Eye Candy #530 - "Rapid Fire"

Rapid Fire:  One of the handful movies Brandon Lee made (this was post-“Showdown in Little Tokyo”, which as you may remember, was dreadful, and pre-“The Crow”).  Brandon Lee is Jake Lo, whose father was killed in Tiananmen Square, making him bitter towards government and authority figures in general.  Now in Los Angeles, he witnesses a murder between feuding drug lords (one Italian, one a Triad) and gets a clear view of the shooter, mafia boss Antonio Serrano (Nick Mancuso).  Serrano is intent on violently muscling on the heroin trade of Kinman Tao (Tzi Ma).  Lo becomes the star witness and is brought to Chicago to testify under FBI protection (because apparently it’s cheaper to film there than in L.A.).   However, the FBI is compromised by dirty agents out to kill Lo.  Lo then grudgingly hooks up with a group of Chicago cops led by Lieutenant Mace Ryan (Powers Boothe) to take down Serrano, so they can catch the bigger fish in Tao.  Brandon Lee plays Lo like a petulant self-centered child, scowling his way through the ¾ of the film like he’s 12, playing the standard “young man with chip on his shoulder”.  Many of Hollywood’s Asian character actors are here, including Tzi Ma, Michael Paul Chan, Francois Chau, Gerald Okamura, and the immortal, mustachioed Al Leong.  Nick Mancuso appears to be channeling both Big Boy Caprice and young Mickey Rourke as he energetically chews the scenery as Serrano.  Director Dwight Little has a long and undistinguished career in film, providing us such unnecessary sequels as “Free Willy 2” and “Anaconda 2”.  This film fits into that same vein of unremarkable film-making.  It’s better than “Showdown”, but still a fairly lousy movie.  Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”