I've been a fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme films since No Retreat No Surrender back in 1986, in fact, that's when my interest in martial arts movies started to grow. To be honest, Van Damme has done some bad films in his time and this has to be one of the worst, though not because of him... Van Damme is the strongest actor in the cast.This is a strange story of police corruption and gang warfare which flares up out of control when Hong, played by Cung Le is released from prison and drives into St. Jude. So that premise alone should allow for great drama and martial arts action, especially as Cung Le is a mixed martial arts champion and the cast sports Peter Weller as the crooked cop Mister V. However, the story is weak and full of plot holes, whereas the martial arts scenes are all fought in slow motion and is easier to spot the fakes and the fluffs - the thrown punches that miss their opponent. The slowness also distracts from the action. There was a reason some 80's martial arts films speeded up the action, they knew it made it more exciting. Hence, you slow it down and it gets boring. This was a major fubar by director John Hyams - the other was to try and make the film stylish and cool, it was too obvious and failed miserably.Then there's the set's these are so cheap and tacky they look as if they were either abandoned buildings or somebodies garage. Should have paid for a location scout, people.It's Weller as the over-the-top Mister V and Van Damme as Tiano who actually appear to give a damn about the film as they both get into their characters pretty well, though it's nowhere nearly enough to raise this out of the toilet it should be flushed down.Yet another movie that could have been so much better had things been done differently.I wouldn't even recommend this to Van Damme fans as he's just not in it fo long enough. If you're thinking of making a martial arts film then you could watch this to see how it shouldn't be done!

I recorded this movie from a movie channel I subscribe to, mainly because Jean-Claude Van Damme was in it. I thought that if he was in it, the movie, direct to DVD or not, would be above average. Think again. It seems most of the budget was blown getting Van Damme, who only has a limited number of scenes that were probably knocked off in three or four days. The movie looks really cheap, with non- existent production values that look even more horrible due to the fact the movie is shot through colored filters and with other techniques that make every shot look UGLY. Though a good blame for the failure of the movie also falls on the script; among other things, it's hard to get a handle on the hero, there are several plot turns that are somewhat difficult to understand, and the rest of the plot is both extremely familiar and painfully predictable.There are a couple of redeeming qualities to this overall sorry movie, however. The fight scenes aren't that badly done, being both bone-crunching while feeling plausible. Also, I appreciated that the lead protagonist is not portrayed as being perfect both with fighting as well as his other actions. That was believable as well. So the movie isn't totally awful, but I still would not recommend it, even to rabid action fans.

So Mr JCVD is now taking roles as wise old mentors teaching the young stuff, reversed from back in the day when he was learning, that is pretty cool if you ask me, it just seems right like a perfectly fitting piece of jigsaw. Of course JCVD has still got all the silky moves but with age creeping up on him he is obviously not gonna be as believable as in his hayday.Cung Le takes on the role as main hero for this 'Yojimbo' remake (yep another one) a loner comes to a small town and uses the two local gangs against each other to get to the big man and bring peace. So completely and utterly unoriginal and to be frank its been done much much better ('Last Man Standing'), the warring street gang element doesn't really work for me here, it just seems like any other warring street gang flick where as 'Last Man Standing' worked really well due to the time period setting, it looked so darn cool.The cast is a mix of your typical unknowns who all seem to be pretty proficient in martial arts to major player Peter Weller as Mr V the main bad guy. Weller is clearly enjoying himself as he hams it up beautifully whilst for some reason he has been made to look like Frank Sinatra with his little hat, old blue eyes kicking ass.As said JCVD takes more of a backseat role being the mentor in flashbacks and Le is the high flying number one. Personally I didn't take to Le as the main man, he looks solid enough yes but he just doesn't have that leading man quality to pull off being the hero, he's not exactly a great looking guy and I just didn't get the same adrenaline rush from seeing him fight. He can fight but its more of a scuffle plus his moves aren't as sharp or far reaching as others I've seen. Sure its more realistic but you kinda wanna see some fancy JCVD type air moves which make you shout HELL YEAH!!, I wasn't really behind him feeling the rush. I love how everyone in these films is a martial arts expert, every bad guy and every random person called on to fight is a martial artist, I know it equals more kick ass but its kinda stupid isn't it.A kind of video game vibe to the style has been attempted in places eg. with the character intros which isn't really needed seeing as it isn't really kept up throughout but overall its a slick moody gangster action piece with a nice limited colour palette giving a touch of class. A bit lacking for Mr Silver really, not quite up to his usual standards, a mixed bag of good and bad but more average really. Certainly more stylish than recent JCVD films but he isn't involved so much with this one sooooo...good film title, bares no real meaning to the film but its cool.5/10

Storywise this really aims high. Something that people might not really be into that much, but whatever the case, you have to admire the filmmakers for trying at least. There are some very fine ideas in this movie (loyalty, friendship, respect amongst them), but none get explored too much. Not to mention that the emotional connection between the viewer and the main character unfortunately isn't the strongest. And that has nothing to do with the storyline, but has more to do with the way the movie is handled.The action scenes are decent enough (some are even spectacular), but hopefully you're not renting this to watch van Damme fight. He's playing a major part, but is a supporting player. But Cung Le knows how to fight. In the charisma department on the other hand ... One really good coup the movie made is installing Peter Weller as the main bad guy. He is terrific and shows what Charisma really is!