Review: My Samurai (1992)

“You
fight well, little man. You have good spirit.”

Taekwondo
champ Julian Lee has been appearing in action movies since 1990, but
his earliest work readily available in North America is 1992’s My
Samurai. This one fell into my lap by accident (my boyfriend
happened to have an unopened copy on his shelf), and overall, I’m
glad I saw it. What threatens to be a boring indie exercise turns
into an engaging adventure with a lot of fight scenes. It doesn’t
fully realize its potential, but the raw fun makes for a feature
worth digging your VCR out for.

The story: When a young
boy (John Kallo) witnesses an underworld crime, his babysitter (Lynne
Hart) and he are targeted for assassination and must rely on the
protection of a martial arts instructor (Lee).

The movie
starts off umpromisingly. It’s really hurting for good actors, with
lead villain Mako and absentee father Terry O’Quinn having
relatively few scenes despite their important roles. I totally buy
Julian Lee as the martial arts teacher he is, but drama seems alien
to him; he makes Philip Rhee look like an Oscar nominee. Young John
Kallo is, somehow, in even greater trouble. They stumble through the
movie’s opening third, gumming their lines and failing to impress.
Then, to my surprise and delight, the screenplay wakes up. At first
it’s just little things that you notice – realistic touches about
what three people on the run have to contend with, like how to find
new clothes and needing to sleep in a cramped space – but
eventually, it’s like the film remembers that it can do whatever it
pleases and has its three stars fighting a glam-inspired martial arts
gang and buddying up with a minister played by friggin’ Bubba
Smith. The final 15 minutes or so lose some of that gusto when the
filmmakers try to shoehorn in a whole scenario about Kallo and his
dad, but overall, this is a pretty energized movie that’s unlikely
to bore its target audience.

There are some disappointing
missteps throughout, beyond the aforementioned pacing issues. Lynne
Hart – one of only two prominent female performers in here –
shows a lot of promise but is somewhat wasted by playing a character
whose sole arc in this otherwise bombastic film is about her love
life. There seems to be some untold backstory regarding the villain,
with the filmmakers trying to draw a parallel between two sets of
fathers and sons, but this is left until the film’s final minutes
and is thus rendered confusing and pointless. Julian Lee has an
embarrassing philosophical scene wherein he claims he never got rich
teaching the martial arts because he didn’t -want-
to be rich; if all martial arts instructors who’ve struggled
and sacrificed
in pursuit
of their passion watched
this scene at once,
their combined laughter might cause earthquakes. Lastly, take note of
the movie’s inappropriate title. Didn’t the studio realize that
neither Julian Lee nor the character he plays are Japanese?

There’s
no shortage of fight scenes, here – about a dozen individual brawls
– and I’m happy to say that they balance out some of the film’s
flaws. The action doesn’t start out promisingly, with some strikes
clearly not making contact and a combatant dying by falling out of a
five-foot window, but it picks up dutifully. Julian Lee provides his
choreographers all the physical talent they need, and they exploit it
by keeping the matches grounded and intimate – lots of
close-quarters street fighting. There’s some flashiness (the glam
gang contains several acrobatic tricksters), and this makes for a
satisfying adrenaline package. Disappointingly, Lee’s onscreen
nemesis – fellow martial arts master Christoph Clark – is
portrayed as so powerful as to negate any potentially cool matches
between them. Clark beats the heck out of Lee, forcing the final
showdown to conclude anticlimactically.

My
Samurai has the right attitude to be a kickboxing flick of the No
Retreat, No Surrender variety, but not quite the concentration to
maintain its enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the mixture of unusual touches
and inspired moments make it worth owning for mildly patient fight
fans.

My
Samurai (1992)
Directed by Fred H. Dresch (The
Kudzu Christmas)
Written by
Richard Strahle
Starring
Julian Lee (Dragon and
the Hawk),
John Kallo, Lynne Hart (Perry
Mason: The Case of the Telltale Talk Show Host),
Mako (Conan the
Barbarian)
Cool
costars:
Bubba Smith (Police
Academy
series), Terry O’Quinn (Lost),
Christoph Clark (Tiger
Street).
Mark
Steven Grove (Legacy
of the Tengu)
plays a member of the glam gang
Title
refers to:
Julian Lee’s character, presumably.
Potential
triggers:
Violence against women, violence towards children, implied
torture
Copyright
Starmax
Film Partnership