|
You know... Every now and again somebody
somewhere sends me a video tape that I have
absolutely no expectations for, and it kicks my ass.
DRIVE... Well... It kicked my ass.
First off, this is a film that went straight to video here
in the United States, and ya know.... It shouldn’t
have. It’s vastly entertaining. The dialogue and the
action is way sharper than any of the Jean Claude Van
Damme films and most of the Steven Seagal schlock.
It stars a bunch of ‘never heard of ems’ and is
directed by another ‘never heard of him.’ And
because it is sooooo low profile, it comes in and kicks
your ass.
Remember Dwayne Wayne from A DIFFERENT
WORLD? Well, he plays a Chris Tucker type and
Mark Dacascos plays the Jackie Chan/Jet Li type.
It’s a film that is actually even a bit more fun than
RUSH HOUR, though it’s production values are
significantly less.
In fact, it’s production values tend to resemble those
of a ShowTime Original flick. However there is one
aspect of this film that shreds all of it’s ‘typical’
trappings.
The Stunt Choreographer, Koichi Sakamoto. Holy
Shit. The stunts and the fights in this movie are
sooooo good, that I’ll hold them right up alongside
some of the work of Woo-Ping Yuen, though his
work in FIST OF LEGEND is quite honestly
legendary.
I guess, one of the reasons this stunt choreography
took me by such surprise was that... I wasn’t really
expecting it. I mean. When I saw Koichi’s name, I
recognized it from SPACE TRUCKERS which I have
been a huge fan of, but... The fights in Space
Truckers while being pretty cool, were no where near
the Coolness of these.
In fact, because I had just recently come from seeing
THE BLACK MASK starring Jet Li, I was expecting
to be less than excited by this, but... MAN... I really
had a blast with the two HOTEL fight sequences.
Both Hotel scenes can be played over and over and
over again. There is this one maneuver where the guy
bounces past a bed, uses the wall to change direction,
then kicks the shit of the guy behind him that made
me feel like my jaw had just come unhinged. OUCH!
Then there’s this badass placekick in the face that just
left everyone in the room just massaging their chin to
see if it was still there.
It’s strange, I’ve recently been hearing that Bryan
Singer has been looking for a fight choreographer for
X-MEN, but had to pass on Woo-Ping Yuen and Ray
Parks.... Well, if you are looking for someone that is
fresh and cool as hell, I think Koichi is the man. I’m
dying to see what he does next.
Meanwhile, though the fighting is awesome in this
film, there are some other areas that really shine.
Scott Phillip’s script is very fun. The verbal dueling
of the lead bad guy and Tracey “BOB THE GOON”
Walter is priceless. And frankly, any movie with
Miller from REPO MAN is a goody. I mean...
Tracey Walter is quickly becoming another Dick
Miller for me.
Then there is the utterly adorable Brittany Murphy
(who you may remember as Tai from CLUELESS or
as the voice of Luanne in KING OF THE HILL) who
literally steals whole sequences from the action. She
is just so friggin happy to be shooting at people that...
She transcends the film. She’s a bored little cutie that
never gets to do anything, until.... NOW and now that
she can do something she’s gonna do it all. What a
pure little bit of joy. She’s in alot of films coming up
this year, so let’s see if she ends up breaking out of
anonymity.
Well... Keep your eyes out for the film. The video
box is kinda lame, but the movie isn’t. It’s not a great
film, but it is great fun. Far better than it has any
right to be for a straight to video. I would have loved
to have seen this at Midnight with a drunk audience.
Everyone I saw this with.... Tom Joad, Annette
Kellerman and Father Geek enjoyed the hell out of it!
| 
