Remember when poster were fantastical hand-drawn pieces of art? I wish they would start doing that again.

Master of the Universe (MOTU for short) is a movie I remember fondly from my childhood.  It was the kind of film you would see played on TBS and WB channels on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, usually buried in a marathon of similarly-themed sci-fi epics.  So you can imagine the delight I found as a pre-teen when movies like Fortress and Highlander would bookend a testosterone-laden thrill ride such as MOTU.  Much to my chagrin though, it has been well over 15 years since I last laid eyes on this toy-line inspired beauty, and I am happy to report it holds up incredibly well, despite showing signs of its now eclipsed special effects and cliched plot devices.

MOTU tells the story of an eternal battle between He-Man, the sort of Savior of the Eterians (good guys) and Skeletor, a tyrannical skull-faced villain who has amassed a gigantic force of black-clad soldiers with laser guns in an attempt to fuse his own existence with the all mighty the power of the universe to become a God to which all will bow and be subservient.  There are some other minor details, such as a sacred sword (who would have seen that coming) and a Cosmic Key that can tap into to musical nature of the entire universe to teleport anyone to any time and/or place, but they are all secondary to the over arching theme of Good vs. Evil that gives MOTU all the setup it needs to get on with the futuristic-fantasy style combat and whimsical, feel good storytelling.

Frank Langella doesn't just play Skeletor, the guy BECOMES Skeletor. Impressive since most of his acting was done solely through his shifty and piercing eyes.

One of the major challenges any comic/cartoon/toy-line turned movie faces is finding talent capable of bringing the larger than life characters that have been summoned from imagination to screen in an even remotely credible way.  Some may argue with what I am about to say, but Dolph Lundgren and company to a terrific job manifesting the starry-eyed childhood wonder that He-man and his cohorts exude to the medium of film.  Frank Langella as Skeletor may be one of the most perfect, glove-tight fights in cinematic history.  Dolph Lundgren IS He-man, right down to his Godly physique and “get it done” no bullshit attitude, as well as being a man of few wasted words.  Courtney Cox plays the perfect “Earth teenager accidentally sucked into interstellar warfare” and Meg Foster brings a deliciously sexy and sinister style to Skeletors mistress of doom, Evil-Lyn.  Bill Barty as the vertically challenged and infinitely adorable Gwildor does a good enough job to land him a role in any Jim Henson film, and James Tolkan plays the frustrating, non-believer cop role to perfection.  The best part is, you can just tell how everyone on set knew exactly what they were making, and instead of trying to prove what a great actor they are in the hopes of landing future roles in “better” movies, they revel in the ludicrous nature of the whole thing, and emit an aura of carefree fun with a touch of either pure righteousness for the good guys, or over the top menace and for the baddies.

Evil-Lyn rocking some awesome contacts and a fancy hat, giving her best "I am evil as all get out" face.

Gary Goddard, directing his only film of any relevance, echoes the playful vibe that MOTU is known for by keeping his camera relatively calm, but flooding sets and locations with a myriad of different bright, shiny, and often neon colors.  He does at times use come cool focusing tricks and “action in the background” techniques like when Skeletors wicked floating throne creeps up on our unsuspecting heroes on a building top, but for the most part he keeps it within the comfortable standards, which is by no means saying he does the viewer a disservice.  The colors and filters work to make the live action seem all the more fantastic and comic-bookish, with heavy hues of red breaking through strands of smoke and fog often when our villains are on screen.  Our heroes get far less of this Pink Floyd concert laser show treatment then the opposition, but they too are treated like gold by Goddards camera, being seen in many heroic poses, and never being filmed to look weak, or even beatable for that matter.  Goddard knew exactly how to make people playing action figures look every bit as fun and gigantic as we all imagined in our young minds when we were playing with the toys and watching the cartoons.

I would not fuck with this guy. Hes got a cape and a speedo on. That's serious.

