Death Fighter

Death Fighter

The film which was formerly called White Tiger but has been renamed Death Fighter has had quite an interesting history before its release. This is mainly because this film is the last recorded work of Joe Lewis, the Karate Champion and Bruce Lee’s friend who passed away in 2012! It is said that Death Fighter was shot just before Lewis passed away. But several disputes regarding the production and distribution of the film caused it to be shelved for many many years.

For martial arts enthusiasts, the behind the scene perils do not show in the film: As the title suggests, Death Fighter comes as a warm nostalgia to older fans of the genre as the film falls somewhere in between the likes of old school Hong Kong martial arts movies with some of the classic Cannon Video cheesiness like American Ninja and Delta Force.

Before the events of the story, FBI Agent Michael Turner (played by actor Matt Mullins from Blood and Bone and Mortal Kombat: Legacy) is in Bangkok, Thailand with his girlfriend. Still, he has eyes for no one, not even her, which is a dreadful combination for his girlfriend. The reason? Michael’s real reason for going is to assist his long-time mentor at the FBI, Joe Lewis in this case, in finding a gold smuggler and human trafficker called Draco, who is thought to be on the Thai Burch border. It is hardly ten minutes into the film that Matt Mullins and Joe Lewis burst in on one of the operations controlled by Draco.

In this instance, Mullins briefly matches martial arts veteran Cynthia Rothrock and emerging star Jawed El Berni (Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, The Viral Factor). Even Joe Lewis gets in a couple – I should point out in relation to this character that he doesn’t appear onscreen for a significant amount of time, but I’m positive his devoted fans will enjoy seeing him operating in spite of everything.

After Mullins faces a temporary setback and is more lost in his attempt to stop Draco, a local police chief introduces him to Bobby Pau, an ex-Special Forces turned mercenary and drunk who is working for Don “The Dragon” Wilson. From the beginning, Wilson was hesitant to cooperate with hot-tempered American who sought revenge, but he decided to do it and involves his friend Otto (Portrayed by a debuting Prasit Suanphaka) just in case. It is at this juncture that the tempo declines slightly as the three men traverse the jungles of Thailand and reach a local doctor’s house played by Thai TV star Chiranan Manochaem.

Luckily, this village is where one of the action scenes of the film is rather staged, and henceforth, Death Fighter does not drops its pace atleast for once. After some films which were supposed to be letdowns for the audiences (especially Hard Target 2), fight choreographer Kazu Patrick Tang uses his entire repertoire of skills and makes each battle for a member of the cast elaborate. Matt Mullins goes for some flying kicks that will make even Uri Boyka from Undisputed duck, while Don the Dragon Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock get along fairly well given their nearly 60 yea.

Of all however, it’s Prasit Suanphaka as Otto who caught my attention the most: though not more than five feet in height, he possesses fighting speeds and fierceness that can be associated to Yayan Ruhian of the Raid series. Suanphaka still has so far only one credit as IMDB tells me, but anything else that he could be working on next is something I should be delighted to watch. The female lead Chiranan Manochaem does her best in the action scenes as well, and bearing in mind I don’t think she has any formal training, she does very well.

The movie wraps up in the way that it should have started with Matt Mullins and Jawed El Berni clashing against each other in this rematch. Even if Draco the Russian warm heartedly evil scarface rather than an evil villain, it doesn’t take the luster out of show. Breathe easy about that their choreography is respectable, accomplished in medium, and doesn’t shake like a cheap whore through a plethora of cuts typical to other low class actions.

There is most likely a rationale as to why they treated martial arts with utmost regards in this movie. Toby Russell is one of the lesser-known directors who has only a handful of narrative movies to his credit but was best known at that time because of hullabaloo surrounding his 1994 documentary Cinema of Vengeance, which praised everything about Hong Kong filmmaking and was the first place which I saw footage from the action movie My Heart Is That Eternal Rose, which focused on Heroic bloodshed.

It is evident that Russell was a keen disciple of those moviemaking principles obtained from Hong Kong. The innovative and punchy principles of modern day Panna Rittikrai were brought to the mixer in techniques that are practiced here as well as by the likes of Bangkok: Knockout and Born To Fight.

And while the story is rather a mere plot device to hold together a series of windows for fights, it should be mentioned that this is the most likable Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson I have ever seen. The acting comes across as natural for a person who has spent more than 20 years of his life in front of the cameras. A role of a drunken mercenary does not seem like an effort to Wilson and quite a few of his more energetic moments contrast well with the blandness of Matt Mullins’ character.

But then again, who knows, maybe that rage on Mullins’ face was not because of anger: It must have been extremely hot while filming Death Fighter in Thailand because there are plenty of moments in the movie where the faces of the actors seem to be soaked in perspiration for no reasons even in the jungle scenes.

Movies take time, or do they? The image that Death Fighter created in its genre is sure to amaze. Matthew with two letters, MacFarlane is breathtaking. You my friend should brace yourself for this outstanding entertaining moment. Let’s not beat around the bush, Death Fighter is an all time classic.

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