Thursday Movie Picks: Science Fiction Horror

The Way of the Dragon

AKA Return of the Dragon

AKA Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris

Directed by Bruce Lee.

1972. Rated R, 90 minutes.

Cast:

Bruce Lee

Chuck Norris

Nora Miao

Chung-Hsin Huang

John T. Benn

Ping Ou Wei

Robert Wall

Ing-Sik Whang

Di Chin

Tony Liu

Malisa Longo

You’re a family of Chinese immigrants in Rome trying to make a living by running a restaurant. There is a major problem, though. The local mob wants your land. Every day, they send goons over to run customers off and rough you up until you decide to sell. What are you going to do? Without any friends in town, you send word back to your uncle in Hong Kong asking for his help. He goes above and beyond the call of duty by sending you a cousin you don’t even know. He sends you Bruce Lee. Pure epicness ensues.

It goes without saying that Bruce kicks mobster tail. With two of the most awesome lines of dialogue you’ll ever hear, Mr. Lee explains both his fighting and the movie in full: “Dragon seeks its path. Dragon whips its tail.” Of course, this is all done by his feet and fists. Why don’t the bad guys just shoot him? Rest assured, dear reader, they try. Our hero’s handy little homemade darts, thrown with the kind of accuracy that would make a sniper jealous, takes care of that minor inconvenience. What happens when they send a whole crew of guys at him at once? Are you serious? You know we’re talking about the legendary Bruce Lee, right?

To the bad guys’ credit, they do the only thing they can do and try to fight roundhouse kicks with roundhouse kicks. They call in none other than Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris. Chuck MFing Norris. Yes. Seeing this movie guarantees you’ll witness the most awesome showdown in the history of mankind. The only thing that could possibly make it any better is if they fought in the one place where the very soil beneath their feet is saturated with the blood of gladiators; blood of both those that have fallen and the winners that limped away. I'm talking about Rome’s famed Colosseum. Oh, that’s right. They do. The true miracle of this film, besides it being a landmark moment in the evolution of fight choreography, is that the entire world didn't spontaneously combust the very instant these two titans clashed.

This is exhausting. Finding superlatives for that which none sufficient exist is difficult work. I must resort to using the one word that works best: perfect. Perfect, as in Bruce Lee movies are perfect. Well, at least the ones he completed while alive. Even the one teeny tiny scene that may cause us to question its flawlessness is perfect even though it is less testosterone filled than the rest of the film. Bruce might seem a little too gentlemanly, or just put off by an overly forward woman, when he turns down a particularly gorgeous and easy piece of Italian hotness (Longo). Then we realize that the life of a truly dedicated martial artist is a disciplined one. Anyhoo, what does all this mean? It means what I've already said, damn whatever credibility you've ascribed to me, Bruce Lee movies are perfect.

MY SCORE: ∞/10

The Expendables 2

Directed by Simon West.

2012. Rated R, 103 minutes.

Cast:

Sylvester Stallone

Jason Statham

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bruce Willis

Jean-Claude Van Damme

Chuck Norris

Nan Yu

Dolph Lundgren

Jet Li

Terry Crews

Randy Couture

Charisma Carpenter

Everything goes boom. There’s really not much more description or explanation needed. This is a movie simply about everything going boom and the guys we love to watch make stuff go boom making stuff go boom. We have plenty of holdovers from the original. Since he’s the creator of both of these homages to the 1980s, Sylvester Stallone once again plays our fearless leader. Joining him again are current action king Jason Statham, former straight-to-video action king Dolph Lundgren, martial arts legend Jet Li, Terry Crews and Randy Couture. Expanding their cameos from the first flick are The Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mr. Die Hard himself, Bruce Willis. Also joining in on the fun are “the muscles from Brussels” Jean-Claude Van Damme and the man who doesn’t do push-ups but instead pushes the Earth down, Chuck Norris.

How the hell didn’t this movie not have a part for Steven Segal? Well, he possibly ate himself out of a role. And again, no Carl Weathers? Did Ivan Drago…ahem…Dolph Lundgren really kill him during that boxing match where James Brown performed “Living in America?” Woo. Good Gawd. Jump back. Kiss myself! Hey! May the Godfather of Soul rest in peace. Sorry. Got off track for a moment.

There is the basic construct of a story here. As you may recall from the original, Sly and the guys whose names I dropped in the first group are kinda, sorta like The A-Team. By the way, since another major draw is our familiarity with and nostalgia for the actual actors and their past work, we won’t be using any character names here. The youngest guy on the squad decides the life of a merc is not for him. . He’ll finish out the month then go home to settle down with his girl and raise a family. If you don’t know how that works out in action flicks, think of him this way: in another movie he’d be a cop with only a few weeks until retirement. In other words, he’ll need to be avenged. He meets his fate during a mission the boys get sent on by Bruce Willis. They don’t want to do it, but Sly owes Bruce a solid. Their job is to grab hold of a thingamajig from the wreckage of a downed plane and bring it back. Of course, that doesn’t go as planned since Van Damme and his evil cronies show up to get their grubby little paws on it. Yes, Van Damme is a villain. He’s a pretty good one, in fact. Anyhoo, that’s about as specific as I’m going to get. From there, our heroes trying to retrieve the thingamajig and avenge their fallen brethren ensues.

The Expendables 2 is a dumb, fun action flick sure to give your surround sound system a workout. It’s even better than its predecessor because there’s not nearly as much downtime so we can get to know the boys. They all pop in, shoot stuff and/or fight while either themselves or someone else makes a reference to one of their old movies, or their persona in general, as a joke. For instance, a large percentage of Arnie’s dialogue is made up of him telling whoever is within earshot “I’ll be back.” You should understand this to mean this flick takes itself even less seriously than its predecessor and is therefore closer to what I thought that movie would be. Without question, this is a “turn your brain off” experience starring a group of guys who made a pretty good living making stuff go boom. In other words, it's so bad it's awesome!

MY SCORE: -10/10