Confronto em Manila

All the members of a Violent Crime Unit, excluding main man Nick (Nevsky) are gorily decimated by an evil cabal of dope peddlers headed by The Wraith (Tagawa), and the broken, but far from unbowed Nick vows his revenge! Now working as a private detective with serially sleazy partner Charlie (Van Dien) a tough case ultimately leads them to a bloody showdown with The Wraith and his gun happy goons. While the formulaic premise is somewhat battle fatigued, Showdown in Manila is a must-see, gung ho B-actioner just for the illuminated action hero cast alone! Mathias Hues, Casper Van Dien, Mark Dacascos, Don 'The Dragon' Wilson, Tia Carrera, Alexander Nevsky, Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa, Cynthia Rothrock, and Olivier Gruner!!! Come on!!!! Only the most churlish of churls would refuse such a glittering array of (almost) immortal DTV royalty! There's plenty of ballistic bang for your buck, and if y'all didn't pay for the privilege, then you have even less to complain about! Unleavened machismo oozes from Dacascos's punch-packed, ordinance overloaded actioner, like the feral stink off a Tijuana bitty bar, it ain't exactly subtle, but it sure hits the spot! 'Showdown in Manila' admittedly takes a wee while to reach maximum revs, but the noisome climactic battle is one righteously old school Commando-style bullet bonanza!!!

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.

Just another Nevsky-Kurytsin lame movie making attempt. Talentless in all ways, pointless and ridiculously stupid. See for yourself.

Ok. The middle part of this movie was terrible. I even considered turning the movie off. But aside from all of that, the beginning and the end (the first 25 minutes and the last 30 minutes) were pretty good. Those scenes were not too boring, included lots of action, and the acting wasn't that bad. A lot of the time. Keep in mind that I said a lot of the time. Because there was one actor (the main actor in the movie, Alexander Nevsky) who was absolutely horrible. He has only been in a few films ever, does not even speak good English (he has a Russian accent so it is occasionally difficult to understand what he is saying), and simply looks bored when killing the bad guys. On the plus side, he is not seen much in the action scenes, only moreso in the middle of the movie. To conclude, I think this film should be watched at least once, as some parts of it were very enjoyable, and at the end, the fifteen minute long fight scene with guns and explosions is one that I just can't stop watching.

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.