Talons of the Eagle

My review was written in November 1992 after watching the film on MCA video cassette.

No-frills martial arts action is displayed in "Talons of the Eagle", an acceptable B title that opened regionally on November 6 and is a Yule video item.

With Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme having successfully moved on to mainstream features, the martial arts vacuum is being filled by a number of interesting types notably Don (The Dragon) Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock.

This feature teams muscular thesp Billy Blanks (usually a villain) with ponytailed producer/star Jalal Merhi. Their moves are fine but acting-wise they both need immediate and intensive sessions with Stella Adler.

Blanks plays a Drug Enforcement Agency operative sent from New York to Toronto to team with local agent Merhi on an undercover mission targeting local drug kingpin James Hong. They get to see the seamier side of Sin City, including a higher sexploitation quotient than usual for the genre.

With undercover agent Priscilla Barnes cast as Hong's girlfriend, the trio get the goods on him, but typical of genre plotting, it's mainly kicking, shooting and explosions that resolve matters.

Pic's main defect is deficient fight choreography, with missed kicks and pulled punches far more obvious than usual. Both leads are otherwise convincing in their roles and Barnes is appealing as a femme fatale.

Hong steals the show with his smooth villainy and a showy scene in which he uses a fan as a weapon. Oversized Matthias Hues is a worthy opponent in the climactic fights.

If anyone say that this is a B-movie, then I suppose they are right about that. If anyone say that this is low-budget, I guess they are right about that too. But these minor details don't mean that this movie isn't good. Personally, I think this is pure entertainment from beginning to end. Good fight scenes, especially from Blanks. It was also interesting to see that Matthias Hues were in it as a bad guy. As always, he does that job in an excellent way. And if you like James Hong, he's here too. All in all a good fighting movie with excellent teamwork between Billy Blanks and Jalal Merhi. The ending proves just that.

Pretty passable overall, some of the bad acting is funny and some of your standard schlocky B-movie stuff is too. However the fighting is for the most part a bit dull and feels slow, and is shot so it's obvious that stuff doesn't connect. It' also felt like certain parts had been cut out?

This is the third movie collaboration of Billy Blanks and Jalal Merhi that I have watched, and it is the weakest of the three. The other two ("TC 2000", "Expect No Mercy") had futuristic angles that gave them at least a hint of creativity; on the other hand, "Talons Of The Eagle" is about as generic as a low-budget action flick can get. And it doesn't deliver on its promise of a martial arts tournament, either: there are three matches and then it's all forgotten. The fight scenes are also not as good as they were in the aforementioned two flicks: the editing is sometimes poor, and the lack of contact in some hits too obvious. Also, having the 60+ years old James Hong going against Jalal Merhi at the end does not really work. And I wonder why Kelly Gallant, who is a quite proficient martial artist, didn't get the starring female role instead of Priscilla Barnes. All in all, "Talons Of The Eagle" is worth a look for fans of the genre, but only if they've seen "TC 2000" and "Expect No Mercy" first. ** out of 4.

I'd give this a 5.5 maximum out of 10. This movie stars a dollar store hybrid of a shorter Steven Seagal as he sports a pony tail and the leather jackets, JCVD with the unidentifiable accent and the good looks of someone along the lines of Joe Pesci or Sardo (Richard Dumont) from Are You Afraid Of The Dark minus those beautiful curls. What surprised me is how almost every training scene he's sweaty. The only thing nice I'll say about the actor is I love his Ellesse track suit. He looks like a walking, talking Jazz paper cup. I kept calling the actor Steven Fauxgal.

For a movie shot in Toronto you don't see much of the city and they insist on using US currency. You can spot Canadian money a mile away due to the colors. What surprised me was that Matthias Hues was in this.

The story is pretty bland and forgetful where they seem heavily inspired by films such as Bloodsport (1988), yet after a few poorly shot fights they just go back into this incredibly mediocre action movie. They even got Michael to do the splits. I can't get over how short he is compared to Billy Banks. I hated how much they relied on vents in this movie as well.

Billy and Michael seemed to have chemistry, more so than say Lethal Weapon 1 or 2 or possibly the Rush Hour franchise. There was some heart to this as there was quite a lot of explosions. The fight choreography was OK, not great. Perhaps it was the opponents. I don't know. I'm not in the movie industry. The last 10 or 15 minutes should have been the best but I was just so bored I didn't care. I would have scrapped all the scenes and started over if the budget would have allowed it.

My least favorite scene in the entire movie was where Michael is in the speedo. His shirt is on inside out and there's a really cringy shower scene. You can tell the girl was more in quantum physics. There's some REALLY ugly strippers in this movie as well.

The only two Canadian things in this movie where one biker said "eh", the Toronto police cop car and of course the cop had to watch hockey.

One weird credit they said "tourney fighters" and early on in the movie they had the lights too bright on a corpse and his eyes are twitching.