The Fury of "Latin Dragon"

she's as pretty as she is well mannered

The CW served up another 2 hours of awesome crap last weekend. Gary Busey leads a no-star cast, but if you watch, you will recognize several people enough to go, “THAT guy!”

for instance, this guy

Super-tatted Latino gangbangers and their super-slut stereotype ho-bags rob and destroy a market owned by one “that guy,” the Asian laundry man from Seinfeld. Then they unsportingly kill this old guy from a building marked “KARATE SCHOOL.” For some reason they seem to know a bunch of kickboxing or something even though they obviously rely on guns. The top bastard kicks the karate teacher off a high staircase into a pool, which ends his life. I think he also shot him, but for some reason the kicking was emphasized more. All in all, they screwed the pooch, because Latin Dragon disapproves of killing his old sensei.

Unfortunately for Latin Dragon, Gary Busey is behind it all. Ruining lives is his business and business is booming. He even has a scale model of his his big dream development, which he lords over like a bastard son of Mike Brady and The Kingpin.

The leading man does pretty good martial arts but his face is almost comedically emotionless. He is like a stuntman who demanded a leading role and surprisingly got it, then found his niche in being stony-faced.

HIGHLIGHTS
Opening Title: The word “LATIN” comes swelling out of a wall of stone masonry. Then the word “Dragon” comes blazing under it in a script of red fire! These heavyhanded fonts prime even whitey’s senses for action. No fuddy-dutty typography here, old son.

Latin Dragon and his muy caliente girlfriend go out to eat at a nice Mexican place. Right in the middle of a calm—even boring— discussion, this big Thor-like wrestler motherfucker strides in wearing very tight jeans. He pushes Latin Dragon beyond the limits of his cool by delivering some lines like “I hear you beaners like your tacos real hot!” Then he dumps hot sauce on their food and says something about illegal wetbacks taking American jobs. I think he says “beaners” TWICE. So they fight, which is the best part. But that’s not saying much. The Thor guy has to be beaten up two times in a row, because he’s full of meaty menace.

For some reason, the bad guys are into all the classic mistakes of the gloating villain: Lorenzo Lamas thinks he has corrupted Latin Dragon’s cop brother, so he commands him to shoot the chained-up Dragon. But the brother waffles, demands to “do it his way,” then unchains his brother and points his gun suspensefully. Then, Dios Mio, he has a flashback to playing guns with his brother in their childhood. So his brotherly love wins out, and he tries to shoot Lorenzo and Thor. But it’s a trick! His gun is empty and they shoot him. BUT, that gives Latin Dragon the moment he needs to unspool a lightning round of tight-jean kicks on his oppressors. Thus, they are finished, the crooked pricks!

Meanwhile, Gary Busey has been trying to force the hot chica to sign a bill of sale in the privacy of his car. For some reason, even though murder and such do not bother him, he will not attempt forgery--he needs that real signature from Latin Dragon’s lady. He gives her the pen. She gives him the pen back--jammed all the way through his hand--Ha! Sweet justice. Then I think she ran away.

Finally, Gary Busey’s last stand. He points a gun at our hero, but one more twist--it’s out of bullets! They are in a train station, so Latin Dragon does a flying jump of about 20 feet and kicks Busey out the door, onto the tracks at the instant a train roars by. Busey=obliterated. So they all go to church to pray for their neighborhood, but Latin Dragon goes to the pier to straddle his motorcycle in the tightness of his pants.

OVERALL
Points scored for pretty good fights (not by Hong Kong standards, but better than, say, Walker Texas Ranger), Gary Busey, dumbness, and considerable hotness of leading lady. I give Latin Dragon 6.5 out of 10 spicy peppers.

The Viking Sagas

I re-watched this movie and took notes for this review, then lost the notes. My wife said yesterday--"you mean we watched that movie a second time for nothing!?" So in the interest of imbuing life's suffering with meaning (and from memory), I give you: "Viking Sagas" starring Ralf Moeller.







Click here for trailer on You Tube.

First thing I noticed during the credits was lots of Scandinavian sounding names--good sign, right? Guess not. The main problem with this movie is the lead actor-- he's a German body builder who makes Schwarzenegger look like a true thespian. His range goes from stony-faced (used most of the time) to stony-faced with buggy eyes (used for killing people and having sex). He's a lumbering hulk. The story goes that he's the son of a warrior chief who didn't want him to be a warrior, so never trained him to fight (so how he got to be twice as beefy as all the other warriors?) Any way, the bad guys kill the father--who buys Ralf some time by disemboweling himself and then wrapping his intestines around a giant standing stone. This is by far the best scene in the movie. So Ralf escapes and goes to find The Best Warrior Ever to train him up so he can avenge his Fadder. When he finds him, he's like a paunchy middle aged Oak Ridge Boy with a mullet and a leather headband, and Ralf gets to deliver this classic line: "My Fadder wrapped his guts around a stone so I could find you." Well, they chuck the old spear around a while until Ralf can catch it in mid-air and whip it around and throw it back, then he's ready to go save the princess, defeat the bad guys, etc.

Other weird things about this movie: all the Vikings wear kilts (?), and the sound track is mainly didgeridoo. Oh, and they ride these tiny Icelandic ponies around, which is probably historically accurate, but looks silly as hell.

The landscape, which is Iceland, is actually really pretty, and I'll admit to enjoying the surreal spectacle of this muscle-bound beefcake bouncing along the barren countryside on his pony, holding his feet out so they don't drag the ground, while the didgeridoo warbles--but even that wasn't enough to make this worth watching, twice.

Do yourself a favor and watch "Arn the Knight Templar" twice instead.