I will never forget the day I got
a Nintendo Entertainment System. The actual
year escapes me, but it was Christmas day.
I got the bundle that came with the game Super Mario Bros, but my parents also got me the game Trojan to go with it (a game which to
this day I have a great fondness for).
Naturally, everything had to stop while I pulled out my tiny
black-and-white television and went through not a small amount of hair-pulling
to get the thing set-up correctly (it was the first time I would struggle with
the heartache of connecting electronics together but would by no means be the
last). If memory serves, I think I beat Trojan within a day or two. Super
Mario Bros took a while longer.
The thing about my Nintendo (and I
think I speak for a great many who owned one at the time) is that it finally
gave video game players an actual story and characters (minimal as some were)
to play along with and follow. The only
other place you could get that was at your local arcade, but I certainly wasn’t
rich enough to sink all my money into those quarter eaters. Besides, the games I wanted to play most were
usually hogged by some jerk who had more coins lined up for future plays than I
had patience to wait out (you know these guys, they’re probably CEOs somewhere today). Plus, the games on early home systems (like,
say, the Odyssey2 I had) were little more than time killers. Games like Alien Invaders - Plus (a Space
Invaders ripoff), KC Munchkin (a Pac-Man ripoff), and Pick-Axe
Pete (which my brothers lovingly referred to as Pick-Ass Pete) were primitive and consisted of doing the same
action over and over again in settings which varied only slightly. So, being able to experience a great-looking
story, in my own home, any time I wanted was as close to heaven as a kid could
get. Now the only thing I would have to
get off my porcine ass for was to go to the bathroom (usually). It took a lot more effort to beat the game Double
Dragon than it did Trojan,
and I can’t say the experience itself was markedly different. But damn if it wasn’t more exciting than Pong.
There is a medallion which was
split in half and given to two brothers (so the legend goes). One half holds the power of the body, the
other the power of the soul. But
together, they’re unstoppable and can unite the people (or somesuch garbage). A group of black riders (why they wear these costumes
is anyone’s guess), led by femme fatale Linda Lash (Kristina Wagner), attack some
Buddhist monks and retrieve the soul half of the Double Dragon medallion. They bring it back to Boss villain Koga Shugo
(Robert Patrick, looking for
all the world like Vanilla Ice with a sculpted goatee), but he needs both
halves to take over New Angeles (did I forget to mention the film takes place
in the future year 2007 after a massive earthquake decimated California’s
coast? Oops). Meanwhile, brothers Jimmy and Billy Lee (Mark Dacascos and Scott Wolf, respectively) fight in
and are subsequently booted from a martial arts tournament. Who do you think is in possession of the body
half of the medallion? Three
guesses. No peeking.
James Yukich’s film shares very
little with the game which inspired it.
It has some of the same characters, including love interest Marian (Alyssa Milano) and Abobo (Allen Nils Stewart pre-steroids,
Henry Kingi post). But aside from these two and having the
brothers fight each other towards the end, that’s about all I can think of as
far as the similarities. The main bad
guy has been changed from the Hell’s-Angel-With-A-Chaingun Willy to the slightly
dandy-ish Shugo. Plus, there are two new
henchmen, Huey (Jeff Imada)
and Lewis (Al Leong). Get it?
The game is solely about finding the brothers’ mutual love Marian, and
there are no medallions or other MacGuffins to be sought. In the film, the love triangle is slanted
toward Marian being with Billy from its very outset. Marian herself is more of a presence in the
movie. Here, she leads a gang of do-gooders
called the Power Corp (and their insistence on not adding an “S” to the end of
“Corp” forces me to pronounce the “P” at the end, but that’s just my
peccadillo). She’s not merely a damsel
in distress, and her family, in the form of Police Chief Delario (Leon Russom), is more entwined
in the goings-on than our main characters’ family is.
Setting the film in a
post-apocalyptic future was definitely a smart move, though its execution is
not quite as much. The gangs and police
have a tenuous truce that gives criminals free reign after dark, but the police
restore order during daylight hours.
This is probably the most intriguing idea the filmmakers added, but it’s
entirely tangential. The game feels like
a version of Walter Hills’s The Warriors,
with its bizarre coterie of eccentrically dressed characters attacking the
players as they fight their way through various settings. In this film, we have gangs like the Mohawks
and the Clowns to evoke the Baseball Furies and the Turnbull AC’s. The costumes give the groups a bit of flavor
but absolutely no personality. They
could have just as easily all been dressed in sweatsuits for how indistinct
they are in their actions. Another
aspect of this future world is the fact that every building in New Angeles
needs massive hydraulic jacks to keep them from falling down. But again, nothing is done with this. It’s just a bit of set dressing to explain
the set designs and provide visual interest but little else. Of course, practically everything in the
future is toxic in some form or another, but aside from some light satire, this
also goes nowhere. This, combined with
the “humorous” television news bits (prominently featured on Channel 69; Get
it?), don’t add anything to the film.
These are ideas we’ve seen done before and done better. They fall flat in Double Dragon, and instead of accenting the story, they simply lay
there, like a pile of dirty underwear in the corner of a bedroom (not mine but
some people’s, I’m sure).
No, the film doesn’t feel like
the video game at all (and not that it necessarily should be slavish to its
source), but would it have been better if it did? If Billy and Jimmy had to traverse the deadly
streets of New Angeles after dark, searching for a woman they both desire but
know only one can have, it certainly would have been a stronger narrative than
what we get. That said, the approach of
the film to the material is hamfisted and comes off largely like pandering to
their imagined demographic. The humor is
sub-juvenile, and is typically set off by awkwardly shot and edited reaction
inserts. There is more mugging per foot
of film than in any ten Bill Cosby concerts.
For a film ostensibly grouped in the Action genre, the action elements
barely approach a level of excitement consistent with an episode of The Bugaloos. The fight choreography is anything but
dynamic, though I would suspect that was more in line with trying to do big
action on a small budget with a cast not really known for their action
chops. That’s kind of a shame, because
it deprives Dacascos, Leong, and Imada of showing off their martial talents to
any great extent. There are a couple of
commendable makeup effects when the heroes are down in Shugo’s basement lab, but
since the absurdly distended Abobo is given the most screen time, he’s the one
that lingers in the viewer’s mind.
Seeing as how the former Mohawks leader is little more than a blockhead
with a body made useless and ludicrous, he is ineffectual as either a villain
or a heroic sidekick. And like just
about everything else in this movie, it didn’t have to be this poorly
actualized. But it is, and whether we
choose to watch Double Dragon
through an ironic filter or take it at face value, the fact remains; this film
stinks. Instead of watching it, I’d
recommend playing the original video game.
That way, at least the frustration you feel can be overcome when you
inevitably beat the final Boss as you’d like to beat this movie (to a pulp,
that is).
MVT: It’s crude and crass, I
know, but the best thing about this film is Alyssa Milano and her
thought-provoking outfit. She also has a
charm which no amount of filmic poop can squash apparently, and it’s evident throughout
the film. The lady can certainly hold your
attention with both her body and her personality.
Make Or Break: The Break
comes in the theater scene. During another
flatly-staged fight, bloated Abobo makes his first appearance. He is completely nonthreatening with his
impractical anatomy, and this scene and the rest of the film bear out just how
shoddy everything about him is. He’s a
walking cartoon, but not in the least bit a funny one.
Score: 3/10
**Like this
review? Share it with a friend. Hate it?
Share it with an enemy.**
No comments:
Post a Comment