BADNESS RATING:
RELEASED: 2001
DIRECTED BY: Art Camacho
Don “The Dragon” Wilson, is quickly becoming one of my favorite bad action stars. I first discovered a movie of his called X-Treme Fighter (review coming soon), and was pleased to find Redemption with a couple of the same cast members.
The movie starts out with John Sato (Don “The Dragon” Wilson) working in an ice cream truck. It is quickly revealed that John and many others in the neighborhood are part of an elaborate drug bust. This undercover operation would probably be noticed by the public due to the large visible earpieces that each team member wears or the fact that the agents stop moving when spoken to through the earpieces.
The plot is that John, is making some bad cop decisions, and an inexperienced member of the team is stabbed. He literally fights a member of his team to keep him in check. But after a swat team love interest is killed when interrupting a drug deal, John is kicked (dare I say kick boxed?) from the force.
It seems John needs some redemption. As with most bad action movies, he is sure to come out ok. But here are a few gems along the way.
- A line from an informant/hooker/friend, while discussing life, “The only thing black and white in this world, are old movies and cookies.”
- A montage where Don “The Dragon” kick boxes by himself as audio from the entire plot of the movie (up to the scene before) replays in his head.
- The scene where Don “The Dragon” and a plump Chris Penn kick box at each other (Spoiler -Don does most of the kicking).
In case you didn’t know, Don “The Dragon” Wilson was a kickboxing champ with a record of (according to his wikipedia page) of 72-5-2 in a career that spanned 4 decades.
More important than his record is that he is involved in a long list of movies starting with “Say Anything” (say what?).