Assassination Games (2011)

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Assassination Games (2011)

Competent double-header which pairs Van Damme with The Shepherd co-star Scott Adkins. The duo take equal billing as conflicted assassins who must unite to bring down a Ukrainian criminal. There are shades of The Bourne Identity in a subplot involving a secret division of Interpol (which equates to three dodgy blokes with assorted accents working out of a cupboard) wanting to silence Adkins’ hired hitman over a stash of money. Meanwhile, Van Damme walks sullenly around derelict buildings in eastern Europe in a slightly absent trance, opening his cold heart to a neighbouring prostitute who initially disrupts his violin practice. “I’ve …

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Bruce Lee: The Man, the Myth (1976)

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Bruce Lee: The Man, the Myth (1976)

Picking up the story from when Bruce Lee departs for the USA and ending on his untimely death, this highly fictionalised biopic sees Ng See-yuen exploit the Lee legend tenfold by replacing facts with mad sensationalism. Through a series of fight sequences, Bruce is shown to basically beat up pretty much everyone he meets. Those who disagree with his theories on kung fu get a thump; there are scuffles with a crime syndicate and even brawls on the set of The Big Boss and Enter the Dragon (the latter at least being partially accurate). Yet the most bizarre sections – …

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)

This noisy sequel barrels along at a breakneck speed, whizzing from one brightly coloured giddy confection to the next. It’s a ride, with director Dave Green ensuring plenty of bang for your buck, and somehow managing to keep all of the story’s disparate parts together. There’s a nod to The Secret of the Ooze with the introduction of a new goo which could turn the turtles back into human form; something which sparks a rift between the boys. There’s also the origin stories of new characters like mad scientist Baxter Stockman (Perry) and failed cop Casey Jones (Amell), who provides …

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Bruce Lee Fights Back From the Grave (1976)

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Bruce Lee Fights Back From the Grave (1976)

With a title like that, you would be right to expect something really promising. Even the opening sequence lives up to expectations. A lightning bolt hits Bruce Lee‘s grave and a lookalike leaps out from beneath the soil. Despite the promising start, this quickly becomes a plodding murder mystery in which a Bruce Lee imitator (Chung Jun, credited as Bruce K.L. Lea) lands in California to investigate the death of his brother. The inclusion of a thousand characters doesn’t help, and the film quickly becomes a bore despite the brief moments of Lee-style brawling. Resist any temptation.

AKA: Invincible Bruce Lee; The Stranger; Visitor …

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Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002)

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Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002)

This one-joke kung fu spoof places the comedian Steve Oedekerk into footage from a 1976 Jimmy Wang Yu film, Tiger and Crane Fists. Alongside new retrofitted scenes, Oedekerk provides all of the dubbed voices and reproduces some of Wang Yu’s movements with the help of a blue screen (this arduous process is shown during the film’s end credits). The story becomes quite preposterous, bolstered by a crude and juvenile sense of humour, which is just what you would expect from the guy who created Ace Ventura. Oedekerk is the Chosen One with a talking face on his tongue, called Tonguey. His family …

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Profile: Jerry Trimble

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Profile: Jerry Trimble

Date of birth: May 12, 1961 (Newport, Kentucky, United States)

Full name: Jerry Foster Trimble, Jr.

Occupation: Actor, stuntman, martial artist, youth speaker.

Style: Kickboxing, taekwondo, boxing.

Biography: Jerry Trimble is a former world kickboxing champion and has appeared in over 50 films, TV shows and commercials. Jerry was born in the small US town of Newport, Kentucky, to parents Patricia and Jerry Trimble, Sr. At the age of 12, he was inspired to take up the Korean martial art of taekwondo after watching the Bruce Lee film, Fist of Fury (released as The Chinese Connection in America). He studied under Richard Hamilton at the American …

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Tiger and Crane Fists (1976)

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Tiger and Crane Fists (1976)

Wang Yu‘s kung fu films are punctuated by an earnestness which make them apt fodder for a spot of retrospective lampooning, particularly when he creates characters who use steel claws on a rope as their weapon of choice, and protect their weak spots by wearing metal nipple clamps. This may be why Steve Oedekerk singled out this straight-laced obscurity for some postmodern spoofery in his hit US comedy, Kung Pow! Enter the Fist. The story, such as it is, points at a generational rift between the schools of Tiger and Crane. Lung Fei plays a powerful, impenetrable Manchu fighter with vague connections …

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Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

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Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

Epic action movie which makes stunning use of its French locales to create a vivid and enjoyable spectacle. Crying Freeman director Christophe Gans pulls out all the stops with this cracking yarn which has only recently received a just and dedicated cult following. It’s the kind of film you could live in for weeks. It is fundamentally a supernatural film, set in the regal refinery of 18th century France, and following the Chevalier de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) and his native American friend Mani (Mark Dacascos). They are sent by the King of Gévaudan province to investigate the suspicious killings …

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SPL (2005)

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SPL (2005)

This melodramatic action thriller was a runaway hit in Hong Kong. As Chinese cop movies go, it is more in keeping with the glossy, serious tone of something like Infernal Affairs than a light-footed yarn like Jackie Chan‘s Police Story. Sammo Hung is smartly re-cast as a gangland kingpin with a sharp suit, cigar and ponytail, playing a remorseless crook and family man with a penchant for golf. Simon Yam is the police chief on his case and the front-runner in a quartet of bent cops whose desperate attempts to nail Sammo see them fabricating evidence and disrupting the course of …

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Bridge of Dragons (1999)

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Bridge of Dragons (1999)

Here’s some wham-bam gung-ho violence before bedtime, starring two of the action genre’s most popular performers. Power Rangers director Isaac Florentine reunites the snarling villainy of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa with the beefy heroics of Dolph Lundgren for this B-movie; they pair had previously worked together on 1991’s Showdown in Little Tokyo. The premise is slightly puzzling: a futuristic fairytale in period costume. Here are the key points: Lundgren is a soldier indebted to a sadistic general (Tagawa) who vows to marry a spunky kung fu princess (Valerie Chow) in order to install himself as rightful ruler. She escapes his grasp to …

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