Shameless Self Expression

Bar owner and ‘nam veteran David Carradine teams up with his crusty ex-cop father (Lee Van Cleef) to take on Yakuza boss Mako and his gang after they kill Carradine’s idiot brother (David Goss). Ross Hagen plays Goss’ turncoat partner, Michael Berryman and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa are henchmen, Dick Miller and Laurene Landon are another couple of crooks. Brent Huff plays Carradine’s other brother.   A pretty incredible B cast is at the mercy of C-movie veteran director Fred Olen Ray ( “The Tomb” , “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers” , “Beverly Hills Vamp” , “Wizards of the Demon Sword” ) in this deathly paced 1986 action movie. To call it one of the better Fred Olen Ray films I’ve seen says little in the film’s favour. The film is too damn short to be so damn slow, and there’s also a severe lack of action for a supposed action movie. Did we really need all those super slow-mo war flashbacks?   It’s also unevenly acted, with Lee Van Cleef and particularly Ross Hagen and Mako the b...

Hardened criminal Richard Harris breaks out of prison, steals a police car and eventually takes a 12 year-old boy (Justin Henry) as hostage when some coppers get ready to approach him. Thus begins a volatile road trip between a desperate convict and a quiet little boy who both happen to be named Martin. Lindsay Wagner plays a prison shrink, James Coburn plays a cop, Karen Black appears briefly as Harris’ ex, and John Ireland is Harris’ recently parolled prison buddy.   Truly awful 1985 Canadian film from former Hammer director Alan Gibson ( “Dracula AD 1972” , “Crescendo” ) is like an awkward, wrong-headed forerunner to Clint Eastwood’s “A Perfect World” . That film was uneven, but at least it gave us one of Kevin Costner’s better performances and never quite overdosed on sentimentality. Costner’s character was still a bad guy, just not quite as bad as his cohort. This film seems to want you to like its main character, and that creates disaster. The sole highlight here is a mer...