Beyond Fear

I have seen Mimi's films, and finally this one has some depth to it. Forget Mimi, although she is cute. The real stars are Mr. and Mrs. Page, a bored couple trying to re-invigorate their marriage. They are a scream. And also, the villains in the film are not cartoonish. They make the film worthwhile. This film is a good one for a dark and stormy night during re-run season.

I say "possibly" because I still haven't seen "Pushed to the Limit", but I have seen "Streets of Rage" and "Personal Vendetta", and this film has two notable advantages over those two: a) although it's clearly a low-budget production, at least it is shot on film, not on video, and b) although the fight scenes are not numerous (no more than 4, to be exact), they are convincing and the last one in particular is outstanding: Mimi goes up against a big tough guy and has to use all her weapons, including some grappling moves, to take him down; the fight looks real and rough. The script gets draggy at times and some of the dialogue is poor, but in martial arts movies what counts more is the fight scenes, and there "Beyond Fear" delivers, if not in quantity, at least in quality. (**1/2)

A retired fighter turned wilderness guide (Mimi Lesseos, who also co-wrote/co-produced) tries to protect her tour group from a pair of lowlifes out to retrieve a videotape containing their senseless murder of a prostitute recorded by one of the tourists.

Dull, amateurish, slow-paced martial arts flick takes a beating. Poor writing, directing, acting, uninspired fight scenes, and unconvincing villains make this one a total bore. Most of the action occurs in the last fifteen minutes, but by then you may be asleep. The best part of this film has martial arts champ Lesseos sparring with a heavy bag during the opening and closing credits. My evaluation: (no stars).

I have no familiarity with Mimi or her movies, but I am a HUGE fan of the action genre, particularly low-budget DTV action movies. So even though I had no idea who this actress was, she seemed to have valid martial arts credentials, which is enough to get me interested. While she does manage to deliver a pretty decent (although terribly anticlimactic) fight scene at the end of the movie, the film simply stinks.

It stinks bad.

The main reason for this: NOTHING HAPPENS IN THE FIRST HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES! I don't know whose idea it was to have so much character set-up in the first and second act, but whoever it was needs to learn Low-Budget Action Screewriting 101: No one cares about character.

Sorry, they don't.

Never have I been watching a Don "The Dragon" Wilson movie and thought, "You know what would make this film better? Exposition and character development! MORE THAN AN HOUR'S WORTH!" This should've been nothing more than a goofy, non-stop kick-fest set in the woods. Instead, they aimed too high and failed miserably.

The film is streaming on Amazon Prime, which is how I stumbled across it. Even for free, I can't recommend the film -- even to fans of the genre.

Mimi, however, was pretty good and very likable. I'll probably be checking out more of her stuff.

I really should give this stinker more credit that 1 star, because the film has so many eye-rolling lines that it's almost worth the price of the rental.

The acting, if you want to call it that, is so stilted and contrived that it makes Ed Wood's actors appear life like. "Sammy," the lone black character, must be Mimi's husband in real life because he appears in her other films, but he has zero acting ability. His lines are priceless due to his absurd delivery, though I suspect the intention was to create a sympathetic character. His old man make up in her other turkey ("Pushed To The Limit") is no-budget, junior high school quality, with cotton ball eyebrows and white spray painted hair.

I cannot fathom anyone actually buying this video, unless people like to throw their own Mystery Science Theater parties and need a copy of something like this on hand. It really is Beyond Fear-- it's actually Beyond Funny.