Rapid Fire is a celebration of the legacy of Bruce Lee, and an attempt at passing the cinematic torch to his son. Make no mistake, this movie’s primary excuse for existence is jerking off deprived Martial Arts movie fans stuck in a time before Bruceploitation. Both father and son died before their fame really took off but from the eerie slo-mo Kung Fu of the opening credits to the blown-out hair to his Liberal philosophies it doesn’t feel like a proverbial torch being passed so much as the smooth transition that can only be granted generationally. Nature-before-nurture. You won’t believe how many times it felt like I was watching an extension of Bruce himself as opposed to his son carving out his own niche: from the finesse to the wit, if only tweaked by their Lizard Oversee’r (cough… EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) to meet the demands of audiences in 1992. Think Enter the Dragon X Die Hard. But aside from the occasional motorcycle stunt or brandishing a gun, or fondling GRATUITOUS TIDDIES, Brandon sticks primarily to what made his father famous: kicking the shit out of dudes! And kick he can. Or could? What is a more appropriate tense?
Story-wise (and this is a movie, remember, and not one of those clip show cassettes that would come out whenever a company deems its properties obsolete), it’s pretty shocking just how comfortable the film is at juxtaposing flashbacks of Brandon’s movie-parents being killed in Tienanmen Square to his jadedness with corrupt authority in present-day America. You could never get away with this now unless your film had a “deeply-personal” agenda; was an awards-darling; or both. Rapid Fire is neither. It’s just a well-written action movie about a set of unfortunate circumstances surrounding a guy who is more-then-capable of getting through it. The mob wants him because he’s a murder witness. The FBI wants him because they’re in with the mob. The cops want him because he killed a corrupt Agent in self-defense. Brandon ends up, uh, spiritually-freeing all of them, including the head of an international Chinese crime syndicate along the way! Brandon doesn’t side with anyone. He’s happy wooing the ladies at art school and politely declines a cigarette when offered to him in police interrogation. He’s a good guy, and he doesn’t want to hurt you, but he can. Sometimes the movie tries to present him with a goofy affability that doesn’t always work to his favour: Brandon’s hair makes him look like Kramer when he’s walking in-and-out of rooms and some of the one-liners are forced. But let’s recall this was the nineties and this was what was popular then. Maybe that was supposed to make his true power more devastating when it was released. His father’s characters were far less ambiguous and more, uh, optimistically-sardonic? In my opinion, it is more likely that Bruce would kill you before Brandon would.
Powers Boothe is in the movie, too. He comes from a very exclusive club of second-tier character actors including Robert Davi and F. Murray Abraham who all have the caved-in cheekbones with poor complexions. The Potmark Boys. I copyright that for later use. I always liked Boothe: he has the charisma to play second-fiddle when he has to and here he fares no different. He does his usual tough-guy-smoker-schtick without fault and plays good foil to Brandon’s Keanu Reeves-meets-Jim Carrey thing the movie does with his character. It’s an hour-and-a-half, totally-forgettable hard candy with a nice soft center like Werther’s where every payoff is deserved. Brandon is known more for his next movie: The Crow, which proved to be his Swan Song; and arguably a directional marker for a future career away from his father’s. This could be why Rapid Fire maybe isn’t as well-known and subsequently harder-to-find as other movies from the same era that featured other stars like Van Damme or Seagal. But through the magic of mystery laserdisc lots off Craigslist I was able to watch it, and I’m sure there are ways for the saxophone-loving, nineties action enthusiast in YOU to watch it too. Like YouTube. You could pay to watch it on YouTube. But I would suggest that you don’t. You could watch all the free clips in-order and pretend it was edited for TV.
//jf 1.8.20
theory of a daskeman 