Runtime: 78 minutes
Directed by: Anthony Chan
Starring: Dwight Clark, Juan Chapa, George Chung, Suzanne Stanke, Vinny Cerrato
From: Pegasus Films
Last night I revisited the poliziotteschi Caliber 9 and it is something I still dig quite a bit. Thursday night was this... talk about completely different. Believe it or not, this motion picture is relevant for the weekend:
Yes, this is a real movie... made by D.A.R.E.!
For you (American) football fans, the star of this movie is Dwight Clark, the late San Francisco 49ers star who was on two Super Bowl winning teams in the 1980's and as the 49ers are playing against the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday in Super Bowl LIV (or as I like to call it, Super Bowl Olivia), what better time to finally view something I've had on disc-which is a glorified DVD-R-for awhile now? I am not even sure where I heard about this first... perhaps it was Letterboxd. Before I go on, I need to explain the concept of D.A.R.E. It is a program where elementary school kids are taught the evils of drugs by police officers. It was actually a thing in my school way back when... I understand it is not as much a thing now, as the program doesn't work. Personally, I hardly knew anything about speed at the age of 10 and allegedly, the main thing the program did... give knowledge of various drugs to young children!
Clark plays BLADE STEEL-despite the name, not an 80's pro wrestler or adult actor; rather, he was... a football player-who is a “bad boy” and has to do community service at a community center after being arrested for driving in his Mercedes while drinking a Bud Light, w/ a cooler of beer in the back seat and a 20 year old girl in the passenger seat. From Heaven (actually, some park in the San Francisco Bay area) you have God asking Bruce (as in, Bruce Lee!) to save Blade for the purpose of Mr. Lee becoming an angel. This is done after Bruce engages in martial arts w/George Washington and Charlie Chaplin... no kidding. Somehow, this isn't the strangest iteration of Bruce Lee... look at the movie The Dragon Lives Again for something really bizarre. Note that Bruce's face is never shown clearly, is only referred to as “Bruce”... and after about the 10 minute mark, he disappears! Instead, Bruce's blind student (not known as Zatoichi but might as well have been) is the one who teaches Mr. Steel. Should Bruce really get his wings in this case?
Anyhow, the community center class is not just full of kindergarten students... but who cares, as the title being Kindergarten Ninja was one of the reasons I even tracked this down. Of course, with Zatoichi teaching him karate, Blade turns his life around and he comes to enjoy his interaction w/ the children. Perhaps Bruce should have tried saving Michael Vick, Aaron Hernandez or Antonio Brown... back on track, there is a villain. HECTOR MACHETE has kids sell drugs in the neighborhood, which results in martial arts showdowns with his goons getting their asses kicked by Steel. Now, this is incredibly low-budget and there are hilariously bad screen wipes that even George Lucas would object to.
That said, I can't get too mad at this wacky production. After all, it's usually tongue-in-cheek; one example is that when Machete first appears, a flashing “Bad Guy” credit appears on screen. The action scenes are acceptable and at least I could laugh at most of the bad actors. One thing I was not expecting was that kids would get beat up, but they do; even more of an eyebrow-raiser... Clark doing karaoke of Edwin Starr's 25 Miles at his own restaurant and he beats up thugs during this performance, yet it happens. Even with this promoting a program that don't work, this has good intentions, promotes some nice messages and much to my surprise, more often than not the actual comedy at least made me chuckle.
Dwight Clark passed away in 2018, unfortunately due to ALS that he believed was due to concussions he got in his playing days. After he retired from the sport he was in executive roles behind the scenes for the 49ers then the Cleveland Browns. As an actor he was not bad and he looked the part so perhaps he could have starred in legit B-action movies during the 90's. Overall, I was relieved this was not intolerable and infantile like it very well could have been; this was easier to get through than I expected.
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