This is the same year he played a Mongol guard in THE SHADOW and a bar fight oil worker in ON DEADLY GROUND (plus THE MASK and STICKFIGHTER), so yes, you can tell that he has his trademark bald-except-for-a-braid-on-the-back hairstyle under the wig.Ībobo sees that the Lee brothers’ guardian Satori Imada (Julia Nickson, SIDEKICKS) has half of the magic medallion that Koga Shuko (Patrick) is searching for, but the gang is chased off by the Power Corps, led by short-blonde-haired manic pixie dream guerrilla Marian Delario (Milano). That’s when they’re ambushed by a gang of liberty-spike-sporting punks called The Mohawks led by a big dude called Abobo, who I was excited to recognize as Nils Allen Stewart, a prolific stuntment, henchman, and guy who played Jesse Ventura in a cable biopic. On their way home in The Dragon Wagon (a modified station wagon with jet engine) they fall for a Bugs Bunny style trick where they pull over so Billy can hit on a woman that is actually a man in a wig. It takes place in the cyberpunky post-The-Big-Quake New Angeles in the futuristic year of 2007, with all the satirical billboards and colorful street gangs that implies.ĭacascos and Wolf play Jimmy and Billy Lee, who are introduced losing at a martial arts competition, and then it’s never really about that again. It stars Mark Dacascos (a year after ONLY THE STRONG, a year before KICKBOXER 5 and CRYING FREEMAN) and Scott Wolf (the same year Party of Five started) as martial artist brothers, Alyssa Milano (in the window between Who’s the Boss? and EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE) as the leader of a vigilante group, and Robert Patrick (who had only done FIRE IN THE SKY and two T-1000 cameos since T2) as an evil gang leader/businessman obsessed with obtaining an ancient Chinese medallion that would give him super powers. I do not personally consider it to be a good movie, but upon this rewatch I found it somewhat enjoyable on the strength of its specific only-in-the-‘90s strain of complete inexplicability. And that stuff about corn-fed Skynyrd types fighting Grandmaster Flash? Nah.DOUBLE DRAGON (1994), loosely based on the video game series, is a sci-fi fantasy action kids movie from the director of THE RETURN OF BRUNO and the producers of NATURAL BORN KILLERS. The lurid late-eighties glow–as resurrected in a 2012 reboot that owes as much to Ninja Turtles cartoons as the original game–only became the focus with the movie and later franchising. Likewise, Double Dragon's elements of mysticism were more akin to Roger Moore Bond movies and kung-fu exploitation flicks than the contemporaneous Big Trouble in Little China. Double Dragon was more a delayed echo of gritty 70s crime flicks such as Death Wish and The Warriors than Reagan-era neon paranoia (in arcades: Narc). However, I'm going to be that guy and suggest that he's not quite nailed the time period. … It's the Reagan-era fantasy in a nutshell-the "one good man" of frontier myth updated for a world of crack dens and moral sleaze, taking down feral street punks with a bone-crunching kick to the face rather than a six-shooter.Ī great article. In brief: The hero is a square-jawed white guy, clad in a blue-collar uniform of wifebeater and sleeveless denim jacket. Like its closest peers-namely Renegade and Streets Of Rage-Double Dragon represents the vigilante myth at its most naked and vicious. Finally, someone has written an in-depth article about the cultural ethos of classic 1980s beat-em-up Double Dragon.
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