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(1992) Ironheart ACTION

Misleading poster cover in which Bolo Yeung is not the star of this straight to rental movie, but it really stars Korean martial artist Britton K. Lee, as officer John Keem moving to LA to investigate the death of his partner. Who eventually uncover a human trafficking ring lead by Australian martial artist, Richard Norton as Milverstead.

Directed by Robert Clouse who was infamous for "Enter The Dragon" and a much cheerful movie called "The Big Brawl" starring a rather young Jackie Chan. This movie is a stinker with a much lower budget he had to handle, but at least Clouse had Enter the Dragon and The Big Brawl in his resume.

They got him in the poster, his name is on the poster so you may be forgiven for assuming that he is the star of the show. He is not, he is just another henchman, doing what he usually does, but not with much effort. Instead the star is a guy who beats up random dudes who attack joggers and parks and drives his car a lot! In fact, pretty sure that fight with the random scumbags attacking the jogger was 10x longer than his fight with the star of the film Bolo...

The movie has a girl being kidnapped, leaving a club with someone who was rich and taking the easy way out. Yes, that is how it is described to the hero when the person who was kidnapped explains to him that the girl quit dancing and tried to get a rich man, thus taking the easy way and deserving of what she gets! Harsh dance teacher. Well the hero is more concerned that these guys killed his former partner and so we got lots of action with our bad ass martial arts cop! Well, not really. Honestly, Samurai Cop was more action packed than this thing was and featured way more action as we mainly see our hero parking...

I understand why they featured Bolo on the poster with his name featured as he is the only person I recognized in this thing! The hero's English is not too good, but he is not horrible (what a compliment). Then there is the dance teacher who looks like Pam Dawber from Mork and Mindy. Not unattractive, but not all that great and she certainly would not have stood out and been kidnapped at the club when she goes undercover. Then there is pizza guy who dated the actually hot girl who got kidnapped at the beginning, I guess he could not make a pizza to her satisfaction!

This one is definitely not good, but amusing. Where else you gonna save a jogger and she runs from you screaming too? This is a movie, she is supposed to be thankful, though her reaction was probably more realistic. The cop's was not as he just left the men dead or dying behind. Then you get a anticlimactic finale where Bolo must of been like, "let's just get this over with, man..." You will witness more than your fair share of parking though!

Robert Clouse, Bolo Yeung and Richard Norton in the credits of working in the movie, what can go wrong? Well, the movie is in a desperate need for a better script and star. Do not get me wrong, Britton got the martial arts skills and believability to be a hero but the script and his acting are severely lacking to give the movie narrative thrust. The only characterization he has got is that he knows martial arts and that he is a cop which leaves us - the audience - with nothing much to root for. Even worse are the villains who are apparently just evil because the movie demands it.

Bolo Yeung and Richard Norton being in the movie should make it quite entertaining because both actors have been in bad movies where they outshine the stars of the bad movies. But they are barely utilized and we are instead stuck with a lot of other unknown actors who are equally as thinly characterized as our main character. Which is frustrating because the movie had potential to be good but it is severely handicapped with a badly written script and flat acting with equally flat characters. Not to mention the movie lacks any sort of tension or ambiance where the music just feels out of place. The plot is also just there where it feels like the writer and director just kind of forgot about it.

The only few good things about the movie is the cinematography, choreography and directing. It is not the worst I have seen but it is certainly a wasted potential.

The acting was bad, and the plot, well i don't think there was one.

Some fat blonde chap who is always dressed in a dinner suit, kidnaps a sort from a nightclub, i think he then kills a copper. pointless fights then happen Kidnapped girl is put in cage on a boat, why? Tough uncompromising martial arts trained cop turns up, speaks bad english and does stuff that does not make sense. Its utter tripe. But he does have a nice car. christ on a bike, this film was a waste of 90 minutes.

An LAPD cop goes after a powerful drug dealer, Richard Norton, following him to Portland, Oregon. The best part of this film is the cop has to face off with Norton's henchmen, the near-mute actor Bolo Yeung (the beefy villain from iconic martial arts classics ENTER THE DRAGON and BLOODSPORT). Watching this early 90s martial arts flick, I think I was most excited to realize it was filmed in Portland, Oregon when I spotted Mr. Hood in the background of one shot, which means Bolo Yeung and Richard Norton were in Oregon at some point! This is only one of two films that lead actor Britton K. Lee appeared in. He's a pretty terrible actor and martial artist, so I'm pretty sure he only got the part because he also served as a producer on the film. Director by Robert Clouse, director of the seminal Bruce Lee film ENTER THE DRAGON, I'd have hoped for better, though outside of that film, Clouse never made another descent film (unless you want to include GYMKATA, which needs to be seen to be believed! I will admit I'm a sucker for THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR though.). Although this film was made in the '90s, it has a strong 80s vibe to it, featuring Jazzercize, loads of synthesizer music, and some terrific 80s hairdos and fashion, which did add to the film's entertainment value, but overall this is a so-bad-it's-good type of action flick that I quite enjoyed, but probably only die-hard Bolo and Norton fans will be entertained by this one.