Les frères Dynamite

Al Adamson was one of the first US directors to use a Hong Kong Stunt team in America. He was a trendsetter for once. The Dynamite Brothers is a real low budget film that has a sleazy feel to it. Alan Tang (former 70's Golden Harvest matinee kung-fu star) stars as a F.O.T.B. chinese looking for his long lost brother. But trouble awaits for him as he "leaps" off the boat. A group of martial Artist led by "MR. Vampire" Ching-Ying Lam attack him on the docks. After dispatching his opponents, Alan heads off to find his brother. He eventually crosses pathes with Stud Brown and the two become the Defiant Ones. What keeps this movie from being great is the bad directing by Al Adamson and his lousy cameraman. They obviously don't know how to film or correctally frame a fight scene. This is sad becuase the action scenes (directed by Ching-Ying Lam) are remarkable. A lot of familiar faces pop up uncredited such as future Sammo Hung Stunt team Members Peter Chan Lung, Philip Ko and Mars can be seen in the back ground. If there was a budget, Al Adamson must have spent it on flying these guys out to California. Besides the cheap feel to the movie, it's not that bad. I enjoyed very much. Alan Tang only got the lead becuase he's the only one that can speak english fluently, Ching-Ying Lam didn't know how to speak english and the others spoke very little. After watching Alan Tang in action, you'll be wanting to watch his older, H.K. work. He's one bad dude. Recommended for historical purposes. B+

Considering that this movie was made by the schlock-meister, Al Adamson, it's no surprise that the whole things comes off as cheap and unwatchable. Aside from lousy camera-work, an annoying soundtrack and cheesy stunts, this film suffers from horribly dull acting and dialog. To say that the main characters are dull and unappealing is an understatement--balls of lint have much more charisma than these two idiots.

The film is about a Chinese guy who comes to America looking for his brother. He meets up with a black man and for a while they are handcuffed together like Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis in THE DEFIANT ONES, though there's no way you could mistake the two movies! A bit later, the two become separated and both have various dull adventures where there is a lot of bad martial arts and cars that explode for no particular reason. Frankly, the plot didn't seem that interesting, so I won't bother to elaborate further on it--you just won't care once the movie gets going.

The only surprise, and it's a mild one, is the presence of a good actor (Aldo Ray) in the film. He isn't that bad but it's sad to see a decent actor like Ray in this and other crap productions in the twilight of his career. It must have been very hard on him taking on such rancid roles for hacks like Adamson.

Overall, the film is an inept mess. Sadly, it's not even a film you can laugh at or enjoy on a camp level--it's just craptastic and dull from start to finish. The martial arts aren't even that good, as the cameraman, I suspect, was a lemur. Plus, many of the fighting scenes were just dumb--such as the guy with the nunchuks who swung them incessantly without even trying to connect or threaten the hero. I think in the end he was just so tired of swinging them that it was easy to beat him! By the way, for the sensitive viewers out there, there are a lot of politically incorrect racial slurs in this film. If you are easily offended, then try watching another film--this one WILL tick you off completely.

My second Al Adamson film and compared to "Brain of Blood" this is a masterpiece.

Some terrible acting, atrocious camera work and some truly amazingly bad dialogue combine to make this a bad film.

By far not the worst film I've seen however.

One scene to look out for is when Stud serenades the mute girl with a song. A scene so awful I very much doubt you can avoid cringing or laughing.

Still there's something here for HK action fans as basically its a bad 70's Kung Fu film.

4/10 about sums it up. Watchable but equally miss-able.

This is a very cheap 1973 actioner which pits a black man (Brown) with an Asian man (Tang) who is searching for his brother in LA. The two spend a period cuffed together and dealing with racist morons before they eventually meet up with the main villain. Tang, an Asian martial arts star, has no real personality and the fight scenes have obvious sound effects added on which doesn't help. Other stunts in the movie look obviously fake and are almost amusing. The film was originally titled "Stud Brown" (after Brown's character) and was billed as a blaxploitation film but that was misleading as Tang has more screen time and deals with most of the action. Ray,a former big name star, plays a corrupt cop. He appeared in scores of cheap features throughout the 70s but at least here, he has a half decent character and actually gets to emote a little. As expected, there are some amusing hairstyles, sideburns, sunglasses, funky instrumental music and slang like "That's where it's at baby!" The video box tries to convince that the 1998 big budget actioner Rush Hour was derived from this film but that's like comparing a penny to a quarter.

I agree with the other reviewer who wrote that there's a good movie buried here, but with Al Adamson at the helm, it was never going to appear on screen. His incompetency as a filmmaker is astounding. How can you make so many mistakes? For example, you have a good set of kung-fu actors who know how to stage a fight, but you'd never know it watching East Meets Watts or Dynamite Brothers or whatever you want to call it. The fight scenes are horribly shot. Add to that a plot that makes absolutely no sense, ridiculous dialogue, stilted delivery, and a lack of any technical acumen, and you've got one very poor movie. I think one of my favorite bits in the movie might have been the character named Stud Brown - how awesome is that!

One of the things that amazed me as I watched East Meets Watts was how in God's name did Adamson convince Aldo Ray and James Hong to be in this pile of dung? Both are very accomplished actors who deserved way better than this.