While laser beams and zoom-ins on paintings are now dinosaurs of the art of film, for me they hold more than just nostalgia.  I liked the way yesteryears’ special effects looked.  Paintings made to replace expensive and impossible sets, sparks flying out of bodies instead of blood, costumes that were complex, bulky, and not aided by computer graphics touch ups, and Ghostbusters style lightning of all different colors, shapes ans sizes warm my heart to no end.  If some one made this film today (and I have no doubt someone in Hollywood is eyeing this for a remake) it would look more like a video game than a movie.  But thankfully, the memory we have before us is one which took full advantage of the available technology as well as traditional customs, presenting gorgeous and elaborate set design (the interior of Castle Greyskull is fucking BEAUTIFULLY done) and pyrotechnics galore.  It sits firmly in between cheese and art, never for an instant trying to pretend, visually or sonically, to be something it’s not.  The music and sound effects are full of tributes to Star Wars and the hordes of other popular space epics, while sprinkling in some Conan the Barbarian for good measure.  It’s all well beyond adequate, and detracts nothing from the overall experience.  If anything, it just adds to the charm and warmth.

What can you say, they just don't make 'em like they used to.

MOTU is one of the finest examples of a movie often referred to as a punchline in a joke, actually being sinfully entertaining and solid after 20 plus years.  Its indulgent, flashy, loud, and has limited mainstream appeal, but it’s also wholesome, pure, easy to understand, and never, ever boring.  It doesn’t bog you down with hours of back story, political allegory, or social commentary.  It’s just a fun, tightly wrapped interpretation of a, at one point, incredibly popular comic, cartoon, and toy line, instead of being a movie which only exists in an attempt to popularise and announce a forthcoming comic, cartoon, and line of pose able figurines.  The acting is well-suited to fit the mood, technical aspects are tailor made to increase that mood, and the story and pace are as on point as one could expect from a 1 hour and 45 minute flick destined to be one of the ultimate popcorn experiences of all-time.  So crack open a beer, pack your bowl, or whatever it is you flunkies do, and revisit a classic that deserves a much better legacy than the one history has bestowed upon it.  After all, YOU HAVE THE POWERRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

I HAVE THE POWERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF20B8p4F08

AND JUST FOR LAUGHS!!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeFH-QoAPCk

That whole cover just oozes toughness.

While we all have favorites movies, any serious movie goer also has a small pantheon built in their minds that contain movies that are not only great, or even brilliant, but instead are transcendent and sublime.  They are the kind of films that make you feel at home inside the deepest darkest reaches of your movie-loving soul.  It pin-points and annihilates preconceived notions that can sometimes make  die hard film buffs wonder if they will ever see a movie that will nail all their personal cinematic desires and fantasies, in only within a certain style of film.

For me personally, I’ve always been extremely partial to a well made action film.  My first real true love in movies was the directing of John Woo.  I was getting to that age right before my teenage years were I had seen enough movies to start to identify what it is I truly like about them.  I found out that I liked furiously paced, relentless action flicks, that feature progressive gun play and/or martial arts alongside such themes as honor, chivalry, and an almost romantic relationship with fate and the violence itself.  Naturally, this lead to people like John Woo, Takashi Miike, Ryuhei Kitamura, Ringo Lam and others, but not until recently had I heard about Eastern Condors, which had a strong reputation for validating Sammo Hung as director, actor, and martial arts star.  Or, at least that is what I got out of the geyser of compliments this film receives online in the circles I travel.  Now having seen it, I can understand why so many people feel that way.

Eastern Condors, where oh where have you been all my life?

The plot, which is the first thing shown and explained in the film, is actually quite solid.  In fact, it’s downright interesting, since some online research by me after watching it shows that there is some fairly solid evidence that missions like this have a historical precedent, albeit a somewhat controversial one.

“A motley group of Asian prisoners held in the US are given one chance for freedom. They are to go deep into Vietnam and destroy a secret depot of missiles that the US left behind during the pull-out. The group, led by Lt. Lam and convict Tung, hook up with a trio of female freedom fighters and a happy go lucky martial artist named ‘Rat’. The entire group is captured by the VC because one of them is a double agent, but they escape, cross an un-crossable bridge, and get to the secret base just ahead of the VC. By this point nearly all of the original group is dead, and it’s up to Tung and Rat to fight the VC’s leader, a bizarre giggling man who’s lightning fast with martial arts. Written by Scott Hamilton {stomptokyo@aol.com}”

Needless to say Eastern Condors is a movie that has a lot going on, especially when you see how many characters this movie handles.  The story is very practical as well, because it allows history to be a base for credulity, while letting common knowledge about Vietnam and the atrocities committed there give the audience a good reason not to be too disgusted when Sammo Hung and company start dropping the hurt on the unsuspecting Vietcong soldiers in brutal, yet stylish, fashion.  There is also some slight heartstring pulling towards a few of the “convicts” that are featured, driven by their reasons why they would be willing to go on a suicide mission just for a shot at freedom.  Sammo Hungs’ directing allows the proper set up time for some of these characters and their sordid history and motivations, and then delivers the payoff for each, blending dark humor, fate, redemption and other qualities into almost all of his characters.  Some do get a little lost in the shuffle, but for the most part every plot and subplot is given ample time to become an integral part of the whole experience, instead of just being filler to pad time up to 90 minutes or so.

