Showdown in Manila

Showdown in Manila at first glance may remind you of The Expendables, but instead of the 80s and early 90s big action stars like Arnold and Sly, it use the "direct to video category". I am not saying this negatively as i for one enjoyed these type of movies. I had fun with Cynthia Rothrock, Don The Dragon Wilson, Olivier Gruner and Mark Dacascos action movies. Sadly, these peoples are barely anymore than an extended cameo for the first 3 and a litteral cameo for the last as Dacascos is actually the director of the movie and his poster appearence is completely misleading.

The movie instead follow Alexander Nevsky as the main character Nick Peyton. Imagine taking Arnold Schwarzenegger but basically stripping all the charisma and one liners from his characters. Thats pretty much what remain there. Nevsky speak with a huge accent making his dialogues hard to understand, but the biggest offender is that he has absolutely no charisma or acting skills. The Terminator showed more personality than his character.

Casper Van Dien plays his partner in the detective agency and is by far the best actor in the whole movie. He tries his best to add charisma and personality to it but thats sadly feel like trying to light a piece of paper in a water bucket.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Mattias Hues plays the villains and they do fine altough i felt they were wasted overall.

The story ain't nothing special, and i supose with better writing, acting and charisma it would had been alright to hold us til the climax, but in its current state it was litteraly a chore to sit trough. By the time you reach said climax you just wish the movie was over.

Dacascos direction when it comes to action was ...fine i guess, even tough the limited budget clearly showed its ugly head, but i felt like he watched Nevsky deliver his line like a robot and was like "thats a wrap, great take". I just can't understand how they could look at this and think it would pass.

I really wish i would had liked this movie, and don't get me wrong i was not expecting theatre quality in term of budget and action, and i was more than fine with these actors "very average acting skills". I never watched a Don The Dragon movie for his acting. That said the movie would had improved a lot if he had been the main character cause his acting is several steps above M. Nevsky.

This movie was litteraly on Youtube completely free (sadly with no subtitles, wich made a lot of the dialogue of Nevsky hard to understand for a non english native as i am) so i can't be too harsh on it i guess as it didn't cost me anything. But if i always enjoyed owning and putting back once in a while an old Bloodfist or China O'Brien, Showdown in Manila is one movie i never intend to rewatch.

I saw this movie via my satellite TV's movie package, and it was such a waste of 90 minutes of my life. The movie drew me with its cast of former action stars Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock and Oliver Gruner plus Tia Carrere but gosh, the (lack of) acting, plot, flow and everything else made it one of the worst movies ever. Please do yourself a huge favor and avoid this turkey.

If you go in with lowx epectations you won't be as disappointed. Tia Carrere the once knock down gorgeous chick from Waynes world, is now pushing 52 and gets about a 1/5th a 'schwinn' in this flick. The lead is a horrible Arnold imitator. Not a good flick by any stretch of the imagination; I only tuned in for the gorgeous chick in the above trailer hoping they're be other beautiful Filipinas...

At least we know who should play in the life and times of Imelda that being Tia Carrere (Ms. Wells) who all of a sudden is looking a bit maidenly. Ms Carrera however was by far the best actor in this mess. Alex Nevski (Nick) should stick to being a thug rather then a depressing leading man. Even Veteran Casper Van Dien (Nick) was off key in a part that only Dirk Benedict could love. Everybody else was forgettable and struggling with a script that could have used a couple of rewrites. Nick's girlfriend Sofia (Maria Bravikova) pop's in from time to time and seems to be from a different movie, it is weird. The only good things about Showdown in Manila are - the music is not bad, the ending had some finality, and sniper Victor (Dmitriy Dyuzhev) looks a lot like a young Martin Landau, but other then that don't waist your time.

Right, well the reason for why I picked up this movie was because it had Mark Dacascos in it. Boy was I surprised to find out that he had less than five minutes of screen time in the entire movie.

Well, this 2016 action movie definitely bears traces of wanting to pick up or cash in on the success of "The Expendables", by trying to put together an all who-was-sort-of-semi-big-in-the-late-eighties-action-stars. But these were not the blockbuster stars of the late eighties action movies, but the ones from the lower rated and smaller budgets. This includes Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock and Olivier Gruner. But honestly, it was actually a blast to have these former semi-big action stars come together in a movie such as this.

As for the lead cast of Alexander Nevsky and Casper Van Dien, well I was familiar with Casper Van Dien of course. But Alexander Nevsky I have never heard about, and he fared well enough, despite only having one expression for most of the scenes that he did. But a movie such as this runs on action and adrenaline, so the inability to put on a thesbian performance was sort of alright here.

There is a good amount of action throughout the movie, which is also what keeps the movie afloat. As for the storyline and plot, well it was entertaining, but it was on the simpler side, so don't expect to be mentally challenged.

It was also nice to see Tia Carrere in the movie as well as Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.

An entertaining enough movie for what it turned out to be. Worth watching once if you enjoy a good old action movie.