• Directed by Fred Olen Ray
• Written by T.L. Lankford
• Starring
  • David Carradine
  • Lee Van Cleef
  • Mako
  • Lois Hamilton
  • Ross Hagen

Fred Olen Ray has always been an able knock-off artist, able to capitalize on genre trends and fanboy viewing desires with a minimum budget. This is not necessarily a bad thing; I appreciate a good knock-off as much as (and possibly more than) the next person. But you know there’s a cap on cinematic quality when the movie is nothing more than an imitation of your average Golan-Globus movie (which were themselves fairly ambition-free action genre filler “product”). If this movie has any real claim to fame, it’s in giving Michael Berryman one of his least likely roles: As a supposedly-Oriental (!) goon to a Yakuza warlord in America.

“You’re waiting for me to get to that ‘cuddly old grandpa’ stage? Keep waiting!”

Said warlord, Tanaka (Mako), is introduced to us as he castigated a younger mob member who has dishonored the clan by stealing a priceless jade statue about the size of an old-style G.I. Joe. The young turk apologizes in time-honored fashion, i.e., by cutting off his pinkie. But that’s not all. Said young ruffian gets out to his car, thinking he got off easy until he turns his key. BOOM. Berryman’s role in all of this? Well, aside from searching the car for the statue while its owner was performing some manual surgery, he also gave him a vaguely-ominous fortune cookie as he was leaving. This, you see, is his character’s Big Thing: tossing people fortune cookies just to give them something to think about. That, and generally messing people up on his boss’s orders. (Believe me, I know all about ominous fortune cookies; check this page if you don’t believe me.)

Meanwhile, we’ve been treated to some other excitement through this and the opening credits: A private eye named Cory Thornton (Ray veteran Ross Hagen) in a black trenchcoat and fedora, walking. Walking. Walking through Chinatown. Walking. Walking. Just when we can’t stand the suspense anymore — Will he continue walking? Where is he going to? Will he stop walking when he gets there? Can he not afford a cab? — he arrives at his destination: A bar run by Tim Roth (Carradine), where Tim is hanging out with his crusty ex-cop father Burt (Lee Van Cleef), his blond prettyboy brother Clay (David Goss), and his younger brother Tommy (Brent Hoff). Clay, it turns out, is Cory’s P.I. partner, which is why Thornton’s been walking walking walking to get there. (At last! The suspense is over! Time to turn off the — oh, there’s more? Okay.) See, Clay’s the upright one, and Thornton’s the shadier one, and Thornton’s gotten them a job working for… Tanaka! It all connects, see. That’s called “screenwriting.”

“I’m Batman. She’s Robin. You got a problem with that?”

Tanaka hires the P.I. duo to arrange a trade for him, half a million dollars to the current holders of the statue in exchange for its return. The trade doesn’t take place until tomorrow, though, which means we get plenty of banter between Roths senior and junior, as well as the introduction of Tim’s wife Sara (Lois Hamilton) and daughter Lauren (Dah’ve Seigler), who’ve both got “BORN TO BE A HOSTAGE” written all over them, even from this early in the movie. Oh, and the combined Roths (minus Clay, out making ends meet) get to beat up three toughs who try to cause troublein the bar. Just to establish that they’re bad-asses that the Yakuza ought not to get mad at. Not that that would ever happen, right?

Anyway, the exchange takes place in the morning, against a backdrop of the landscape on which Captain Kirk fought the Gorn. It turns out that the statue’s current holders are Dick Miller (!) and a blonde, whose name you really don’t need to remember, since as soon as the trade is made, Thornton pretends to see the thieves going for their guns, and opens fire. In short order, Clay and Thornton are left holding both the statue and the money. Thornton then tries to complete the doublecross by shooting Clay, who manages to get away with a gutshot and the statue. Thornton immediately calls Tanaka and blames the doublecross on Clay.

Tim, meanwhile, wakes up from a long flashback dream from his days in ‘Nam just in time for Clay to fall through his picture window and give him the statue, then expire without saying who shot him. The police show up in short order, but the Roths (Burt lives there too) decline to mention anything about the statue (because now it’s “family business”). The investigating lieutenant (Burr DeBenning), who just happens to be Burt’s former partner, can tell they’re not telling the whole story, but just kinda shrugs his shoulders, as homicide lieutenants are known for doing on whatever alien planet this story is taking place on, and disappears from the movie.

That Tommy, he’s just such a hard guy to pin down.

Younger brother Tommy goes out looking for clues and stuff, and ends up being caught by Tanaka, who’s in a hurry to get the statue back. Seems that he owes it as a “gift” to the local Tong for a territorial boo-boo the Yakuza made, as a Tong goon reminds him (a conversation I mention only because it takes place in — a strip club! Bet you suspected one of those had to show up in here somewhere, right?). Tommy gets caught, and is tortured for information by Michael Berryman and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (holy cow, it’s “When Genre Actors Attack!”), while Tanaka does his “inscrutable Oriental” schtick. And eventually, Tommy gets killed.

