Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book

by Meyers, Ric

  Despite having Conan Lee (star of such outstanding kung fu films as Corey Yuen’s 1982 Ninja in the Dragon’s Den and Liu Chia-liang’s 1988 Tiger on Beat) on set, stunt coordinator Kenny Endoso settled on more familiar pushing, punching, and kicking … when the stereotypical Fu Manchu-ish Chinese characters weren’t ponderously floating or incongruously shooting lightning out of their fingers and/or eyes. Suffice to say, Little China didn’t approach the power of the films that inspired it.

  Elsewhere in 1986, when The Delta Force and The Karate Kid Part II hit theaters, a little movie called No Retreat, No Surrender also came out. It was a laughable effort, ripped off from Rocky IV (1985) with an American martial arts team fighting a seemingly unstoppable Russian bruiser. The filmmaking skill on display was barely above home-movie level (despite the fact that Corey Yuen Kwai directed it), but there was something about the intensity of the actor playing the Russian that stood out.

  That was no accident. Twenty-five-year old Brussels, Belgium native Jean-Claude Van Varenberg (aka Van Damme) had been preparing for that moment almost all his life. “I’d been dreaming of working in show business since I was ten years old,” he said. “I started to work in France, but I thought America was the best place in the world to succeed as an action film actor.” The reason he felt that way could be summed up in one name: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  If Chuck Norris was the poor man’s Clint Eastwood, Van Damme was certainly Arnold-lite. Like Schwarzenegger, he was a heavily muscled man with a heavily muscled accent. The comparison was not lost on Van Damme, who came to Hollywood with little money, no English, and the laughable Westernized name of “Frank Cujo.”

  “I tried to look as charming as I could and started knocking on every door. It took me three years to even begin making a name for myself. I was obliged to take a lot of odd jobs, including as a taxi driver and a bouncer.” He also got work in Missing in Action 2, where he asked Chuck Norris to serve as his agent (“I was very naive at the time,” he says) and in Schwarzenegger’s Predator (1987), where he worked inside the alien suit.

  “I was wearing the suit for three weeks before Kevin Peter Hall took my place,” he explained, “because he’s a lot taller than I am. This experience was a big step in my career. I remember that they asked me to do a very dangerous stunt, and I was obliged to say no, because I had just been hired for Bloodsport and I was afraid I’d break my leg.” Van Damme saved his leg for the Mark DiSalle production, which appeared in 1987.

  The earnest, decent-looking variation on Enter the Dragon, which told of international martial artists competing in an illegal battle to the death, was silly and predictable, but enjoyable for all of that. And, of course, it had Van Damme giving it his all. Van Damme saw Chuck Norris’ spinning back kick and raised him one: Jean-Claude could not only do a 180-degree flying front kick, ballerina-style, but he could do splits like nobody’s business. Van Damme hoped Bloodsport would be his ticket to the major leagues, but he toiled in independent exploitation features for years more. Up next was Black Eagle (1988) in which he played villain to one of Sho Kosugi’s last gasps as a ninja hero.

  Cyborg (1989) treated Van Damme a little better, in that it was Albert Pyun’s bargain basement variation on Terminator (1984). On the one hand, Van Damme found his new director even more inspiring than the man who made Die Hard and Predator. “John McTiernan is a wonderful, hardworking director,” he said at the time. “But I’m more impressed by Albert Pyun’s work because he gets wonderful results without a big budget. He’s a very resourceful person.” On the other hand, Pyun was not resourceful enough to avoid being second-guessed by his star. “I was very disappointed in Cyborg because I didn’t like the editing,” Van Damme also said at the time. “I had to go back and reedit it myself to make something coherent out of the film.”

  It would not be the last time Van Damme felt the need to do that to his director, nor would it be the last production Van Damme worked on where a stuntman was reported hurt. For the moment, however, he returned to work with Mark DiSalle, who directed his next picture, Kickboxer (1989). It worked along the same lines as Bloodsport, but to lessening returns. Even so, Van Damme’s first five movies established him as an ambitious actor willing to do almost anything to get ahead.

