Director: Louis Mandylor
Year: 2025
Country: Philippines/USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Kung-Fu/Martial Arts
Plot:
After being captured in the Pacific, a British RAF officer is taken to a Japanese POW camp where he is introduced to other captured prisoners in the facility with him. As he and the others are subjected to the brutality at the hands of the Japanese guards overseeing the camp, he is soon thrust into a series of martial arts brawls against the other guards for the gratification of the boss of the camp, forcing him to utilize his skills to save himself and the rest of the prisoners at the camp.
Review:
This was a rather enjoyable if somewhat flawed genre effort. Among the better qualities here is the stellar action throughout that makes great use of the prowess of each of the participants involved. The action choreography of the film is an unquestioned highlight, featuring a slew of hard-hitting confrontations in the middle of the camp as demonstrations for the amusement of the Japanese leader, which makes for a highly effective time throughout. With the grounded nature of the fighting on display as we see him kick apart a series of nameless grunts or other ranking personnel, which constitutes a series of brutal, hard-hitting fights, the film manages to keep the story moving along as a means of testing his skills under the guise of an actual practice employed at the time. Coupled with some solid War action in the raid that takes place and a rather solid storyline that keeps this one moving from one fight to the next, there’s a lot to like here.
While all of this manages to be quite fun, there are some minor issues present. The majority of those are centered around the lack of stakes in the film, where it’s hard to gauge what type of danger he’s in while at the camp. The whole time spent at the camp is basically dealing with the fighting as a way of covering for the other prisoners to stay working on their rescue plans in secret, but it hardly makes any kind of impact on the fate he has in the camp as that would give the fights have some meaning as he’s always dealing with nameless thugs instead of escalating the stakes. It does offer up the kind of brutality inflicted on the rest of the prisoners as a potential issue, yet there’s barely anything here about the fighting specifically, where everything feels quite bland and whitewashed in terms of what’s going on. That type of glossing over in terms of historical accuracy is another big issue to tackle here, and overall is what brings this one down somewhat.
Overview: ***.5/5
An immensely effective and enjoyable genre effort, there’s enough going on here that manages to make everything feel entertaining enough to be worthwhile enough to overcome those issues. Viewers with an appreciation for this kind of Action effort, who are curious about it, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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