taste I think competitive fighting is one of the squarest action subgenres. You got less room for chase scenes and explosions, the rules and locales of the fights are too rigid. I mean nothing against a good pre-fight jitters locker room scene or a spooky ancient temple with torches and mystical snake statues, but I prefer a more urban style of action movie. One with crooks and creeps, alleys, fire escapes, car windshields.

LIONHEART is a smart compromise because it continues the competitive fighting of BLOODSPORT and KICKBOXER but in a cartoonish underground fighting circuit in New York and Los Angeles. This is another subgenre that gets old fast, usually because you get sick of looking at the same dimly lit arena with a fence or barbwire, maybe a strobelight. This one avoids that pitfall by having a new location and crowd for each fight: a circle of cars (with people rollerskating around), a swimming pool with all but the deep end drained (crowd in bikinis like it’s a pool party), inside somebody’s mansion (a black tie event) and (my favorite) a racquetball court. Brian Thompson is there but never fights. The real villain is Cynthia (could’ve sworn the credits just called her “The Lady,” but maybe I imagined that) the stereotypical L.A. rich bitch of the ’80s: short hair, expensive clothes, sexually and capitalistically aggressive.

The story begins with brother Francois set on fire during a weird West Side Story style drug deal. He survives, but burnt to a crisp, and cries out for his brother Lyon (Belgian actor Jean-Claude Van Damme). Lyon doesn’t get word for weeks because he’s in Djibouti doing forced labor for the French Foreign Legion. He escapes, stows away on a boat, gets money fighting in a parking garage, goes with his new self-proclaimed manager to L.A. to find his brother. Of course he gets there right after Francois dies. The widow blames Lyon for Francois’s drug problem so she won’t accept any help from him. So he does more fights and gets the money he wins to her, pretending it’s from some non-existent life insurance policy. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 6 Comments »

Double Impact

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Well I thought this would be funny because Jean-Claude Van Damme plays twins but it is not one of his better pictures in my opinion. It is not nearly as boring as Cyborg, but it is pretty generic and dull and shows few signs of the iconoclastic action pioneer that Van Damme would later become.

I guess he does an okay job of playing two different characters for such a limited actor but you would think they would do more with the twin concept. The opening scene where jean claude’s characters is only a baby is pretty well done, but then it skips to 25 years later and the happy keyboard music plays and it’s just your usual mistaken identity twin garbage.

About 5 seconds into jean claude’s first scene he’s already doing the splits, in colorful spandex, for an aerobics class he’s teaching. Then he goes to hong kong to avenge his parents death and happens to run into his brother and find out his parents were killed. That is how it always is with these twins, either their parents died or they got divorced and they try to get them back together.

The plot and action are real routine, just a bunch of exploding and running around in the streets like an old cop show and not even very much kicking. They do this kind of crap in Vancouver Canada every day, it is called syndicated action shows that nobody you know has ever watched. There is usually a magic car or a super hero involved though instead of twins. (more…)

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