Tim, meanwhile, is out looking for Thornton, in the most circuitous route possible. He looks up Thornton’s stripper girlfriend, who tells him to check a waterfront warehouse. Tim goes to the warehouse, finds a drug deal in progress, beats everyone up, and hears that Thornton is planning on clearing town, and is packing up at — his office! Wow, what a place to look for a man, huh? Why, you ask, didn’t Tim check the office first? Running time, dude; gotta pad that running time. Tim finds Thornton and beats a pseudo-confession out of him before Thornton breaks free and gets away.

Tim returns home to find Tanaka in his living room, and his wife and daughter playing their Designated Hostage roles in a “safe location.” Tanaka wants his statue and the money, which he’s convinced are both in the possession of the Roth family, so Tim takes a henchman back to the bar, where Burt is conveniently waiting to blow him away. Then Tim arranges a new deal: Just the statue in exchange for Mrs. and Miss Roth. The exchange is lined up for night, in the middle of Chinatown Square — “And come alone, okay?” “Sure, you bet.”

Bet this isn’t the photo Berryman has on his driver’s license.

I think you can see where this is going. Tanaka, despite superior firepower and presumable familiarity with the territory, is unable to put together an ambush competent to take down a retired ex-cop and a potbellied ‘Nam vet, and ends up having his ass handed to him. In the complete absence of police officers on this planet who respond to automatic gunfire in a public pace, Roth pere et fils manage to restore everything as it should be (aside from two dead brothers, of course).

What’s truly notable in this movie, and not in a good way, is where the money went. You see here the same repetitive use of confined and cheap locations, the limited cast, etc., that one expects to see in a cheap action flick. According to the IMDb, though, this is one of the few Fred Olen Ray movies to have a budget of a full million dollars, and the largest discernable chunks of that went to scenes that are of little consequence. (More so than the rest of the movie, I mean; if you cut out all of the inconsequential scenes in this movie, you’d have an empty video sleeve.) One is Tim’s lengthy ‘Nam flashback dream, in which he and his army cohorts exchange gunfire with Viet Cong civilians. While supplemented by stock footage, it still was a scene that required a more expansive backdrop than the rest of the movie (i.e., backstreets and Bronson Canyon). Problem is, Tim’s supposed lingering shellshock ceases to be a part of the movie immediately after this scene; once Clay crashes into the living room and dies in their arms, Tim is decisive and in control, and aside from a throwaway line from wife Sara — “This isn’t Viet Nam!” — his battle experiences have absolutely no place in the rest of the movie.

Look, I know you’re trying to be an unconventional hero and all — but SUCK IT IN!

The second money-drainer is even more puzzling. It’s a car chase with Michael Berryman being pursued by a police car; the chase eventually makes it onto the freeway, and even into the wrong direction of traffic. It takes money to shut down a freeway for that kind of shooting, you know. And yet, it’s a completely irrelevant scene. Not only is the pursuer a cop whose face we never even see, but this takes place after Tanaka has been killed in the climactic shootout. (Whoops, hope that isn’t too much of a spoiler.) It amounts to nothing but possibly the world’s longest breather between the main villain’s death and the henchman’s final stab at the hero. As far as the audience is concerned, the movie is essentially over before the big setpiece car chase even begins; instead of being in any way thrilling, it just seems like a stalling tactic to delay the closing credits that much longer.

Given the number of familiar faces on parade here, it’s a shame that Ray and writer Lankford couldn’t figure out a way to use them better, even with added cash in the kitty. Although this was only Ray’s seventh released feature (he’s now got over seventy directorial credits under his belt), it looks like he was already so adapted to the strictures of low-budget filmmaking that he honestly didn’t know what to do with the added resources.

A Notable Quotable:

“This is very embarrassing. You would think that modern man would have outgrown such archaic tactics by this time. Here we are once again, an evil yellow man torturing the valiant white hero.”

- Tanaka to Tommy

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 24
• breasts: 2
• explosions: 9
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 3
  • Dick Miller (the statue thief) played “Vendor” in the TNG episode “The Big Goodbye,” and “Vin” in the DS9 two-parter “Past Tense”
  • Michael Berryman (credited as “F.C.” for “Fortune Cookie”) played “Starfleet Display Officer” (under tons of latex) in Star Trek 4, and “Captain Rixx” (under blue makeup) in the TNG episode “Conspiracy”
  • Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (“Toshi,” the torturer) played “Mandarin Bailiff” in the TNG pilot “Encounter at Farpoint”