Justice

In between playing supporting roles in movies like THE GRANDMASTER, Cung Le found the time to build on his solo career in the direct-to-video realm. Disappointingly, his sophomore effort here leaves a good deal to be desired. While the previous DRAGON EYES filled his prospects as a karate star with promise, PUNCTURE is a less impressive action flick that's mainly weakened by the ravages of producers and certainly leaves Le looking less extraordinary. It's still a decent film that's strengthened by its fight content, but a bit too far from perfect to warrant a purchase for me.

The story: The family of a war veteran (Le) is murdered by a racist underground faction after he interferes with their business, prompting him to target the group and its leader (Dolph Lundgren) for retribution.

I don't blame the stars or even the director (Giorgio Serafini) for the movie's DTV-isms. The production company behind the film, Voltage Pictures, has a habit of editing its low budget movies in amateurish ways, so expect to see lots of gratuitous slow motion and sped-up segments, "artistic" lighting overexposures, unnecessary close-ups, and scene-hopping. These aspects are present just enough to properly irritate you but not ruin the movie, to the same degree that the screenplay bothers me. There's a good deal of unnecessary cruelty and exploitation of women that I don't appreciate. While that was bad enough, I find it just as hard to forgive how boring the script renders Dolph Lundgren. The Swedish Superman excels at playing villains, and though it seems like the part of the long-haired supremacist leader would let him show off some of his creepiness, he clearly doesn't have good character material to work with and ends up being pretty unmemorable.

Cung Le shows his rather meager dramatic limits, though he still makes a good tough guy. Another tough guy, Vinnie Jones, plays a character that weirdly has the bare minimum to do with the plot but manages through sheer charisma to still come off cool. But actions speak louder than words in these kinds of movies, and this is where PUNCTURE WOUNDS shows its best side. With only four fight scenes and one shootout, the movie could definitely use more action, though Cung Le's kicks are worth waiting for. The choreography manages to appear completely efficient without shirking flashiness, so it's very satisfying when Le takes on groups of bad guys. His finale with Lundgren is much shorter than it should be, but it allows Lundgren to look pretty fluid and powerful, using his height, reach, and power karate to take the fight to Le, cool but believably.

The fights too are hampered by the aforementioned editing, so despite being the movie's brightest spot, they can't elevate this review to a higher rating. Despite this one being a minor disappointment, I'm hopeful for Le's future, provided he choose a better studio for his next vehicle. Bottom line: if you're looking for an imperfect but moderately exciting karate-revenge movie, this one fits the bill well enough, but it's not nearly the best any of its performers have to offer.

When this movie popped up on Netflix recently, I decided to give it a look since it had Dolph Lundgren in it, one of my favorite B movie actors. Also, with this movie he returned to his acting roots of playing a bad guy after so many years of playing heroes. Sadly, this novelty did nothing towards saving this pretty bad movie. There are many problems with the movie, but the main problems are that the movie is very slow and boring. The pacing is sluggish, and there are some plot holes and murky plot details that reek of amateurish writing. The movie could have been livened up by some good action, but the movie disappoints in this area as well. Believe it or not, in the first hour of the movie, there are only about two minutes of footage that could safely be called "action". And when the action does come, it's choreographed, directed, and edited in a way that comes across like the protagonist (or antagonists) are not skilled at all in hand to hand combat (or other kinds of combat, for that matter.) As for the acting, lead actor Cung Le (who in many scenes looks like Cuba Gooding Jr.) is really bland and lacking charisma, and Lundgren gives a very lazy and unemotional performance, clearly just being here for the paycheck. Not the worst action movie I've seen, but it's so boring that I would only recommend it for insomniacs.

A certain justice had a good ring to it for a movie, but we ended up with another made for dvd film and because of the quality it showed. But looking away from that lets get onto the main plot of the movie .Chung lee plays john. An ex veteran that some how gets mixed with mob people. They do the unspeakable to the people close to him and because of this its an all out revenge type movie that is pretty good. We also have vinnie jones and dolph lundgren. Both pretty good actors and maybe this movie was not the one to showcase them but both characters were good and along with the rest of the cast it was enjoyable enough overall an ok movie but nothing really to great.

The minute Lundgren saw the wig and facial hair his character would have, he should have known this was a film he should have steered clear from. It's not good, the script is bad, the acting is fairly poor, and the plot unoriginal.

It is coherent, so if you want an action film offering nothing more than a bit of violence, then this absolutely fits the bill. The final fight scene is actually pretty good too, so you have that choreography to look forward to, but the rest are a bit hit and miss.

It's really the dialogue that makes Puncture Wounds/A Certain Kind of Justice so poor though. Cringeworthy narration to bookend the film and the most ridiculously placed "It's okay, bro" within the script. So it's difficult to see if the acting is bad, or the material the cast had to work with just tripped them up. To be fair, Evigan (the only woman with lines) does okay, Vinnie Jones does his job (but very much typecast), and Lundgren passes, but really Le as the lead doesn't excel in anything but kicking.

Also shout out to the most shoe-horned scene possible, where a secondary character has to deal with an ill loved one whilst getting visited a rip-off Colonel Trautman.

Review: I must admit, I was expecting this to be one of those typical badly made movies with a ridiculous storyline, but it didn't turn out to be that bad. The acting was a bit sketchy, but there was meaning behind the violence and the characters all played there part in this movie about revenge. Basically it's about a war veteran whose suffering with post traumatic stress and he ends up saving a girl from getting a beating in the parking lot of his hotel. The girl turns out to be a prostitute who works for Hollis (Dolph Lundgren), who isn't too happy about the guy taking out his men. To keep up his street cred, Hollis teaches the guy a lesson for messes with his business, which turns out to be a big mistake. It isn't a very deep and intelligent script, but you do end up sticking with the storyline, just to see how the whole mess pans out. The fighting scenes were OK but it still looked a bit cheap and the main character needs some more acting lessons. Average!

Round-Up: What the hell was going on with that stupid wig and the ugly looking moustache on Dolph Lundgren. I've heard about actors getting into character, but that make-up was terrible. Anyway, Lundgren seems to be another one of those actors that hit the big time when he was young but now they can only manage to go straight to DVD. I quite liked him in the first Expendables but I haven't really seen him in anything amazing since then. The guy who plays the main character, Cung Le, also starred in the awful Man With The Iron Fists but he hasn't done anything else that major. You can actually tell that he hasn't starred in anything in this scale because his acting is quite stiff, like when the Rock first started out in the movie world. Anyway, if you want a no thrills type of movie without that much depth, then it's worth a watch.

I recommend this movie to people who are into there action/thriller movies about a stressed out war veteran who takes on a drug lord after saving a girl from a beating. 3/10