Movie Monday: Only The Strong

You know, if you ask me to list some of my favorite martial arts movies, I will undoubtedly begin to mention a few movies starring Mr. Jean-Claude Van Damme.  Of these movies, the most treasured and beloved is Bloodsport, a movie that features fighters from all over the world, more splits than most men's groins are comfortable with, and of course, a shot of Mr. Van Damme's perfect butt. In my raging manliness, I see another man with a butt shaped as gloriously as Mr. Van Damme's and I immediately become wildly jealous. "Why isn't that my butt?"  "How does one acquire such a butt?" "If I had that butt, I would use it for evil."  These are all thoughts that run through my head. Anyway, I guess the point of all this is that I was mentioning    Bloodsport to my co-worker when he recommended a movie from 1993 called Only The Strong.  Now given the way that he described it, I was pretty intrigued, especially when he said the words "You'll love it."  Yeah, just like that. 

So I eventually I settled in and prepared myself for what I was sure to be a mediocre at best viewing experience.  But I was wrong. I was dead wrong.

First of all, If you really want to have a lot of fun with Only The Strong you can pretend you're watching a prequel to Iron Chef America and it takes place before the Chairman inherited Kitchen Stadium and trained a bunch of chefs in the culinary arts.

So anyway, the movie is basically about how Mark Dacoscas has been on active military duty in South America for so long that he's forgotten how to fit back in to society. Well the Army just kind of throws him back to Miami and wishes him luck.  Anyway, The Chairman of Kitchen Stadium, a stranger in his own land, now wanders into his old high school where he finds it filled with *gasp* DRUGS! RAP MUSIC! UNRULY TEENS!  After some boring talking he beats up some Jamaican drug dealers and inspires his old teacher to put forth the idea before the faculty that Chairman teach the kids capoeira  in order to teach them discipline. They decide to give him a shot BUT WAIT!!! They're going to give him the twelve worst kids in the school! Uh oh!


Blah blah blah, stuff happens the kids resist his teaching, he does some cartwheels and then they learn capoeira. The plot of this movie isn't very interesting. Neither is the main character.  Neither are a lot of the other characters. You know what is completely awesome about this movie? The villain. Oh my God, the villain. 

If you took Satoris from The  Final Sacrifice and blended him with Tony Montana you might have a little bit of what Silverio is.  He is by far the most entertaining character in the whole movie. Silverio is against the Chairman because Miami belongs to him. He is the drug dealing, chop-shop running, capoeira badass who's been calling the shots for a long time and he doesn't appreciate this saint or as he calls him throughout the movie in what is one of the funniest voices I've ever heard, "Santo" coming in and ruining everything.

The feud between Silverio and the Chairman gets pretty intense, a kid dies, chop shops get raided, people fight with machetes, the usual. Anyway there's a nice heartfelt ending and whatever, I won't spoil it for you because you should definitely watch this one if you're in the mood for a good cheesy flick. Aside from Silverio, I did enjoy the brief cameo that shamed martial artist Frank Dux made as the welder in the chop shop as well as the performance of the one teacher who kept accusing our beloved Chairman of training the teenagers for his "death squads." Also, for some reason never addressed, Miami has a lot of Brazilians and Jamaicans, but apparently no Cubans.

This movie is good, but not great. Dacoscas as Luis Stevens is a pretty likable character, but he's no Jean-Claude Van Damme because you'll never see the Chairman doing this on Iron Chef America: 

Only The Strong gets 4 inexplicable machetes out of a possible 5

Film Friday: Cronos

Gee whiz! My first movie review.


So last night amidst much merrymaking, some friends and I decided to watch this movie Cronos. Now I had seen the cover to this movie while browsing the Criterion Collection section at Barnes and Noble but it looked pretty boring so I never bothered to pick it up.

See? Boring. Like the cover to some crappy Stephanie Meyer novel.

Anywho, so they explained the plot to me as "Oh, this alchemist invents this device to give him immortality and  some bad guys are after it." I don't know I was kind of buzzed but whatever that sounded cool. So I was like "Alright, neat sort of a mix between 'Highlander' and 'Quest of the Delta Knights'."  At this point I was ready to enjoy some good old historical fantasy with just a hint of sci-fi. But then....something went horribly wrong.


SPOILER ALERT: 

Well first of all the alchemist dies 5 minutes into the film and we skip to modern day where the device is found by an old antiques dealer named Jesus. Also it turns out it's a half-assed vampire movie. And I say half-assed because it doesn't really quite decide if it wants to go full on with the vampire thing. On the one hand, Jesus will be avoiding sunlight and coming back from the dead and lapping up blood off a bathroom floor with less shame than Tila Tequila.

He's licking every other bathroom floor that floor has been with.

But on the other hand, it's a story about a grandfather and his granddaughter trying to outwit the bad guys. It's a story about a quest for eternal youth. It's a movie with Ron Perlman in it.  The vampire thing is there but for some reason it never really feels like the main focus of the movie. 


Overall, "Cronos" is a pretty good film, although it certainly wasn't what I was expecting nor is it something I would normally be interested in. It's not that Cronos is a bad movie, it's just I don't like vamprism in my movies unless it's done just right. Vampires should be either kicking ass without equal as in the first and only acceptable "Blade" movie, being incredibly cheesy and sexually creepy as in the original "Fright Night", or completely likable as in "Let the Right One In." It's not that I didn't find this movie appealing in any way, it's just that "Cronos" keeps giving me the feeling of a really dressed up version of a much crappier movie.  I can appreciate its value and that it was willing to take a new concept and go with it, but it can best be summed up with a quote from another more entertaining vampire film:

I'm going to give "Cronos" 3 Ron Perlmans out of a possible 5.