
Average customer rating: |
Double Dragon in Last Duel
Starring: Mae Lim Manufacturer: Saturn ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B0000BUTUK Release Date: 2003-07-17 |
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Double Dragon The Last Duel
Starring: Kang Ho Manufacturer: Beverly Wilshire ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD ASIN: B00005YREP Release Date: 2002-05-27 |
Customer Reviews:
Double the dragons, double the action!!!!!!!!.......2003-06-18
Buy It, Then Store It on Your Bottom Shelf.......2002-11-12
The classic kung-fu plot of revenge is played out rather unevenly--trying, I think, to accomplish too much with too little. None of the characters seem to develop, although the film attempts to over-develop them with insufficient scripting and feeble story lines.
The soundtrack, using exerpts from, among other things, the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" theme song (while the hero travels alone and misses his father) and 1960-ish ensemble jazz (during some of the fight scenes), intensifies the film's inability to suspend the viewer's disbelief (unless it is this viewer's incredulity at having purchased the film, then having watched it through to its conclusion).
The fight scenes were generally unrealistic, with blows and kicks from the given camera angle missing their targets by as much a foot or more (that's 12 inches, not to be confused with the five-toed appendage that the kicker wields). The fighting styles portrayed were rather stiff and "slow" looking, giving one renewed appreciation for the likes of really talented artists, like Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Gordon Liu, Jackie Chan, etc.
If for nothing else, this film is worth watching just to see the coloration of the villian's hair (I won't spoil the surprise for you), and the way he uses it in the final fight scene. In addition, the dubbing has a decidedly Old Western-sounding flair which actually makes the film strangely endearing.
Despite all these anomalies which, by the way, typify the movie in its entirety, I will no doubt watch the movie again, somewhere down the road, being an inveterate fan of this movie genre which, I believe, belies an underlying bent toward masochism.
I can think of a host of kung-fu movies I would rather have purchased than this one, knowing what I now know about it. And I would certainly not recommend that a kung-fu movie neophyte make it one of his/her first, critical purchases, either. Although I did not dislike this film enough, nor perhaps have sense enough, to discard it, I will consign it to the bottom shelf of my budding kung-fu library.
**POST SCRIPT**
I watched the movie again last weekend (blush). In terms of a "good" bad kung-fu movie, this is it. Those characteristics of poor filming, tired plot, poor acting, incongruent dubbing and less than thrilling fight scenes--those things that us die-hard addicts to this genre will routinely put up with in the quest for a moment of plausible kung-fu entertainment--all coexist, in excess, in this film; but I still could not bring myself to get rid of it. Who knows? It may become a "classic" in its own right, within the ranks of "Grade B" grade B martial arts films.
Average customer rating: |
Double Dragon in Last Duel
Starring: Mae Lim ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B000066NV9 |
Average customer rating: |
Red Tiger/Double Dragon's Last Duel
Starring: Brooklyn Zu Double Features Manufacturer: Ground Zero ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD ASIN: B000094J8G Release Date: 2003-11-18 |
DVD:
DVD
Adventures in Odyssey: Someone To Watch Over Me