Rapid Fire | | Cast : | Brandon Lee, Powers Boothe | | Director : | Dwight H. Little | | Studio : | Fox Home Entertainme | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | August 21, 1992 | | DVD Released Date : | May 21, 2002 | | Language : | Spanish (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | January 21, 2005 | | Summary | GOOD MOVIE FLAWED DVD | Content
 | AFTER READING EVERYONE ELSES REVIEWS, I DON'T KNOW IF THEY JUST DIDN'T NOTICE THE JUMP IN THE FIGHT SCENE IN MANCUSO'S BAR OR I JUST GOT A QUALITY CONTROL ERROR DVD. MY DVD LEAVES OUT HALF THE FIGHT SCENE, I KNOW, I ALSO HAVE IT ON VHS. IS THERE ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE WHO NOTICED THIS. |
| Rating | | | Date | November 27, 2004 | | Summary | Now THIS Is What a Martial Arts Movie Should Be! | Content
| 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. |
| Rating | | | Date | October 31, 2004 | | Summary | Rapid Fire has no fire to rapidly fire with | Content
| Brandon Lee's (Legacy Of Rage, The Crow) second to last film before his untimely passing. This has Lee going up against Nick Mancuso, when Lee witnesses Mancuso whack a guy in coldblood. Lee is then put into witness protection in a safe house where even there he isnt safe. Soon he doesnt know who to trust, the cops or a rouge cop Powers Boothe (Frailty, U-Turn), but he joins Boothe's side, so lee teams up and they try to take Mancuso out. Lee cant deliver his lines but he sure knows how to kick some ass. The action scenes, some of them are tedious, but most of them for example where Lee fights the corrupt cops in the safe house, are at best. Boothes' acting in this is so mindnumbingly idiotic with him trying to be macho but he cant pull it off. Mancuso must of had a blast with his part. Also starring Raymond J. Barry (The Deep End, Dead Man Walking), Kate Hodge, Tzi Ma (Rush Hour, The Ladykillers 04'), Michael Paul Chan (Spy Game) and Dustin Nguyen (The Doom Generation, tv's V.I.P.). |
| Rating | | | Date | September 27, 2004 | | Summary | excelllent | Content
| i just bought it today andlike some peoples was saying that the dvd freeze mine work perfectly |
| Rating | | | Date | July 22, 2004 | | Summary | YOU SAW ME WACK THAT GUY RIGHT! | Content
| JUST LIKE HIS FATHER,BRANDON LEE WAS TAKEN FROM US WAY TOO EARLY.FROM THE OPENING SEQUENCE WE CAN SEE A LITTLE OF BRUCE LEE IN HIM.RAPID FIRE IS AN EXCELLENT MARTIAL ARTS MOVIE WITH SOME VERY GOOD FIGHT SCENES AND EXPLOSIVE ACTION.BRANDON LEE USING ONLY HIS HANDS AS WEAPONS UNLEASHES HIS OWN FIST'S OF FURY.WHAT THIS MOVIE LACKS IN DIALOGUE IT DEFINITELY MAKES UP IN ACTION.I HAVE READ THAT SOME OF THE REVIEWERS HAVE HAD FREEZING WITH THEIR DISC'S,FORTUNATELY I HAVE NOT HAD THIS PROBLEM.THE PICTURE IS VERY CLEAR AND THE SOUND IN 4.0 IS GOOD BUT INCONSISTENT AT TIMES.THERE IS A BRANDON LEE PROFILE,FEATURETTE AND TRAILER BUT THATS ABOUT IT.IF YOUR A FAN OF MARTIAL ARTS MOVIES CHECK THIS ONE OUT,I'M SURE IT WON'T DISAPPOINT.IF YOU WANT TO THE ULTIMATE BRANDON LEE CHECK OUT THE CROW. |
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