Rapid Fire (1992)

Too much of everything

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Rapid Fire starts in Los Angeles where Chinese student Jake Lo (Brandon Lee) is invited to a fun raising party in aid of helping those in his own country, while at the party a drug trafficker named Carl Chang (Michael Paul Chan) is murdered by Californian drug lord & mobster Antonio Serrano (Nick Mancuso) which Jake is witness to. Jake manages to survive Serrano's attempts to kill him at the party & is placed in protective custody as the only living eye-witness, various Government agencies have been after Serrano for years & it is felt that Jake's testimony could put him away for life but after being handed over to the FED's in Chicago another attempt on his life is made but again using his wits & martial art skills Jake manages to survive. Unable to trust anyone & with nowhere to go a cop named Mace Ryan (Powers Boothe) manages to convince Jake to trust him. Ryan has been after Serrano for ten years & sees Jake as the key to nailing him & together they team up to being Serrano down & those who grow & supply the heroin...Directed by Dwight H. Little this incredibly formulaic action thriller is perhaps most notable for featuring Brandon Lee the ill fated son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee in his final completed film as he would be accidentally killed while shooting his next film The Crow (1993), to be honest Rapid Fire is completely unremarkable in every aspect & while it's not terrible it's pretty forgettable & far from special. Rapid Fire just feels like it has been thrown together using every action thriller cliché going, the fish out of water hero, betrayal, one good honest cop willing to do what's right while those around him are corrupt, an American mobster, drug deals gone bad, Chinese gangsters & lots of men in grey suits who walk around trying to look tough. The whole script feels like it has been cobbled together trying to use just about every action thriller cliché & stereotype that it all became a bit of a blur & it was all too familiar. On it's own the familiarity wouldn't have been so bad if the action made up for it but even this is routine & predictable. The dialogue is pretty bland, the bland character's do little to life Rapid Fire above average either, there are many better action films out there with even the generic sounding title Rapid Fire not inspiring much interest. The script does try to inject a little human tragedy & give it's main character a little bit of background as the massacre in Tienanmen Square is featured but this angle is quickly dropped as is Lee's quest to find out the truth about his dead father.I suppose the biggest disappointment with Rapid Fire was that the action scenes are so dull, virtually every one is not much more than people shooting at each other & no-one seems able to hit Brandon Lee obviously even though they are a few feet away. When Brandon Lee does get to show off his martial art skills the film livens up a bit but they aren't used enough & over too quickly. There's not much other action, a car blow's up, a truck overturns & there's a fire at the end but not much else. The best sequence is at the end as Brandon Lee fights the Chinese drug lord on train tracks which leads to an obvious death for the bad guy but it's as good as the film gets really. The film looks alright but has no great visual style or substance.With a supposed budget of about $10,000,000 this has decent production values but even back then that wasn't a lot of money for a big action flick. The acting is alright, Brandon Lee is watchable enough while Powers Boothe doesn't seem that interested.Rapid Fire is as routine & forgettable a 90's action thriller as there is, Rapid Fire is the type of film that you think you have seen before & you definitely have except with different actor's as there really isn't an original moment in the entire 95 minute duration.

