The Emperor’s Sword (2020)

Posted in Reviews

Sumptuous, moody wuxia with a modern twist; a constantly moving, robotic arm camera used during the action sequences, and a weird, gimmicky motion-sensor technique which zooms between takes in incredibly artificial slow-motion. It’s actually quite distracting, and clearly doesn’t work. During an action scene, the camera seems to pause on completely random parts of the frame. Then there’s the shoddy visual effects used in post-production. It’s a shame, because it detracts from a film with some accomplished moments; a Hero-lite story set after the death of China’s first Emperor, Qin Shi-huang, and in the tumultuous period before the start of the …

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Profile: Daniel Bernhardt

Posted in Profiles

Date of birth: 31 August, 1965 (Bern, Switzerland)

Occupation: Actor, stunt performer, model.

Style: Taekwondo, Karate, boxing, kickboxing, jiu jitsu, judo.

Biography: Daniel Bernhardt is an actor, stunt performer and martial artist, known for playing roles in Hollywood action films. He was born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1965. He has two brothers, Dirk and Cliff. He played football as a child and started training in martial arts at the age of 15; he trained in boxing, kickboxing, karate and taekwondo. After finishing high-school at the age of 16, he spent four years working his apprenticeship at an architect’s firm. He graduated at the …

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KFMG Podcast S06 Episode 76: Daniel Bernhardt

Posted in Podcasts

“I’m very, very fortunate. I work with the best people in the game. And they push me – they push me hard.”

Daniel Bernhardt is a true renaissance man; a martial artist from Switzerland who went from being a professional model in Paris to a Hollywood action star. In the 1990s, he was a leading man in low-budget martial arts films – the star of slicker-than-your-average straight-to-video hits like the Bloodsport sequels, True Vengeance and Perfect Target, working alongside fellow martial artists and aspiring filmmakers like Chad Stahelski, David Leitch, Brad Martin, Jonathan Eusebio and J.J. Perry. When the video market crashed in …

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KFMG Podcast S06 Episode 75: Lee Charles / James Nunn

Posted in Podcasts

“It’s my proudest achievement in film to date.” James Nunn

It has taken six years for director James Nunn to bring his one-take, real-time action movie to the screen. During that time, ‘one-shot’ movies like Birdman and 1917 have not only dominated at the box office, but they have also been lauded by critics. In many ways, Nunn’s intense, relentless thriller, One Shot – which is released theatrically and on VOD services in the USA on 5 November 2021 courtesy of Screen Media Films – is an even more remarkable achievement, considering its comparatively low-budget and 20-day shooting schedule (1917, by comparison, was made …

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One Shot (2021)

Posted in Reviews

Taut, enveloping, and very well crafted ‘one-take’ action film which absolutely delivers on its real-time premise. The technique has been explored in Hollywood in recent years in the Academy Award-winning Birdman (2014) and 1917 (2019). The sheer audacity of indie filmmaker James Nunn and martial arts star Scott Adkins (who last worked together on 2016’s Eliminators) to even attempt to do a similar thing on a comparatively minuscule budget is worthy of your admiration; the fact they actually manage to pull it off is nothing short of miraculous. There are shades of Extraction star Chris Hemsworth in Adkins’ Jake Harris – …

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Rurouni Kenshin (2012)

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Nobuhiro Watsuki’s popular 90s manga gets the live-action treatment with fight scenes orchestrated by long-time Donnie Yen collaborator, Kenji Tanigaki. Japan, 1868, and the Battle of Toba-Fushimi marks the end of shogunate rule and the start of the Meiji period, when Japanese isolationism was replaced by a new age of modernism, openness and industry. At the end of the battle, when it’s clear that Japan’s feudalistic system is over, legendary pro-government killer Himura Battōsai (Takeru Satoh) – forever marked with a distinctive facial scar – stabs his katana into the ground and walks away from the bloodshed, becoming ‘Himura Kenshin’, a …

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More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story (2021)

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A ‘warts and all’ documentary about the life of Japanese American comedian and actor Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, who died in 2005 at the age of 73 after a lifetime battling with alcoholism. Curated by his third wife, Evelyn Guerrero, and seemingly endorsed by Morita himself, the film appears to be based on an unfinished memoir and features Morita’s own voice narrating much of the story. As a sickly child with spinal tuberculosis, he was practically immobile for most of his childhood, before life-saving back surgery gave him the ability to walk again. At the outbreak of war, the Morita family were forcibly …

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Yakuza Princess (2021)

Posted in Reviews

Anyone going into this contemporary Brazilian female-led martial arts film expecting something similar to Vietnam’s Furie, the Philippines’ Maria, South Korea’s The Villainess, the USA’s Atomic Blonde, or umpteen other offerings from recent years will undoubtedly be disappointed. This is an altogether different beast – and not a fully unwelcome one, either. Unlike those high-octane thrillers, director and co-writer Vicente Amorim prefers to take his sweet time revealing a story which is all too familiar – not to mention one that we have already figured out within the first few minutes – while also touching on a number of quite obvious …

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Kate (2021)

Posted in Reviews

Mary Elizabeth Winstead makes polonium poisoning look cool in this neon-drenched, self-aware and formulaic fight film from Netflix and 87North Productions – master purveyors of the mid-budget Hollywood head-stomper. As an action star, Winstead shone in Scott Pilgrim, was wasted in Gemini Man, and damn-near stole Birds of Prey. She undergoes the obligatory months of training to perform as the titular Kate – an ambiguous title for a rather unambiguous character. She’s a Tokyo-based assassin, groomed into an uber-killer from a young age by shady father figure Varrick (Harrelson). Following a one night stand, she discovers she has been fatally …

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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Posted in Reviews

A charming, inventive and entertaining live-action debut for the superhero Shang-Chi, originally modelled on Bruce Lee and first introduced into the Marvel comics at the height of the kung fu boom in the 1970s. Shang-Chi might not have the same superhero clout as Spider-Man or Captain America, but this origin story very much positions him as an integral player in the ongoing – and increasingly convoluted – Marvel Cinematic Universe, with all the bloated backstory that requires. The character also signals the arrival of Marvel’s first Asian superhero in a film with mostly people of colour in the lead roles. That is …

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