Rather than going the FIST OF THE NORTH STAR route of just having white dudes with Japanese names, they have him explain that he changed it to sound cool. She gives them her half of the magic medallion before dying when the bad guys burn the theater down. I didn’t recognize Nickson as Co from RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and she’s not that much older than them, so I thought at first she was their sister or girlfriend, not the friend of their parents who raised them. The Lee brothers live in a closed one-screen movie theater filled with props, sporting equipment, a piano and various junk. There’s a funny gimmick that the designs on their clothes exactly match the graffiti wall behind them, but, as one of the screenwriters complains in the blu-ray extras, it’s weirdly staged to show them rappelling down and getting into place rather than being camouflaged and then revealing themselves, as obviously intended. 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. 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.
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