Being the son of a legend isn't easy, especially when you're the son of Martial Artist Bruce Lee. That was the predicament that Brandon Lee was put in, and soon comparisons to his dad were hard to avoid. Even with his first film in Showdown in Little Tokyo, Lee was clearly going to get some kind of comparison to his dad. Of course Brandon never was as great of a martial artist as his dad, but to me he was a better actor despite being dealt with bad one liners in his debut. For his second effort he goes solo, though he doesn't do so with the most convincing act.Clearly a star vehicle for Lee, Rapid Fire delivers what it needs to and no more. The action does enough to be entertaining due to decent production values, but the story is mostly third rate at best. Jake Lo (Lee) is a college student who is good at drawing, especially a model that takes an interest in him. After being dragged to a party, he witnesses a murder by drug kingpin Antonio Serrano (Nick Mancuso) and somehow escapes his clutches.Of course he doesn't get away clean and ends up being arrested. That is until he tells the cops the story, and he is transported to Chicago to testify against Serrano. But when a few dirty agents want to take him out, Lo goes all out and has to team up with local cop Mace Ryan (Powers Boothe) if he wants to live another week. Eventually Ryan uses Jake as bait to lure Serrano into giving details about a drug deal, but all hell breaks loose again and soon another drug dealer comes into play that Jake will have to take down as well.Rapid Fire is not without merit, but one cannot help that it should have had more action and less story. Story can only take an action movie so far, and perhaps it takes Rapid Fire too far to the point of near boredom. Of course with Brandon Lee as the star he never makes Rapid Fire boring, but he sure as hell doesn't make it as worthwhile as The Crow. When Rapid Fire sticks to the action, it generally entertains. When it goes for dramatics, they seem to bog down Rapid Fire's fast pace approach.The basic story of Rapid Fire is adequate, though not the most intelligent story you could get out of an action film. When Lee kicks ass despite being a pacifist, it creates unexpected thrills and actually keep us in the movie. When he flashes back to his past, it gets a little too sappy and adds little depth to a movie that should contain more action. As the film progresses, the story seems to run out of energy and never quite knows where to end. The main problem is that Rapid Fire gets tangled into too many subplots that feel rather irrelevant, and they seem to restrict what Rapid Fire could have been.Lee was capable as an action star, but as a leading man he wasn't quite ready to make the leap. He looks the part and seems to fit the leading role, but he doesn't take charge the way his dad did. He feels more like an afterthought in Rapid Fire despite being the lead attraction, and it's not just the story that makes him forgettable. It's the lack of truly impressive action pieces that make Lee barely better than Chuck Norris or Jean Claude Van Damme here, even with a few glass shattering sequences that occasionally entertain.The villain, or villains, are mostly just nameless presences that don't add much to the story other than characters that get their asses kicked by Brandon Lee. The cops that help Lee are somewhat amusing, but they're played out typecast roles at best here. Only Boothe gets some kind of background story, but even then we don't feel all that much emotion for a cop who gets too greedy in trying to nab a drug kingpin. In giving us another villain, Rapid Fire gets desperate at creating more thrills when it should have stuck to a better story.Some of the action pieces in Rapid Fire work, but not many of them seem to work well. They sustain our attention just enough to get some joy out of Brandon Lee kicking ass in his first lead role, but to be honest they don't make us cheer enough for the good guys. When the story is at its most basic, the action actually can be entertaining. But with layers of story there comes a price, and the price that Rapid Fire pays is thrilling action. Rapid Fire isn't weak, but it never seems to be better than the best Jean Claude Van Damme effort.Grade: C

It was a huge blow when the news of Brandon Lee's death made headlines in the mid 1990s. The fact that the guy never managed to fulfil his opportunities as a successful action movie star and follow in the footsteps of his dad in that particular sense was tragic, considering just how good he was on screen. Showdown In Little Tokyo was a C-list martial arts epic, whilst The Crow- Brandon's very last movie he had starred in, was a horror movie, which whilst his martial arts skills were relatively limited, he still manage to display his acting graft as well as to show that he can act, in addition to kicking arse.Rapid Fire came out in 1992 amidst his previous effort, his collaboration with Dolph Lundgren entitled: 'Showdown in Little Tokyo', which was released the year before. In this movie, Brandon plays art student Jake Lo, who witnesses a murder and afterwards, finds himself on the run from a gang of evil drug lords, as well as a bunch of two-faced, backstabbing cops, of whom are enlisted and supposed to protect Jake but who turn out to be doing the dirty work for the bad guys. Thankfully, he has a good cop on his side and together, the pair, despite their dislike for one another, work together to bring them to justice.American martial arts films tend to be rather forgettable, run-of-the mill type of movies compared to the Hong Kong, Kung Fu-based flicks, but Rapid Fire in contrast is one of the much better efforts. It is action-packed, explosive and Brandon is not that bad of a fighter. He is exceedingly good and manages to combine his late father's trademark moves and aggression with Jackie Chan's athleticism, and his fast and frenetic movements. Another leaf he has taken out of his text book is when he takes an object and smashes it on his opponents head, for example.This is a good martial arts movie; alas, it is a glimpse of how great Brandon was and how great could have been and how far his career might have gone- had he still been alive today

I'm not into a lot of these martial-arts pictures pre-"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" years, but Brandon Lee was a cool guy to watch. What a shame this son of the famous Bruce Lee died so young.This picture was good....for the first 15 minutes. Then it descended into the Rambo- mentality mode in which the good guys don't get harmed but all the bad guys do, despite 1,000-1 odds on that happening. In other words, this had no credibility. For example, six people are firing machine guns at Lee while our hero has no weapons.....yet he escapes unharmed. Some of the action scenes look hokey, too. They are so much better these days. No disrespect for Mr. Lee, but it is this kind of movie that gave martial arts films a bad name in the general public for a long time.