John-Rhys-Davies Movie Reviews

Both these titles are essential for Chuck fans but to anyone else: Fiewalker is just plain ropey and Hero & The Terror slightly boring.

FROM SHIRLEY HEAD OF HIS FAN CLUB HERE IN CANADA

History lesson: European steel and metallurgy was vastly superior to contemporary Japanese sciences. Native Japanese steel occurs only in extremely small deposits of black iron-bearing sand, called tamahagane. The excessively complicated process the Japanese smiths developed for forging a sword was necessary due the the incredibly poor quality of their ore. Moreover, the technique of combining hard, high-carbon steel with softer, more resilient iron was well-known in Europe during the Dark Ages. It was employed by the Norse centuries before their ever was such a thing as a katana. Europe's technology had advanced sufficiently by the time the Japanese got around to it, and it was all but obsolete in the West. In fact, when the Europeans first showed up in Japan, the Japanese almost immediately begin European metal. Finally, many, many samurai wisely imported European armour, recognizing that it was far more protective than their own.

For further reading, I recommend: Arms and Armour of the Samurai by Ian Bottomley, any of the Osprey books by Anthony Bryant, and anything by John Clements for comparison of Western and Asian martial technique.

Taken in the right spirit it is rousing enough matinee fare but everything goes ata such a lickety spit pace that it gets tiresome.Even action movies need some quiet scenes by way of contrast and everything here is so live action cartoonish that it quickily becomes tiresome.Updating the novel to the early 1900's doesn't really work either

Where is the chill that the original novel had in the character of the evil Gagool?Where are the colourful characters of the novel,like Sir Henry? Where is the dignified treatment of Africa and Africans that was a key part of the book?In short,nothing but action makes for a basically dull movie,paradoxical as that may sound

If your wanting to see a great Gary Daniels movie, get "Hawk's Vengeance", the acting in this movie isn't bad at all, and the plot is good.

MC

That said, this movie has a solid, if not spectacular, plot and direction. There are some fairly good actors in the production. It ain't a "hollywood blockbuster". But it also wasn't made on a shoestring budget. I understand that this movie is one in a series of similiar films, so the production company undoubtably saves money by reusing their sets and props. Maybe you don't need to see all of the movies in the series to actually have "seen" them all. But if you want to watch one to see if it's your thing, you may as well make it this one because Gary Daniels is in it.

It's an "action movie" about special military ops whose job it is to penetrate a hostile environment and thwart some terrorists who obtain a nuclear device. If that movie scenario sounds like an appealing one to you, then you'll probably like this movie. There are some martial arts skills exhibited by Gary, who is well known for his abilities at such. But there is not as much as one would see in Gary's other movies. Non martial arts fans will probably enjoy the fight scenes because of his skills, and may find it a welcome improvement over the typical fight scenes you see in these sorts of movies (ie, clumsy, unskilled fighters badly faking punches). Martial arts fans will probably be disappointed that they don't get to see Gary show off more.

You probably don't expect much in the way of character development from this movie, and you won't get it. There is a hint of some potential romantic interest between a female lead and Gary, but that is unfortunately not explored. (When are producers going to figure out that you don't put a guy with Gary Daniels' sex appeal in a movie and then not exploit that?) She even chooses another guy over Gary later on. (Yeah right. Like that's believable).