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Summary: Brandon Lee - Great Martial Arts Movie
Review: Lik showdown in little tokyo Brandon Lee stole this movie and made it a great flick. If anyone else had been the start it just wouldn't have worked as well. This movie is full of great martial arts moves, comedy, and a decent cast. Powers Boothe is really great in this, one of the few movies i've liked him in besides Red Dawn. It has it's stupid moments and corny one liners, but in no way are they as bad as Showndown in Little Tokyo. Brandon Lee looks great in this movie and has some great moves i would love to learn for myself. I'm suprised he didn't get more recognition from this movie before The Crow came out.
This movie is entertaining and a certain scene with a "train" was even copied in a video game called "blood" as a tribute, it's a classic movie moment. Good action flick, great Brandon Lee Movie. Add this to your collection if your a martial arts and a Brand Lee Fan and you won't regret it. I'll be buying this on DVD asap. One of my favorite moves from this movie is definetly the double punch of "Cerrano", Fist first then the elbow, in one quick motion. Awesome.
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Summary: Among the martial arts/action elite
Review: No matter how many times I watch this movie, it never seems to get old. Combining elements of American action shoot 'em ups with the chop-socky combat of the Hong Kong martial arts genre, "Rapid Fire" seems bent on squeezing as many action sequences as possible into its brisk 90-minute running time. However, in between fight scenes, the writers and director actually take time for little things like plot and character development, which are too often lacking in martial arts flicks (can you say Steven Seagal)? The main characters, Brandon Lee's reluctant crime fighter and Powers Boothe's grizzled cop, actually have some beliefs and internal conflicts that motivate their actions. And on top of that, there are some actors in this movie who can actually act! In the action department, the fight scenes are extremely well done, devoid of camera tricks, multiple angles, fancing directing, or any other gimmicks that distract from the fight scenes themselves. It seems the makers of this film knew what they had in Brandon Lee and let him and the other actors carry the action on their own, a decision that definitely paid off. Highly recommended for those who want a little brains to go with their action.
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Summary: Decidedly small but engaging action movie.
Review: Rapid Fire does not aim at greatness the way The Crow does. But within its own parameters and ambitions, it succeeds quite well: As the first showcase for Brandon Lee as a leading man, and as a tight, small-scale action movie with a little more attention to emotional resonance than usual.As art student Jake Lo, Lee has not quite matured fully at this stage, but he is already great to watch -- while not quite possessing of Bruce Lee's charisma and rock-hard machismo, Brandon has much more acting finesse, a terrific blend of youthful cockiness and vulnerable sensitivity, and of course, much better dialogue delivery than his venerable father. He is ably supported by the beautiful Kate Hodge, who plays a stronger and smarter female counterpart than in most action movies of this breed. Powers Boothe as crusader cop Mace is an acquired taste and Nick Mancuso overdoes his greasy-mobster thing, but it doesn't really detract from the brisk pacing, well choreographed fight scenes and a nice subplot involving the main character's involvement in the Chinese student democratic movement. The only real dud in this movie is the sound. The gunfire in Rapid Fire sounds as weak as a food processor, many martial-arts sequences suffer from weak or missing sounds, and the '80s power-rock that accompanies the (pretty well executed) love scene and the ending definitely makes this movie seem dated. Nevertheless, a good action showpiece.
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Summary: Rapid Fire DVD Review
Review: Rapid Fire exhibits excellent video quality and looks like a recent release rather than a 10 year old film. Rapid Fire's soundtrack, encoded in Dolby Digital 4.0 rather than todays 5.1 soundtracks, produces surprisingly deep bass, with really no need for the .1 LFE channel. The .1 LFE channel however, would add more excitement to the action scenes. The soundtrack also exhibits clearly intelligible dialogue that most films lack....
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Summary: Make way for Mr. Lee!!
Review: RAPID FIRE is definitely a kung fu movie classic, and right now, my favorite Brandon Lee movie (Just about to watch the rather under-recognized LASER MISSION.) Brandon Lee stars as college student/martial arts master Jake Lo, who refuses to join Chinese Democracy activists, since his father was murdered for the very same cause. Lo becomes entangled in a web of diaster when mafia druglord Antonio Serrano (Nick Mancuso) murders the chief distributor of a competing drug lord Kinman Tau (Tzi Ma, from RUSH HOUR)to get ahold of his drug trade. Lo has the unenviable misfortune of witnessing the whole damn thing and must join forces with crusty chicago cop Ryan (Powers Booth) and his beautiful partner (Kate Hodge) to take down both Serrano AND Tau. Once the action starts, it doesn't stop. I think the climatic battle between Brandon and asian bad guy Al Leong (whose had duels with guys like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis) is this movies best and easily the best in '92, and finally one of the best ever. One of the quite abundant brawls even occurs on the chicago el, where Brandon and his opponent mostly just use steel rods as their weapons. A kung fu flick to be cherished by kung fu fans, as well as Brandon Lee fans all over the world. Buy this one right now, you won't regret it.