He kicked him so hard he knocked the sweat off that soldiers face.

To go along with the sound plot, we are also treated to some above-average acting.  The main reason I can’t elaborate more on it was because much of the heavy duty acting stuff this cast did was being done during major action scenes or in small breaks between confrontations, meaning that I was of course biased to be enjoying the chit chat between members of the good guy team while they shot, kicked, ninja’d, and blew away anything in there path.  And really, the action is the main course, so lets move on to examining what makes this particular films combination of roundhouse ricks and bullets so damn exhiliarating.

While John Woo maybe the master of blissful bullet ballets, and Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Tony Jaa may have set the bar impossibly high for physical, hand to hand combat and evasion, Sammo Hung seems only interested in combining these elements seemlessly, while keeping both methods of combat wildly entertaining and fairly logical.  This is where the ever important job of pacing comes to the forefront.  Sammo’s directing shows great patience, as the movie doesn’t even start with an action scene, but instead builds almost all of the important plot points up, so we don’t have to deal with buzz-killing exposition later on when we should be watching high flying action.  His pacing rewards the viewer later on when scenes of great intensity are strung together beautifully, leaving little room for taking a breath before the next onslaught or obstacle.  The action is well choreographed, and has a particularly visceral feel, as stuntmen take devastating looking tumbles after being kicked or thrown, strikes land with almost disturbingly realistic results to the adversary, and our heroes take no prisoners and don’t show many signs of that disingenious “mercy” modern day action flicks seem to be overly obsessed with.  It shows great emotion when dealing with certain subjects, like the torture of prinsoners by the vietcong, but it stays true to the logic of “if someone has a gun and is ready to kill you, you should always try to kill them first.”  In other words, it lets the action be the action, and lets the messages be the messages.

Not only a great action flick, Eastern Condors show brief glimpes of the reality of military corruption in 'Nam.

Besides awesome action, solid acting and a sturdy plot, the last thing I noticed, and maybe the thing I was most impressed by, was that Eastern Condors has sprinkled in, very respectfully I might add, some messages about the deteriorating conditions by which not only Vietnam, but much of the world is succumbing too.  Humanity can be encapsulated by the picture above, a snapshot taken from Eastern Condors, of a small boy playing Russian Roulette with a prisoner.  What you can’t see is that there is another boy who is taking turns firing a revolver with one bullet in it at the prisoners head, while the men around are cheering them on and I think even taking bets on which child will be the “winner.”  I won’t prance around thinking I know what Sammo Hung was trying to say exactly with scenes like this, but I think he may be trying to show some humanity, but showing the direct opposite of it.  He may be trying to say that even from birth, children can be brought up to be desensitized hate machines, and that even our enemies may deserve a sliver of our compassion and understanding, considering their history and lack of options during their youth when they are most impressionable.  Never the less, it’s a tasteful and sobering few moments that make Eastern Condors all the more unique and relevant.

The big bad guy who just so happens to be an insanely acrobatic martial artist. Go ahead, call him a sissy. He would kick you in the head 3 times before you even see his legs move.

All of this comes together to create a cozy, in not a little jarring, lost gem that has the substance and the style to stand up to even modern day action flicks, especially when you take into account there was no such thing as complex wire-work, rigging and cgi back in 1987.  Back then, chances were if something exploded on screen, it was also w blown up when they filmed it.  And that really is right in my wheelhouse.  It’s assuring to know movies like this exist, because they are like a warm blanket on a cold day.  There’s nothing quite like a damn fine action flick, and Eastern Condors delivers both the “damn” and the “fine” in spades.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

P.S.  This movie is uploaded on youtube.  Here is part 1, but you can find the whole thing broken down into about 12, 10 minute parts.  Don’t forget to hit the “HQ” to get near dvd quality video!!!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJpQVee3GDo

You know a movie means business when it uses crosshairs in the title.