  Death Warrant (1990), coming from Canadian director Deran Serafian, was Van Damme’s first movie with any real industry credibility. This was the old chestnut about a French-Canadian mountie being sent undercover into a prison to see who’s killing convicts — but even aside from the clichéd plot, Van Damme’s films were already of a recognizable type. He would glare, lose the first fight, do a split, do a slow-motion leaping front kick, and then win the second fight for no apparent reason other than the script said so. There was no training, no discovery of an enemy’s weakness, no growth, and no change.

  There also seemed to be no technique either. Although there were allusions to Van Damme’s karate and kick-boxing career in Europe, there was no real evidence of martial art understanding or skill on screen — just glares, splits, slow-motion kicks, and inexplicable victory. Those were all in abundance in his next film, the seminal Double Impact (1991), his first major-studio film. Although a man named Sheldon Lettich directed it, Van Damme contributed the screenplay and was credited as fight choreographer in this two-headed Universal Pictures release. Two-headed because in it Van Damme played twins separated soon after birth who are then reunited years later in Hong Kong to avenge the death of their father. For reasons yet explained, Van Damme seems obsessed with playing twins.

  Given his script credit, Van Damme was more than likely responsible for the totally gratuitous dream sequence in which he cavorts in the nude with beautiful co-star Alonna Shaw, as well as the scene where a bevy of leotarded beauties coo over his spandex-covered buttocks (while he does a split, naturally). Otherwise, it was business as usual, with Van Damme inexplicably losing his first fight with Bolo Yang Sze-yeung, but just as inexplicably winning the second. As unfocused as Double Impact was, it had nothing on Van Damme’s next movie, one which he reportedly concocted himself, which has been called A.W.O.L., Wrong Bet, and, finally, Lionheart (1991).

  Sheldon Lettich was still in the director’s chair for this tale of a foreign legion deserter who descends into the world of illegal street fighting. And it, like its predecessors, is full of loving close-ups, as well as repetitive fights that have no discernible dramatic structure. When the evil manageress bets against him in the final fight, Van Damme barks, “Wrong bet!” and trounces his opponent with, you guessed it, a slow-motion leaping front kick.

  By the time of Universal Soldier (1992), he had become Universal Studio’s good soldier, willing to appear in all manner of predictable, ultimately unsatisfying action fare. Here he shares the screen with Dolph Lundgren, whose Rocky IV role of the seemingly unbeatable Russian fighter Van Damme had borrowed for No Retreat, No Surrender. Their teaming did nothing to improve the uninventive tale of two super-soldiers, one who goes berserk and one who becomes heroic. Guess who played who.

  But all of this is mere prelude to the real reason Van Damme is in this book. Following his Universal soldiering, Van Damme wanted singular credibility, and he thought the best way to get it was to become a one-man Ellis Island for Hong Kong’s most kinetic and important action film directors.

  “I know the new government won’t allow me freedom of speech nor freedom of creation,” said John Woo before Hong Kong was returned to mainland China in 1997. “I can’t approve of totalitarianism, and I know people like myself will be crushed by the new regime.” So, instead, Woo allowed himself to be pressed into service by Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Universal Pictures gave him a way out. But it came with a price. That price was Hard Target (1993), and the version which eventually made it to American screens could not honestly be called a John Woo film.

  Reportedly, Woo delivered an over-two-hour first edit of this modern variation on The Most Dangerous Game (1932), i.e., people hunting people for sport. He was sup
posedly told that “We don’t release Van Damme films that last over two hours.” Mere weeks later he delivered an edit that was only about ten minutes shorter. Despite enthusiastic responses from test audiences, Van Damme was said not to like it (not enough close-ups of him, apparently). So the rumors started flying that Jean-Claude locked John Woo out of the editing suite to create a Van Damme-centric ninety-four minute version that had plenty of Jean-Claude close-ups, but much less of Lance Henriksen’s charismatic turn as the villain.

  Sadly, it was just the start of John Woo’s Hollywood education. In ten years, Woo went from being declared the world’s most important and best action filmmaker to being dismissed as a has-been hack. The powerful blend of emotion, effort, passion, and compassion that drove the complex heroes in Woo’s Hong Kong films started to disappear in Broken Arrow (1996) and Face/Off (1997), became self-satirizing in Mission Impossible 2 (2000), then was beaten to death in Windtalkers (2002) and Paycheck (2003).

