Gladiator Cop

Lorenzo at his best! Emotion, passion, drama, one of the biggest action flicks of the year , even with a small budget, but Lorenzo is enough and steals the show. G R E A T

He is good with a sword and has weird dreams but is he Alexander The Great? The sword is missing again and Barrett is unofficially on the case. But this time he may be in over his head. A reincarnated general he executed has taken his partner prisoner. Can he get his hands on the sword in time to save them both? The sword fights are excellent. Lamas as always is at his best. Nick Pasco's character is killed in the first movie and yet somehow turns up again here without explanation. My gut feeling is that this was one movie edited into two. But they are both so good. Who cares?

(27%) An unsurprisingly crap movie - but what a title. Apparently this uses footage from another movie and it really shows, for if were a set of teeth it would badly need braces. The cop in question is an X-men style mutant who can solve crimes by simply touching the victim's dead body, so why he isn't decorated as the best cop on the planet is a mystery as he visits morgues and wraps up a case within mere seconds. Plot-wise this is garbage, but the illegal fights to the death are actually quite good fun to watch as some of the guys taking part are huge and dressed in some ridiculous outfits wielding massive comedy weapons. Between the fights there's only the lovely Claire Stansfield and the always watchable James Hong to keep the wheels from falling off. My advice, skip to the fights or don't bother.

If you're looking for an entertaining fighting movie, avoid this one at all costs. Do you want to see a movie that's so bad that it becomes an unintentional comedy? Then you also should avoid this one, because it's so utterly bad that it's not even funny. The movie's plot circles around illegal, underground street-arena fights where the fighters use many kinds of brutal weapons and kill each other. Sound familiar? This has been done many times, but never as bad as this. Most of the fighters are really unfit and shabby people, and there aren't much that reminds me of true martial arts skills. The story makes no sense, and is just full of plot holes. I just don't get why Lorenzo Lamas stars in this. He's not exactly the best action star around, but this was a disaster even by his standards.

This film has more cheek than any I have seen. It seems to be made almost entirely from left over footage from The Swordsman. It is like watching outtake footage. The plot has been extended to include a new baddie, but the relationship between the two main characters bounces around in context all over the place, continuity is almost non-existent and you keep wondering where in time and space the activity is happening. I guess this is recycling taken to new levels. However watching The Swordsman and then Gladiator Cop is an interesting exercise in picking up what you have seen already, what really belongs in the first film and why you aren't doing something more productive.