Rapid Fire

Rapid Fire (1992)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Dwight H. Little

Starring: Brandon Lee, Powers Boothe, Nick Mancuso, Tzi Ma, Kate Hodge

From: 20th Century Fox

Here is a review that won’t be too lengthy, but I wanted to say a few things about this motion picture. I taped it a long while ago on VHS from a Fox Movie Channel broadcast and I watched it shortly thereafter, then I decided to watch it one more time before I taped something else over it.

This is a low-budget action film and you should keep your expectations in check; that said, it’s still pretty entertaining for what it is. The plot is about a half-Chinese dude (Lee) who manages to witness a shooting at a party; as it involves drug dealers and the Mob in Chicago, he ends up in hot water and he meets up with a cop on the edge (Boothe) and his cute colleague (Hodge). Along the way there’s double-crosses and swerves and surprises on the way as they deal with quite a few unsavory characters and you have shootouts and Lee has to use his martial arts skills on more than one or two occasions.

In this movie, you have everything from a scene at a nude modeling class to a subplot involving Tiananmen Square, a hideout at an old bowling alley, Chinese stick fighting, and more. There’s also the required love scene, yet to a greatly cheesy early 90’s rock ballad. It’s fast-moving so you don’t want to think about things too much. If you are able to shut your brain off, you should enjoy the martial arts, shootouts, and other forms of action. Some of it is prop-filled a la a fight scene with Jackie Chan, which was a nice change of pace. Would Brandon Lee have become as popular as Chan-or heck, even his own dad-if not for the accident that claimed his life while filming The Crow? Who knows for certain, but it’s a shame such a freak and fluke thing happened to both father and son there.

Anyhow, if you want yet another time-waster that you should enjoy watching if you like low-budget action movies and you have an hour and a half with nothing else to do, give this a shot… wait, REALLY bad choice of words there. I mean, give this a try.

I’ll be back Friday night with something that will give me more to write about.