June 10, 1994
So far my study of summer ’94 hasn’t found much excitement in the big blockbuster type movies. THE FLINTSTONES got all the hype but the ones I’ve been most invested in were quirky things by well known directors – SERIAL MOM, CROOKLYN, EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES. Now finally we come to a straight ahead action spectacle that truly delivered at the time and still holds up today.
SPEED came out 30 years ago as I post this, and it’s a classic. It feels like a very traditional studio crowdpleaser, but also not quite like anything else before or since. Twentieth Century Fox figured out what they had on their hands and moved it up from August to June, but no one else was sure at first if Keanu Reeves would be accepted as an action hero outside of POINT BREAK, or even if people would want to see him with short hair. So for many it was a surprise how big it became (5th highest grossing movie of 1994). (read the rest of this shit…)
SHOWDOWN IN MANILA is the latest from Alexander Nevsky, the Russian bodybuilder turned b-movie actor who starred in and directed 
Nevsky plays Nick Peyton, the leader of some sort of elite police strikeforce thing in Manila. In the prologue he leads a police raid and his whole team are wearing those giant helmets like in 
If I had to choose the better STREET FIGHTER I guess I’d have to go with the newer one, STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN LI. It’s a slick, competently made preboot with TV actress Kristin Kreuk as the young Chun Li. There seems to be more martial arts in the first 8 minutes (when Chun Li is still a kid) than in the entire STREET FIGHTER: THE MOVIE even if you watched it two times in a row. Could’ve done without Chun Li’s constant voiceover narration through the first half, though. 
There are three very clever sequences in this movie. First, it opens with narration over a starfield, and then pans over to show Mars. Suddenly the familiar UNIVERSAL logo letters spin around Mars. So it’s just like the usual studio logo except the red planet instead of the globe. Then the letters go off screen and the camera zooms into Mars and into a space colony where the movie takes place. It’s like there’s not even time to bother with a studio logo, our only option is to work it into the plot. That is how urgent it is to get to the motherfucking DOOM.
From the same director, producer and cast as Romeo Must Die and Exit Wounds comes another exciting pile of disparate elements squooshed together into the same basic shape as an action movie. It’s really more of a booger sculpture than a movie, but for a booger sculpture, it’s not that bad, I guess.
This is the latest Jet Li picture, his last in the US was 1999 Outlaw Award Winner for Best Picture – Karate Black Mask. That was weird type of comic book story where there is karate, masks, lasers and all that sort of garbage, which is why it is good. Jet Li is an amazing type of action star as far as the kicks, the punches and etc. Legend has it that he is so fast they have to ask him to slow down so the camera can pick him up properly. In fact this guy is faster than Superman in my opinion, and he can also fly although only with the help of cables that are removed using high tech electronic computers that they have today. But the real thing about Jet Li is that he is a very charismistic and good looking dude, maybe a little feminine but in a “I’m gonna kick your ass and the girls will still think I’m sensitive, sucker” type of way.
