Double Dragon

This film needs less Scott Wolf.

This video game to movie adaptation from 1994 was born from the joining of divine inspiration and incomprehensible genius, by which I mean ‘it sucks more dick that Elton John would in George Michael’s bathroom at a New Year’s Eve party’. If I was this movie’s mum I’d be so disappointed.

Directed by an absolute imbecile named James Yukich, who has - before and since - only ever directed live concerts for TV, it was spat straight out on VHS in a time when going straight to tape was something only porno films did. So obviously this over-qualified artist was the right man for the job.

This movie sees the untalented and rather homely Scott Wolf as Billy Lee, twin brother of Jimmy Lee (played by Mark Dacascos). They are martial artists who are prophesised about in the legend of the Double Dragon.  The role of the main villain is filled by Robert Patrick. Robert, having portrayed the T-1000 only three years previous, decided to channel that menacing bad guy persona that served him so well in the past. He plays Kogo Shuka, a dickhead with a stupid name and an appearance that can only be described as Vanilla Ice with a goatee and worse dress sense. Words, no matter how mocking or scornful, cannot do justice to the ludicrousy of this dude’s looks. It’s just that bad. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

They also cast Alyssa Milano as Marian, mostly as an excuse to check out here arse for 6 weeks during filming, I’m pretty sure. They certainly didn’t hire her for her talent or personality. Then again I don’t think they hired anyone in this movie for their talent. And as if having Scott Wolf wasn’t bad enough we get a cameo by Andy Dick, the least funny man in all of television. Julia Nickson stars as the-terribly-thought-out-Asian-name Lotus Flower, who is something of a caretaker to the two boys. Julia also seems to be the only Asian in all of Hollywood able to play the female support role in a terrible martial arts B-movie. I’m almost surprised they didn’t also cast Pat Morita or Mako just to show how serious about Kung-Fu this movie is. Which is very little.

As I look this movie up on IMDB I realize that the entire cast of this movie are people you wouldn’t invite to your mum’s Sunday barbeque. One thing I find almost laughable is that this phenomenal piece of shit actually took four writers to produce. Four fucking writers. Four. That is four more that they needed. The incredible lack of skill of these 4 morons is somehow compounded until it’s so dense you’d think it belonged to Steven Seagal. Really Hollywood, you are giving the task of writing a video game adaptation to FOUR FUCKING PEOPLE? Might I remind you that the story was already written in 1987? What the hell where these four assholes doing then? That’s like giving a packet of crayons to a class full of retarded kids and expecting not to end up with some paper smeared with shit and glitter and a drawing of a dog that looks like it’s in serious need of being taken out the back and shot. It’s so bad it is beyond being funny.

If I had any part in the making of this film I would have killed myself from the dishonour long ago. At one point they actually kick an old Double Dragon arcade machine and break it, and I find that scene pretty much sums up the whole movie rather aptly. What they did here was kill fond memories and the dreams of the young.

This movie makes House Party look like Schindler’s List. They actually named the two evil Asian henchmen ‘Huey’ and ‘Lewis’. This is thankfully only taken advantage of once in the whole film when the Liquid Metal Man asks “Huey, Lewis. What’s the news?” This is just to show you the kind of dialogue we are dealing with here. There is also a femme fatale who carries around a leather whip as her weapon of choice. So can you guess what they named her? Linda Lash. Yep, you can see the thought process for that one. Pure genius.

This movie is a huge shit sandwich sprinkled with false hope and a cheap video game tie in. Besides, anyone who has ever played Double Dragon can tell you that Billy should have blonde hair and that the brothers are twins. How the fuck, then, can Billy be white and Jimmy be Asian? I swear by the end of it all I wanted to do was punch Scott Wolf right in his smug, stupid face.

The fashion of this movie will make your eyes bleed; it’s so horribly 90’s. This is amusing because the movie is set in New Angeles, 2007. This movie was set 3 years ago, and everyone looked like they just stepped out of an episode of Saved by the Bell. There is one scene near the end where the brothers actually appear in their signature outfits, except they look like gay Kung-Fu rhinestone wearing clones of Seigfreid and Roy, only gayer. The script is poorly written and the one-liners contain more cheese than your average American’s diet. It fills me with an intense feeling of disgust, mixed with just a pinch of shame, to have watched it in it's entirety. Given the choice I’d rather munch on a bowl of dicks than sit through it again.

This movie sucks so hard I’m surprised Bill Clinton didn’t hire it for secretarial work. It’s like watching your own baby slowly choke to death on the other side of an unbreakable window. Sure, there are some laughs, but mostly it’s painful to watch its pathetic struggles and you feel somehow numb and empty by the end of it.

The final verdict: this movie deserves to die from AIDS and fire.

And AIDS that are on fire, or maybe fire that has AIDS, somehow.