Guilty Pleasures Part 2

Ok..so sue me. He's gained a 100 pounds, makes direct to DVD fodder that feature 2 minutes worth of aikido, of which a full minute is probably executed by a stuntman...but I still spend some time during my DVD trawls trying to seek out a watchable Steven Seagal flick with the ardent yearning of a lovestruck puppy hoping for a glimmer of attention from his crush. In vain.Since Half Past Dead, the last Seagal movie to unspool from a cinema projector way back in 2002, he's made about 17 DVD flicks, out of which only Shadow Man, Belly Of The Beast, Urban Justice and Into The Sun managed to extricate themselves (barely) from the dungheap of dreck that Seagal's output has shat out onto the B-Movie landscape these past 8 years. So for a whiff of nostalgic longing for a leaner, meaner Seagal (available only in the first 6 flicks of his career) , I periodically pop in Marked For Death, the 3rd Seagal movie and for some bone crunching, neck twisting, wrist snapping demonstration of aikido at it's most lethal, look no further. Sadistic Jamaican Drug Lord Screwface ( a brilliant Basil Wallace) rubs retired DEA agent Seagal the wrong way, and gets his eyeballs gouged in, spine snapped, thrown out a window and impaled on a stick. After watching his entire posse get wiped out. Don't fuck with an irate Buddhist man...

Another longing, this one for Missed Opportunities assails me whenever I see Brandon Lee strutting on screen. Handsome, lean and athletic, he was poised to carry the Martial Baton from his late father Bruce Lee when death tragically cut him down, via a stunt accident on the set of The Crow.

Showdown In Little Tokyo sees him play second banana to Dolph Lundgren, but Brandon exudes natural charisma and maintains his dignity even when a scene forces him to admire the size of Lundgren's Dong. Showdown is so gleefully unabashed in it's casual racism and sexism and over the top in it's violence , it's to me, an important artifact of the '80s. And like the best Bad Movies you keep coming back to it has a kick ass villain, in this case Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa in full tattooed Yakuza regalia, oozing reptilian charm with his sonorous voice even as he disrobes a blonde escort and fondles her breast as a prelude to hacking her head off..while video taping the whole act. The movie's one charming concept (Scandinavian Lundgren is steeped in Japanese lore while Asian Lee is Californian Clueless) is soon buried under an avalanche of escalating violence as the ass kicking duo take on Tagawa's Yakuza minions.

Rapid Fire was a far more effective launchpad for Brandon Lee, as he now gets to strut his stuff solo, playing the world's least protected Witness under Protection. Invigorating fight scenes, smoothly executed by a very limber Lee, a decent plot and the always reliable Powers Boothe make this a Prime Replay Candidate on my Player.

Jean Claude Van Damme's career arch is scarily similar to the Pony Tailed one, with the exception that he's still kept himself in shape but I steadily bypass his current output and pop something like Timecop in when I need my JCVD Martial Mayhem fix.

It's time travel plot makes nary a lick of sense..but it features some decent ass-kickery from the Muscles from Brussells and it's climactic showdown where the baddies have to contend with both Past and Present Van Dammes is still a B-Movie delight.