ROAD RAGE (2000)

Directed by: Sidney J. Furie

Writer: Greg Mellott

I don’t know how many of you are car chase scene addicts – I sure am! A car chase in a movie is like a great instrumental break in a rock song – it tends to overshadow everything else and I always wish there was more of it. Take for example the 1972 film Fear is the Key. It begins with a mindblowingly great (and long) car chase, but the rest wasn’t that good. In Bullit, which was of course a great film, car chase scene was the best part, too.

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So what if someone made a movie consisting entirely of car chase(s)? Road Rage is that movie! Unfortunately, it’s really horrible. Okay, before we get into details, to respond to a question you’re asking – yes, of course, there’s Duel, a brilliant film, one that certainly predates Road Rage and serves as an obvious inspiration for it. However, Duel was primarily a thriller (or even horror), not an action movie. The main character being pursued for no reason by something large and terrifying and seemingly undestructible is a theme that has more in common with, say, Halloween than your regular car chase movies.

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As much as I’d prefer to continue writing about Spielberg/Matheson’s masterpiece, sadly, we have to turn our attention to Road Rage, which, as I said, is a real action movie with lots of car chases and crashes. Similar to Duel, the main protagonists get into trouble straight away and are being chased to the very end. Everything else is different. First of all, there is no mystery about the pursuer’s identity – Casper Van Dien and his annoying female sidekick Sonia are being chased by her idiotic ex-boyfriend and his two equally idiotic friends. All three of them are dumb jocks (actually, two of them are, I don’t know about the third one) who look like they couldn’t tie their shoelaces, which is extremely disappointing especially if we, again, remember Duel and its mysterious antagonist whose face we never see.

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Be that as it may, those three morons for some reason always appear on our heroes’ tail when they least expect it. They are never too upset about their truck exploding or falling off the side of the road or other similar minor annoyances. For example, they try to attack them on a gas station, hit a gas pump instead, there’s a big explosion, the truck is totally destroyed, but minutes later it’s as good as new. I don’t understand if they got a new one, or quickly fixed the one that exploded or... For a movie with such a simple story, it sure has its share of whatthehell moments.

 

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So, anyway, how the heck have they managed to ruin such a great and simple idea? Surely, a few continuity errors can’t be such a big issue. Well, the main problem is the screenwriter, who should be shot repeatedly in the head before he “writes” anything else (unfortunately, this movie is more than 10 years old and in the meantime he has “written” quite a few of them, which I’ll try my best to avoid). The characterization is absolutely horrible and the dialogs are the worst. Almost everyone has two or three (not very impressive) lines that they repeat over and over until you get sick. Take the main bad guy, the ex-boyfriend. Aside from looking like a complete dork, he constantly repeats how he loves Sonia. Remember, this is happening at the same time while he’s trying to kill her. His fat sidekick (the non-jock one) only cares about his truck not being damaged so it’s “You scratched my truck! Don’t hit my truck! You’ll ruin my truck! Don’t ruin my truck!” over and over and over again. As a bonus, his acting (if you can call it that) is terrible.

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Sonia is really cute and while her conversations with Casper are made of the worst clichés ever (“You are a rich girl! You have everything!” “No, I don’t! My life sucks!” “No, it doesn’t!” “I love stars!” etc) it’s all relatively bearable until about halfway through the film when she finally loses her grip and starts yelling “I want to talk to him! Let me talk to him! Why is this happening to us? I wish I was dead! Let me die! I want to talk to him! Let me talk to him! Why is this happening? I want to die!” and similar. You get the idea. Anyone less cool than Casper would’ve probably thrown her out of the damn car under her stupid ex-boyfriend’s wheels. Anyway, Casper’s the only one that manages to fight the idiotic script and come out with some dignity left.

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Or is he? There’s a scene when he and Sonia are out of gas and they stop a ranger (played by Catherine Oxenberg) to try to get a ride. The bad guys appear and immediately attack, Catherine gets out of the car and shoots at them, but they hit her and she rolls over to the side of the road. So, surely, our heroes immediately go there and help her, right? Wrong! They take her car and get the hell out of there without even turning their heads to see if she’s alive! And I presume we are supposed to root for them? Remember, this is Casper’s wife we are talking about! He probably had a lot of explaining (and dish washing!) to do to make up for that. If anyone cares, the ranger apparently did survive, but she didn’t appear again. Her sole purpose was to provide a new car after Casper’s limousine ran out of gas.

