Yes, I watched this on purpose. Part of me is kicking myself because I put this movie on to be background and actually ended up watching it. There was a recent observation I heard on a message board, where people were bitching about remakes. One poster mentioned that good films shouldn't be remade but that remakes of bad films are fair game. Here is a movie that I, honest to god think could be remade. The film stars Michael Dudikoff who the trailer advertises as the star of the American ninja series....so you see the caliber of film we're dealing with. Anyway, Dudikoff(who I'm convinced turned to martial arts to fight off grade school bullies who plagued him with doo-doo jokes about his last name) is a retired secret service agent who takes care of his sister and is on his way to visit his black friend who's also politician. Now his black friend (I'm not looking up his name I've already devoted too much attention to this movie) has spent his career combating a secret ultra right wing organization of white guys who want to bring America back to the good ole days by way ruthless violence. This is the key aspect that makes the film ripe for a remake, the crazy right wing conferences don't feel like that far a cry from the amount of people loosing their shit over gun control and birth certificates and what have you. Now a black man going against conservatism in the Regan era sounds pretty progressive for some low budget ninja movie.....pretty impressive right? Well not really cause the black guy and his whole family are killed and their house is burned down, his son's death is one of those unintentionally hilarious low budget moments . Though what almost makes up for it is the amount of homoerotic undertones the all-American villains are endowed with, which has me concluding that the villains in this film are just like any number of politicians who campaign against homosexuality only to be caught
blowing the prom king.One top of that, whenever the white guys ride into battle they sport masks that just remind me of the
Eyes Wide Shut masks and one in particular wears a costume that looks like an S&M getup. Anyway back to the movie, so the pissed off white guys play this 'Most Dangerous Game' type scenario and the climax of the film includes Dudikoff running that gauntlet. This piece of the movie is actually pretty well done, with some surprisingly raw fight scenes....oh and at some point they kidnap his sister and try to sell her off in a Cajun sex trafficking ring.....that also happens.
No for this remake, instead of having the white male lead take over, I'd go with a black protagonist. A black politician would be even more relevant these days especially one who can kick some ass. What would be even more progressive would be a black women fighting a bunch of pissed off white guys, if only our generation had a Pam Grier. But anyway for now we'll settle for a male lead like Jamie Foxx, done. Now regarding the subject matter, government conspiracy theories and what not, Michael Bay will probably want to jump on this, not going to happen. Bay's tendency to fetishize everything would fuck up all the dirty white guy's clearly repressed sexuality, not too mention take a lot of unnecessary moves to make them look especially badass (one cool thing about low budget action movies, this one in particular, all the guy's look like they've been in fights, they're not all cut an dried). Kathryn Bigelow is my choice for the
Avenging Force remake, the film's confrontation of the hypocrisy of the societies that keep us safe would be a perfect companion to
Zero Dark Thirty. And simply put, as great as
Zero Dark Thirty and
The Hurt Locker are who doesn't want to see her return to her more unapologetic genre films like
Point Break and
Near Dark? In fact even something as goofy as
Point Break does an impressive job of showcasing the contradictions and ultimate failure of Bohdi (Swayze)'s supposedly zen like mantra. The mantra followed by the bad guys in this film is the complete opposite of the spectrum so it'd be the perfect auteur piece for her. So I'll go type up the script and mail a copy to Bigelow....oh shit. Looks like Dudikoff has already hinted at
Avenging Force 2. Wikipedia has it slated for 2015. Guess this whole thing was a big waste of time.
* Favorite bit from Michael Dudikoff's Imdb trivia page:
- His passion is designing homes, particularly ranch style. His fifth home
was called the "Dudarosa". He also delves into bronze sculpturing.
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