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Summary: The Most Underrated Action Movie This Decade
Review: Rapid Fire may be a showcase for Brandon Lee's martial art skills but it is still a good movie. The action scenes are terrific and there's plenty of them. The movie itself may only be 90 min. but it is a very enjoyable 90 min. with all the fighting and explosions. To me the best thing about the movie is Kate Hodge who played Karla Withers. She is hot and I wish she was in more movies.
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Summary: Well it's about TIME!
Review: So I figured what the hell. I've been researching and researching for a few YEARS now wondering when someone was going to get off their chair and put this on DVD. So I type in "Rapid Fire" just on a whim here at Amazon.com just now and what do I see? Well, who do I give the gold star to? It's about time. I don't know, it's Brandon Lee, it's action, it's not Laser Mission, it's maybe just a little sickening that it took someone this long to make a move. How [sad]. This should have been available on DVD a LOOOOOOONG time ago. Um, yes, I'll buy one please. ...
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Summary: Brandons best action movie!
Review: This (without a doubt) is Brandon's best action film. Everyone is so hung up on the CROW, which is a great film, but as far as martial arts,Rapid Fire is the best.
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Summary: Basic Action Film
Review: This is a pretty basic action movie not really anything special but yet sometimes I find myself wanting to watch it again!I've no idea as to why!Anyway if you are looking for a pretty basic action movie (and if you find this web page) Buy this!
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Summary: Now THIS Is What a Martial Arts Movie Should Be!
Review: To the strains of sitar music, a lithe figure dressed in white moves in slow motion against a black background, his graceful movements funneling seamlessly into violence. One by one, opponents present themselves. One by one they're smashed aside. Slowly we segue into a close-up of an intense, handsome young man's face, and we see the words BRANDON LEE. Thus begins Rapid Fire. If you wanted to build a martial arts movie superstar - and obviously that was the goal - you couldn't have done it better than with that sequence.
Serious martial artists were aware of Brandon Lee's existence since his birth. They also knew he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as an actor. All across America - probably the world - untold thousands of people rooted for him. Brandon paid his dues in a few ultra-low-budget projects before co-starring with Dolph Lundgren in Showdown In Little Tokyo. Not a great film, but Brandon was good in it, and that got him Rapid Fire, his first lead role and, as it turned out, an absolute starmaker. (On the strength of Rapid Fire, Brandon got The Crow - and we all know how that turned out.)
It's fascinating to compare Brandon as a martial artist in Rapid Fire to his dad. Bruce Lee started out a highly skilled martial artist with real-world capabilities who became an actor. Brandon by contrast always wanted to be an actor, thus his martial arts training was geared toward flashy techniques that would look good on-screen. What the hell, they DID look great. Brandon, though obviously a fine athlete, didn't have his father's explosive speed and power. But then, who does?
So many martial arts movies are dumb chock-socky. By contrast Rapid Fire is well-written and directed, and decently acted, especially by Brandon, Powers Boothe as Detective Lieutenant Mace Ryan (God, you gotta love that name), and Nick Mancuso in a cheerfully over-the-top performance as a crazed mob boss. On top of that, Rapid Fire fulfills the greatest requirement of a martial arts flick: the sense, as you watch the actors in motion on the screen, of "Oh my God, I didn't know human beings could DO that." This is not a love of violence per se, but rather a love of watching hard, competent people push the human body's design parameters in violent conflict.
The fights in Rapid Fire were choreographed by Brandon and Jeff Imada. The standout scene is a fight to the death between Brandon and Al Leong (probably best know as Endo, the torturer from Lethal Weapon, and Uli, the chocolate eating terrorist from Die Hard). All the fight scenes are top-notch, though several stunts, like using a motorcycle to drive a bad guy through a row of glass display cases, and employing a clothing rack to trip an opponent during a fight, were lifted from Jackie Chan's Police Story. However (a) in all honesty I have to say that both these moments were done better in Rapid Fire, (b) in 1992 in the US only a handful of hardcore kung fu movie buffs had ever seen a Jackie Chan film; even those few recognizing the influence probably smiled at the homage rather than considering it a rip-off.
There are other smile-making moments in Rapid Fire, like comments on how Jake Lo's (Brandon's) deceased father was such a great martial artist; Brandon's summary clocking of a bad guy dramatically swinging nunchukas, his dad's most famous weapon (obviously this fellow had watched way too many Bruce Lee movies); Brandon using as a disguise an outfit incorporating the same sort of Coke bottle glasses his dad used for the same purpose in The Chinese Connection; and I laughed out loud at the scene where Jake explodes all over a treacherous FBI agent, beating him like a red-headed stepchild, leading Mace Ryan to comment, "Jake, why don't you take those fists of fury of yours outside?" That little in-joke requires no explanation to any Bruce Lee fan.
So for Brandon a handful of crappy roles led to Showdown In Little Tokyo (so-so) begat Rapid Fire (a truly, deeply enjoyable action adventure flick) and then The Crow (an absolute masterpiece). And that's all we're ever going to have of Brandon Lee.
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