• Directed by Don Allan
• Written by Michael Stokes
• Starring
  • Roddy Piper
  • Torri Higginson
  • Peter Williams
  • J.R. Bourne
  • Rachel Wilson

Rowdy Roddy Piper (the paragon of all that is masculine) is a vice cop forced to fight his way across the Jungleground (that part of town where no cop will venture) by dawn or his girlfriend will die.

It got off to a rocky/slow start, but when Roddy hit the streets, so did the movie. A lot of good combat sequences and fast pacing kept it from getting boring.

This movie makes no bones about being shot in Toronto — every single member of the cast (including Piper) has appeared on Canadian-shot TV: Forever Knight, Highlander, even War of the Worlds.

Let’s keep track of our Plug’n'Play stock characters, shall we? We’ve got the unpretentious salt-of-the-earth cop, ready to propose, no less (serial #10743), The artist girlfriend a la Highlander: The Series (serial #08356), the full-of-himself snobbish gallery owner (#11099), the charismatic leader selling out his own people (#02896), the trusted lieutenant who has to follow his principles instead of his leader (#53317), and the prostitute with the heart of gold (#00001 — I thnk it’s the oldest cliche in the world).

Odd how modern gang culture started as a reaction by underpriveleged minorities, but this one is based on Norse myth — the whitest of the white.

And is it just me, or was Odin too much of a twitchy 98-lb weakling to be leading these modern-day Vikings?

Mark this on your calendar: someone in this movie actually realized that splitting up to explore was a BAD IDEA! Too bad the good guys never think of that…

Wouldn’t the recoil from a semi-automatic just be a bitch on rollerblades?

All in all, not a boring action film (which is the only real sin an action film can commit).

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 21
• breasts: 0 (even though one of the main characters was a hooker)
• explosions: 6
• one-punch knockouts: 1
• actors who’ve been on Star Trek: 1
  • Nicole de Boer, Samantha’s best friend at the party, is currently Ezri Dax on DS9