Em Nome da Vingança

I just caught this film when I was away on holiday and being a martial arts movie fan I thought I'd check it out, but I have to say it was diabolical.

The fight scenes are slow and poorly choreographed, the acting is laughable and the direction is deplorable. They must have pulled these actors off the streets and thrown them in front of the camera.

When you look at what people like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were doing over 20 years earlier it makes you wonder how these people have the face to make such rubbish. It really is THAT bad.

Don't bother spending any money on this film, buy your wife some flowers or something like that, you'll get a better result!

This is one of many 90s martial art movies i own, and as i keep my quest to get them all(more or less) it seem the deeper i go and the harder they are to find, the worst they happen to be. I started this "quest" around 4 years ago and naturally after getting every seagal, van damme, lundgren, rothrock and the rest of the more known actors movies, i got to the smaller ones but among them they where good surprise. Billy Blanks made a lot of good ones and the one that interest us today, Jeff Wincott, actually made some pretty good too.

Actually No Exist was one of the first i got 4 years ago, happened to find it in a pawnshop on VHS, and it was pretty decent. Mission of Justice is a VERY GOOD one too. But it seem here, with Street Law, no matter what they tried to do, they just wanted to sink that movie from the get go. The beginning has you wonder "what the hell is happening" and even tough it dosen't last, you may question that choice for a while. Then the stories pick on, and as much as i want to get into it, it seem to be hard to believe that some righteous lawyer would actually do that kind of stuff.

But Jeff is not bad playing the character, there is a couple of good scene of acting i enjoyed, he seem better than your typical low budget martial art movie actor. I could had excuse the scrip and the meltdown of many story arcs it try to accomplish would it had been of why i picked up this movie in the first place... Good Fights. But that was the coffin final nail to me.

They are shot with bad camera angles, terrible slow motions that seem to last all fight long for most of them, not to mention a bunch of them being very short and unnecessary.

Anyway, the movie is not that terrible, its just that its easily forgettable...

A street wise lawyer deep in debt is forced to repay by participating in illegal martial arts fights. Jeff Wincott exhibits his martial arts skill throughout the entire movie. The story is decent, but being in the martial arts myself, I thought this aspect really delivered.

'Street Law' is interesting if you're a fan of Jeff Wincott. It has some cliches typical of dtv fare - underground fight tournament, big bad villain, revenge plot - but it isn't horrible. You do have to buy-in to the fact that a long haired muscled martial artist with fighting experience also doubles as a successful lawyer though.

John Ryan (Wincott) has gone into hock with a loan shark to the tune of 78k on behalf of some of his poor clients. Enter Luis Calderone (Paco Christian Priesto) as his childhood friend who went to prison after an incident involving both of them. He's built himself up to be a formidable gangster who buys out Ryan's debt, bribes key people, implicates him in a murder in a bid to own him. John is told all he has to do is win some underground fights he runs and he'll be free. Of course, all Luis wants is sweet revenge.

What's holding it back is some poor choices. There's a "capture the flag" element here to the fight scenes that adds nothing. Also a dreadful use of slow-mo, camera work that doesn't even capture blows landing. Plus after the build up between main characters (all Luis wants is sweet revenge) the finale is a letdown. Most of the supporting cast don't standout either.

'Street Law' doesn't look horrible, but you've seen the sum of it's parts done better elsewhere. Priesto made for a decent bad guy and fans of Jeff Wincott will find bits to like here, but this isn't the best flick he's done or even a decent dtv trip on it's own. It's also the second team-up Wincott made with director Damian Lee and of course filmed in Toronto.

As the credits for "Law Of The Jungle" started to display, my expectations sank greatly. First, the credits identified the producer of the movie as Ashok Amritraj, a producer who has produced an unbelievable amount of shoddy schlock. Then the director credit came up, identifying the director as Damian Lee, who has directed a lot of really bad movies. But the credits also revealed that star Jeff Wincott was one of the producers. Maybe, I thought, he would bring to this movie what he had learned in his American movies. (This movie is Canadian)

It didn't take very long to realize that this was turning up to be a very bad movie. In fairness to Wincott and Lee, they were working with a really terrible script. (Oh, wait - no fairness to Lee, since I just remembered that he wrote the script for this movie.) It takes about half an hour for the movie to develop something of a plot, and it's very slow-going afterwards. The movie is stuffed with talk talk talk - and not interesting talk.

What about the fight sequences? Well, I'm pretty sure martial arts fans will be greatly disappointed. Lee screws up these scenes like he does with the other parts of the movies. He does make Wincott get hit with a lot more blows than you usually expect the protagonist to get in a movie like this, but other than that interesting aspect, the fights are horribly done. Lee incompetently uses techniques like slow motion, bad camera angles, and very one-sided fights for the most part.

A message for Wincott: Make regular trips to your barber. The long hair look you have in this movie makes you look ridiculous.