  Woo learned what so many other Hong Kong filmmakers discovered: the American film industry doesn’t really like kung fu, no matter how much they glad hand or give it lip service. And Woo, like virtually all of the others who followed him, only returned to glory once he returned to China. He may have made some money in America, but he only makes great films in Asia. His latest, Red Cliff (2008) and Reign of Assassins (2010), has given him his best reviews and box office, since, well, Hard Boiled.

  Hard Target, meanwhile, leveled out at about $30 million at the box office. The aptly named Nowhere to Run (1993) came next, after Van Damme made an ironic cameo appearance in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first major bomb, The Last Action Hero (1993). Then Jean-Claude led the crew who completely fumbled Street Fighter (1994). Despite the fact that they had the kinetic videogame as inspiration and a great crew of martial artists ready to help, the live action adaptation was a dull dud.

  Timecop (1994) was the last straw. Although the effort seemed to be promising, this tale of a time traveling policeman didn’t have a clue. Jean-Claude had gone back in time to save his murdered wife, seemingly setting the stage for a clever, rousing climax in which he could counter every villainous ploy, since he knew what was going to happen, but, instead, the finale was an illogical, uninvolving mess where, just as in every other disappointing Jean-Claude vehicle, things occur simply because they do.

  Before the critical and box-office drubbing Timecop took, however, Van Damme was already hard at work on their next film, a Die Hard knockoff titled Sudden Death (1995) in which Jean-Claude plays a fire inspector whose daughter is taken hostage by a quipping extortionist who threatens to blow up the Stanley Cup playoffs, as well as the attending U.S. vice president. When that, too, disappeared in the ocean of cinema without causing a ripple, Van Damme thought there was only one way to make a good movie … direct it himself.

  “Directing is my dearest wish,” he proclaimed. “When I am the director, I’d love to hire unknown actors and make them stars. I think it’s a wonderful thing to do, and I’m sure it’s possible with a good script.” Didn’t happen. The Quest (1996) made no new stars, and the script was a warmed-over 1930s version of Bloodsport. Although the production proudly proclaimed the participation of fifteen of the world’s greatest martial arts champions, you couldn’t tell by the finished work. As usual, Van Damme merely swings his arms and legs the same way from the first fight to the last — the only difference being when his opponent falls down.

  Something had to be done. Since John Woo wouldn’t work with him again, back to the Hong Kong well Jean-Claude went. If he was the poor man’s Schwarzenegger, then he would get the poor man’s John Woo. Ringo Lam directed Maximum Risk (1996) and managed to invest what action scenes there were with some verve. Unfortunately, all too much of this middling thriller was taken up with boring intrigue as Van Damme fell back into his hoary Double Impact fixation of playing identical twin brothers.

  By then Jean-Claude seemed to realize that all sorts of Hong Kong directors would love to get out of town on the eve of the 1997 Chinese takeover, so he next secured the participation of Tsui Hark, perhaps hoping that the revolutionary director could do for his career what he did for Jet Li’s. But Van Damme was no Jet. Double Team (1997) and then Knock Off (1998) not only failed to restore Van Damme’s reputation, but seemed to rob Tsui of all his filmmaking ability as well.

  Even though Hark returned east a lot sooner than Woo, even his most exciting (2000’s Time and Tide) and beautiful (2001’s Legend of Zu) films were marred by an eroding story-telling sensibility, and his subsequent work ranged from awful (2002’s Black Mask: City of Masks) to disappointing (2005’s Seven Swords, 2006’s The Warrior, and 2007’s All About Women). Only in 2010 did he begin to regain his filmmaking footing with the well-reviewed Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

  As for Van Damme, having squandered the opportunities that could have come from working with the world’s best action film directors, he stumbled into the direct-to-DVD world of international co-productions. Although he’s made more than fifteen other flicks since then, the only one that drew any real attention was JCVD (2008), a Mabrouk El Mechri film in which Van Damme plays himself during a post office robbery. Although promoted as a “mea culpa” film in which Jean-Claude supposedly addresses his shortcomings as an actor and person, it is actually a cunning defense of himself as a misunderstood victim… that, ultimately, fell on deaf ears and blind eyes.

