La loi de la jungle

Of course I had never heard about this 1995 movie titled "Street Law". I happened to stumble upon it by random chance here in 2024, and opted to sit down and watch it, on account of it being a movie that I knew nothing about.

Writer and director Damian Lee put together a rather bland and generic script that was somewhat devoid of anything interesting or extraordinary. And that made sitting through "Street Law" somewhat of a struggle.

The acting performances in "Street Law" were okay. Nothing outstanding or great, mind you, but for a movie such as this, then the acting performances weren't bad. I was only familiar with leading actor Jeff Wincott in this movie.

There were a couple of action scenes that sort of kept the movie afloat. But hardly something memorable. The slow motion fight scenes, however, were just incredibly cringeworthy to sit through.

While I did manage to sit through "Street Law", this was not a movie that made a lasting impression on me. And I bet that come next week, the movie will be gone from my memory. And this is definitely not a movie that will find its way to my screen a second time.

My rating of "Street Law" lands on a very generous four out of ten stars.

A movie that goes 100 miles an hour to open up the film, not with fast paced action, but rather with choppy and erratic scene transitions and editing! Street Law!!! A film where the fighting scenes are in super slow motion and dull, yet confronting an old dude, now that is action packed! Where we get butt fondles, fighting attorneys and a guy who wants revenge because he and his childhood friend apparently did a petty crime and were treated like grade a felons...

The story, well, guys yell to start the festivities out and then we watch a guy running through the woods so he can miss a deer. This can be forgotten as it seems totally irrelevant to the plot until the end. A lawyer who owes a loan shark big money for reasons unclear has his debt bought by an old friend who wants his old buddy to do a stupid fight with the unnecessary step of capturing a flag. The friend refuses so bald guys get beat, others paid off and soon the lawyer is forced to partake in the game and professes that he is clean while he apparently took out a huge loan from a loan shark...

Jeff Wincott is the star here and he is a guy you have probably seen, you just do not know the name. I have seen him in several films and in each one his hair is totally different so he does look different in each role in a film that is not very good... The girl is pretty attractive and does have a nice butt though...

So, the film is not boring thanks to the fact no scene really lingers all that long and sometimes we are thrust into a completely unrelated scene out of nowhere! I mean, what was the point of showing a scene in the opening then using it again later? The most boring part are the fights in the ring as they are generally slow paced and lack action; seriously, the guy yelling at the other guy telling him he was evicted was more exciting!

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.

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...

'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.