Not so fast as it turns out. And certainly, not
fast enough at nearly 2 hours. Tracking down the films of martial artist
D.Y. Sao led me to this road kill. A case of the flu is preferable. I have
a bad knee and so once I started, I just had to watch it all the way through.
Too painful to get up; too painful to watch. The good news is I made it.
The bad news is I made it. I have rarely seen such a mixture of abysmal acting,
moronic dialogue, insipid narrative but solid action. Sao is a talented martial
artist, but what he knows about acting could fit in a shot glass. But amazingly,
he is not the worst offender. That honor goes to Bai Ling who screams, stares
and gesticulates like a mad woman on crack.
Sao gets a phone call that his younger brother
has been murdered across the country. Sao is on a plane the next minute,
visits his brother's grave and tells him you will be avenged. If I have to
burn this city down, so be it. Ok. It is a big city. Good luck. He is so
annoying with his screeching that the police captain (DMX) tells him that
his brother was involved with an underground motorcycle racing group headed
by Cobra. Who always wears a helmet. Identity unknown. So he decides to race him though he knows
nothing about racing. A huge amount of time is spent with Tec (Natalie Burn)
refurbishing a bike with all cool sounding things that I didn't understand
and teaching him how to race. So, you might expect this will lead to some
exciting racing. No. A few seconds of racing. But along the way, a triad
keeps sending goons to beat him up. Yay. Action. Not bad. He has some great
flip kicks in him. And there is a wtf ending that makes no sense. Some of
these low budget straight to video action films can be decent (Bangkok Dog),
some are ok (Shadow Master) and some like this one need a lobotomy. But you
keep looking because there will be a few hidden gems (The Paper Tigers) among
the dross.