  In 1988, when Chuck Norris slummed in The Hero and the Terror and Van Damme excelled in Bloodsport, another story was taking shape in Hollywood. Rumors circulated that Michael Ovitz, agent extraordinaire — then considered one of the most powerful people in the film business — was holding up Warner Brothers on the Lethal Weapon deal unless they gave his aikido teacher a movie of his own. Whether or not this story is true, an entertaining movie called Above the Law premiered. It starred a thirty-six-year-old aikido teacher named Steven Seagal.

  Again, aikido is a Japanese martial art, but one that is more water than ice. Seagal’s aikido also served to prepare American audiences for the kung fu to come because it took the roundhouse punches that had been U.S. fight choreographers’ stock-in-trade for more than fifty years and turned them back on themselves. It was the hand-to-hand equivalent of a wild-mouse roller coaster, spinning the antagonists in tight, fast, vicious circles. Unlike some other so-called American martial arts movie stars, it was instantly apparent to audiences that Seagal knew what he was doing.

  According to his official studio bio, Seagal had been learning karate and aikido since he was seven years old. By the time he was thirty-one, he had opened an aikido dojo in Sherman Oaks, California, and whether he was teaching or, as others said, body-guarding Michael Ovitz, by 1987 he was working with Andrew Davis on a story that would become the script for his first starring role. That wasn’t all. Not only would he help write the story, he would also be the producer and martial arts choreographer. It was more than possible that the studio didn’t expect much from this collaboration. After all, what had the two done before?

  Reportedly, Seagal had been the martial arts coordinator on the samurai sword picture The Challenge (1974), while Davis had merely managed to make Chuck Norris look great in Code of Silence. But other than that, what? Davis had been the director of photography on some minor independent exploitation movies like Cool Breeze (1972), Hitman (1972, not to be confused with the Jet Li film of the same name), and the gangster thriller Lepke (1975). Since the Norris picture in 1985, he’d no major credits to speak of in three long years. The odds were that Above the Law would make some lean, mean money and disappear.

  The odds were wrong. From a final screenplay penned by himself, Steven Pressfield, and Ronald Shusett, the director once again spun gold. Set in his beloved Chicago, Davis weaved an entire life around Seagal, whose career-long concerns were already evident. More than just a well-trained, no-bull cop, his character was also a caring and religious husband/father. Long before Quentin Tarantino worshiped actress
Pam Grier in Jackie Brown (1997), Davis cast her as Seagal’s partner in this tale of an obsessed cop trying to take down an FBI-protected drug lord. And long before she hit gold in such films as Total Recall (1990) and Basic Instinct (1992), Davis cast Sharon Stone as Seagal’s understanding wife. The rest was up to Seagal, and he delivered.

  Whether blasting away with an automatic, or clothes-lining some thugs, the aikido ace made all the other Hollywood action stars look like pretenders. Outside of a rushed, perfunctory climax, and an odd finale where Seagal lectured the press on corruption, Above the Law was a complete success. Critics and fans alike sat up and took notice, while Seagal moved quickly to show that he needed neither Ovitz nor Davis. Warner Brothers, however, seemed less than enthusiastic about their new star.

  For the aptly named Hard to Kill (1990), the basically unknown Bruce Malmuth was in the director’s chair, while the star took the additional credits of screenwriter and martial arts choreographer. Both the script and action were in good hands. Its martial arts highlight was an engaging scene set in a liquor store where Seagal taunts a punk into attacking him, because aikido, like taichi, works best when channeling an attacker’s energy back at them. Playing another pragmatic, prepared cop, Seagal is blasted into a coma by a corrupt politician who he had been investigating. When he awakens seven years later, his muscles haven’t atrophied, but his family has been slaughtered. The remainder of the film’s ninety-five minutes was a very satisfying hunt for revenge.

  With just his first two films, Seagal had set the stage for his entire career. On the one hand, he seemed to enjoy making straight-forward action films where his heroes were never in doubt or bettered. On the other hand, as evidenced by The Making of Hard to Kill, Seagal was continually frustrated by his studios’ apparent lack of cooperation with the budding auteur’s vision. It was not surprising, then, that he parted ways with Warner Brothers for his third movie, Marked for Death (1990), where he took on Jamaican voodoo drug runners with his kinetic aikido. Seagal returned to the screenwriter role for his next movie, which was originally titled The Price of Our Blood. The studio, however, didn’t want to lose the catchy three-word titles of his filmography, so when the movie reached cinemas in 1991 it was titled Out for Justice.