Okay, so it was never going to get an Oscar, but consider this movie's merits for what it is ¡V a low budget film trying to ride out on the ¡§fame¡¨ of a B grade star with Ninja hype. Take that away and what you have is an innovative late 80s early 90s martial arts flick that managed to repackage the ¡§Blood Sports¡¨ idea using (some) extremely talented actors. I watched this video as part of my research on a new director, Tony Szeto. I was amazed by the fight scenes that involved Mark Dacascos (Kenjiro) and Tony Szeto (Phan-Xu). Even with the dismal fight between Dacascos and a hopeless Bradely (Drew), the close-ups reveal a telling red flag ¡V obviously the close-ups of the previous fight between Dacascos and Szeto. Realize that, barring the slow motion, all fighting was done in real time. That is, there was no motion speed-up as often used in Hong Kong kung-fu films. I don't know about the rumors that they used actual weapons (blunted of course), but I have an article from an Israeli newspaper that says one of the actors were injured by a weapon while shooting one of the fight scenes. With ¡§Brotherhood of the Wolf (2002)¡¨, it is surely only a matter of time before Dacascos hits the A-list in Hollywood. But with the knowledge that much of the martial arts choreography was done by Tony Szeto, I'm looking forward to seeing his directorial debut in ¡§DragonBlade (2003)¡¨, which apparently will be packed full of martial arts weaponry.
Review of American Samurai
