Retro Reviews

Fantasia XXVI Review: A Look At Wong Jing’s 1982 Action Adventure, MERCENARIES FROM HONG KONG

Undoubtedly, one of the most well-received aspects of being an avid Arrow Video collector nowadays means being exposured to rounds of cult classic titles long-adorned by certain niches. Specifically, we’re talking those of the Hong Kong cinema kind and folks especially fond of Arrow’s Shawscope 2K restorations of late, including and not limited to Wong Jing’s third directorial outing in his career with Ti Lung starrer, Mercenaries From Hong Kong. Ti Lung plays Lok Li, a hired killer working in Hong Kong already wanted for murdering the son of a crimeboss. Before he can escape to Thailand until the heat blows over, Lok gets enveloped into even more trouble at the behest of Ho Ying (Candice Yu), a wealthy tycoon’s daughter who claims she is being blackmailed by the assassin who allegedly murdered her father and stole a highly confidential audiotape. Assembling a team of six to retrieve the tape […]

EXCESSIVE FORCE Review: Thomas Ian Griffith’s Failed Attempt At Reaching Stardom

Mike Garcia

Is such a pity that this film bombed in the box office because is more than a decent action thriller cop, but the 90’s were a dark era for this type of films and for all those talented guys who tried to become martial arts movie stars… Produced, written and starred by Thomas Ian Griffith, under the direction of Jon Hess, this was supposed to be Griffith´s breakthrough to stardom but that never happened and he remained in movie history just as the bad guy from The Karate Kid 3. Role that recently has granted him a new popularity for the Netflix generation, in the spin- off of the saga, “Cobra Kai“… Coincidentally on this film, his character is also named Terry as in the Karate Kid, just coincidence? Or he was trying exploit that early success on his career? Only he knows.. What he really did well, was surround […]

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IRIS CHANG: THE RAPE OF NANKING: Scars Filled with Hope, Healing Wounds From the Past

Mike Garcia

The rape of Nanjing, is one of the darkest atrocities in recent history, a happening that´s been denied by some ultra nationalist groups and was forgotten in the west history books for a very long time… December 13th is the Nanjing massacre memorial, to commemorate such a tragic happening, I´ve decided to write about this moving long feature documentary from 2007, that revolves around Iris Chang, an enthusiastic Asian-American young writer, author of the best seller book, “The Rape of Nanking“, a work that brought to light to western readers the horrors that the Japanese Imperial Army commited during their invassion of the city in 1937. The makers of the feature, combined Chang´s real footage from TV appearances, with dramatizations of passages from her life in which she´s wonderfully portrayed by the gorgeous Olivia Cheng, displaying on the screen the reasons and motivations Iris had to expose to the world […]