Sparrow Unit is a one of those flicks I never would of found had it not been for the passionate and devoted fans of trashy cinema that populate the deepest, darkest corners of the Internet.  It barely has an imdb page, there are no pictures, trailers or clips from it anywhere on the ‘net, yet despite total anonymity, it seems to travel the proper circles through the reputation it has among those who have been fortunate enough to have seen it.  What is that reputation you may ask?  Well imagine if John woo moved to the Philippines, and made a furiously paced, but grittier ultra violent action movie about rebels performing a seemingly endless sequence of hits upon mostly unsuspecting, but supposedly “corrupt” military and police personnel.  If you don’t already have a boner, now would be a good time to get one.

Sparrow Unit’s plot is relatively insignificant in the long haul, but does enough reason, just enough that is, to shrug off the fact that about every 6 1/2 seconds, someone is being riddled with lead.  The story follows a group of  “Sparrows”, which is the authorities cute little nickname for rebels-ish people who lives in the mountains, and come down to mainland Philippines in order to assassinate high ranking officials in order to expedite a coup.  Their reasoning is simply that the “powers that be” are hellishly corrupted, a motivation which one of our crew of Sparrows will question later in the movie, naturally.  So with that little tidbit out of the way, Sparrow Unit sets out to actually be more frenetically paced and show more on screen deaths than a Ringo Lam, John Woo, and Michael Bay movie combined.  Ok, so it’s not that many, but since watching this movie consisted of little more than enjoying terrific shootouts and chase scenes, I’ decided to count along with the kills, and I lost count somewhere in the very high 90′s, due to the fact that I couldn’t clearly see how many people died in a particular boat explosion.  Make no doubt about folks, even though this movie seems to try and be sending a message about rebellion and authority, it makes no bones about what the first priority is, which is killing every extra that was paid for at least 23 times.

Oh fuck guys, its the late 80's. Grenade from Army Surplus store. T-shirt and matching denim jacket and jeans supplied by OshKosh B'gosh.

The acting, from what I can tell, seems pretty competent, but again, it is incredibly hard to really invest a ton of emotion into these characters, since they are all so cookie cutter (in that awesome kinda group of assassins 80′s way) and predictable.  You have your hard-headed die-hard leader, willing to sacrifice anything to achieve his mission.  The partner/friend to the leader guy who ends up questioning his own motivation and whether or not he even believes in what he is doing anymore.  The rest of the crew is filled out by the expendables, who are given small traits like enjoying food or maybe being a little funny at inappropriate times.  There is of course a girl, who of course is hot for hard-headed leader guy, and the have sex.  It’s probably the worst love scene ever filmed, includes no nudity, and is awkward as all get out to watch.  But, it’s the 80′s and goddammit were gonna have a love scene edited together and intertwined with some heroes dying, because goddammit, it’s the 80′s!!!  Did I mention this movie reeks of the 80′s?

They kill a guy with a speargun, which was totally unnecessary since th assassin had a gun with him at the time. But the speargun was a million times more badass.

There really isn’t much more I can say here other than if your an action buff who thinks they have seen everything, chances are you haven’t seen this.  It’s budget seem fairly modest, but damn do they make every penny count.  The death toll is hovering around triple digits, the action is so relentless there were times where I would walk away from my computer to grab a drink, keeping my eyes on the screen, only to be caught off guard by the sound of gunfire, and have to race back to my seat in order to see what happened.  It has a somewhat twisted playful vibe to it to, and even though there are several “downer” moments, I never felt like the director was trying to genuinely make me feel sad.  The “downer” moments seemed like the logical thing to do next, in order to progress the nearly non-existent “story, thus it happens.

When dying from a hail of bullets in a foreign action movie, it is important to jump and flail the arms and legs wildly, as to convey to the audience that you, in fact, have been shot.

So if you are at all an Internet savvy person (I.E. you are familiar with the ways to “procure” certain items online in the new century) and you want to see something that transcends the action genre into a video game-esque, laugh riot of pure, seemingly uninterrupted 9mm joy, then hunt down Sparrow Unit: The Termination Squad, crack open a cold one (or whatever fancy drugs you ruffians do now-a-days) and get ready to get blown away.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!!!!!! Just look at that facial expression. He loves his job.