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Also, one of the first scenes in the movie is Casper being headbutted by that loser ex-boyfriend, which sucks big time. Johnny Rico would certainly have none of that!

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Fortunately, the movie is not completely unwatchable. The action scenes are pretty cool, especially at the beginning, but there’s also some nice car chasing through the beautiful Canadian country at the end. Too bad they didn’t hire someone at least competent to write the script. Hell, I think even Kevin Smith would have written it better!

THE SWORD OF BUSHIDO (1988)

Directed by: Adrian Carr

Writer: James Wulf Simmonds

The Sword of Bushido stars Richard Norton, one of the true martial arts legends, the man who has so many black belts that he probably needs two separate rooms to keep them all. Richard may not be as famous as Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris, but unless you’re Jackie Chan (and you are probably not) you should get the out of his way. In real life, he has worked as a bodyguard for many famous rock stars and he’s constantly improving, learning new skills, speaking on various martial arts seminars, etc. And he even co-created his own martial arts system (called Zen Do Kai or something). The point is – if for any reason you decide to mess with Richard Norton, you can choose from various ways in which he can kick your ass. You have been warned.

OK, anyway – The Sword of Bushido is a really nice B action/adventure movie in which Richard Norton plays Zac Connors, a former Navy Seal (or some such thing) who goes on a quest to find the truth about the disappearance of his grandfather. His plane was shot down three days after the end of the World War II and his fate remains a mystery. Well, not quite, because the very first scene shows him being captured and about to be killed by the Japanese, but Richard doesn’t know this, as he’s not able to watch flashbacks.

 Richard demonstrates his skills with those knives made famous by Raffaello in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Some blonde girl, who happens to be an information officer or something (and Richard’s real life wife), finds that the plane crashed somewhere in Thailand, and as a reward Richard lets her make love to him. After that, he travels to the said place and discovers the remains of the plane (and his grandfather), but he and his guide are attacked by a ruthless gang of bastards and they kill everyone except Richard. And just as they are about to kill him too, he’s rescued by a brave gang of nearby villagers, led by Suay (meaning: beautiful), his future love interest. Together they kill the gang members and Suay tells him about the terrible situation in the region – gangs of looters and robbers and killers and mercenaries and drug smugglers and gun runners and bad students and stuff are freely roaming and attacking innocent villagers and the government is powerless.

Together they get back to the village, but to their horror they discover that it had been attacked and some people are dead, including Suay’s mother (notice how many people die in this movie). Richard stays in the village for some time. Actually, discovering the remains of his grandfather was just a part of his real mission – you see, he (grandpa) has stolen a legendary sword from the Japanese and Richard’s giri is to return it to them. The reward is 2 million dollars, but he’s such a nice man that he doesn’t care about the money.

That’s about the first half of the movie – what follows is more deaths, more adventure, more action and some nice fighting scenes, just to keep you entertained right till the end. In fact, what I love about B-movies is that you can have so many different cool things in them. For example, here we have a car chase scene in which Richard drives a go-kart. Then there’s a really cool scene when a ninja attacks him in the hotel room, Richard kicks his ass, throws him out of the window and then the poor guy suddenly gets hit by a bus, in a scene that foreshadows Final Destination movies.

There’s also a hilarious Japanese bad guy, whose English is so mindblowingly terrible that half the time you can’t even tell whether he’s speaking English or Japanese. Speaking of speaking, there are some funny dialogs, but when it comes to one-liners it doesn’t match an average Arnie or Lorenzo Lamas movie. My favorites are Suay’s description of the situation in the jungle, when she mentiones “bad students turning into killers”, and the cheesy pick-up line Richard uses to get her to bed (“You have got to let yourself love. If you don’t – you have lost the war anyway.”).

Long hair - not cool!

As for acting, it’s mostly terrible, with that Japanese guy taking the cake. Richard is certainly not a bad actor, but he fought hard with the American accent and he generally lacked the coolness and charisma of Lorenzo Lamas. I prefer his bad guy roles (see for example the brilliant Jackie Chan Movie Mr. Nice Guy, where Norton simply shines). On the other hand, the fighting scenes are great – you won’t see something like this in an A movie, where the main roles are played by people like Keanu Reeves.

I recommend The Sword of Bushido to any B-movie fan. You have action, adventure, swordfights, sex, good music, exotic setting and Richard Norton. What more could you possibly want?