Crouching Street Knight Hidden White Tiger

In anticipation of the feeling I knew I'd have after watching UNITED 93 I wanted to have a couple of pure mainlined 90's martial arts wonders to get me back on my feet. First up was Jeff Speakman in STREET KNIGHT:
I can see why this was the end to Speakman's short run as a theatrical action star. He has plenty of fight scenes but they just don't have the energy that was on display in THE PERFECT WEAPON.
A real problem when these films don't have great action is that you really start to focus on the plot which is usually a bad thing in these films. STREET KNIGHT'S premise made no sense to me. A group of rogue cops try to end the truce between the local black and latino gangs. They do this so that the police will focus their attention on the brewing gang war, thus giving our villains all the time they need to rob a fancy jewelry store.
The ridiculous aspect comes when they rob the jewelry store. It's such a high class joint that it obviously would be nowhere near the bad part of Los Angeles where the gangs would be fueding.
So while STREET KNIGHT was a letdown I'm glad I saw it for the final act. At one point Speakman has a gun in a bad guy's mouth in order to get some info. Out of the blue another bad guy appears. Speakman fires his gun into the mouth of bad guy #1 and the bullet goes straight through and hits bad guy #2 as well. Neat trick!
Then when Speakman has his showdown with the main boss it looks like the boss has the upper hand. He points his gun at Speakman, then to show how classy he is he recites a line from Shakespeare. This gives Speakman the time to toss a knife at the bad guy, followed by Speakman's gal pal tossing him a gun, followed by Speakman firing about a dozen shots into the bad guy. Then Speakman gets to recite his own line in response to the bad guy's Shakespeare quote:
"Hasta la vista. Schwarzennegger."
Hold up! Penalty on the play. You can't take someonelse's line and then just because you quote them expect it to be okay.
But the true highlight comes as the credits start to roll. They begin with a dedication. I expected it to be for perhaps a crew member who passed away during pruduction of STREET KNIGHT. Instead this is the dedication:
"This film is dedicated to the United Kenpo Family and for gang truce everywhere."
Now that there is some true social impact.
Next up for me was Gary Daniels' WHITE TIGER. In this outing Daniels found himself in the rare position of a DEA agent whose partner is murdered. Who is his partner murdered by? Everybody's favorite Asian ganglord Cary Tagawa(He was in Mortal Kombat kids).
WHITE TIGER wasn't quite as unrelenting as Daniels' RECOIL or RAGE but I dug it. Tagawa is in usual(angry) form, there are some solid fight scenes, and lots of neck snappings including the rare neck snapped in between two legs which Daniels pulls off with measured precision.
At one point Daniels' love interest is kidnapped by Tagawa, just like Tagawa did to Lundgren in SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO. Daniels reacts to this kidnapping the same way Lundgren did, by spending a good deal of time training himself with martial arts shadowboxing before actually going after his lady.
Daniels also does one of my favorite things a hero can do in a film. He puts a picture of Tagawa on his mirror to serve as a constant reminder of who his enemy is. I wish I had some mortal enemy whose picture I could stick on my bathroom mirror. I can asure you people that I've got a picture of my own mortal enemy taped to my mirror.(It's John Stamos if you where wondering)



Random post from a Walker Texas Ranger board.
The show jumped in the middle of the 8th season when they started showing less and less of that HOT new ranger, Gage (Judson Mills). We want more Gage!!!!! ~Squeekybat65