2hotFeature
one of my absolute favorites!
Matrixiole
Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.
Neive Bellamy
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Comeuppance Reviews
Sam Wood (Huff) is a Vietnam War vet who is still chillin' in 'Nam because he "feels more free there". When a female reporter named Maryline (not a typo) Kane (Stavin) approaches him about being in a news package about returning to Vietnam, he reluctantly accepts. It soon transpires that the whole thing about being on TV was just a ruse to get Wood to go back behind enemy lines to rescue Maryline's father, who is still a prisoner of war at the Lu Tan prison camp. She sought him out because he's a one-man army with a surprisingly positive attitude. His motto of "It can be done!" is downright infectious. But rescuing dear old dad isn't going to be a walk in the Philippine park. He has to contend with super-evil arch-baddie Duan Loc (Pochath), his toady Bross (Puppo), and a never-ending stream of tan-outfitted, triangular-hat-wearing troops...who bring new meaning to the term 'cannon fodder'! Will Sam and Maryline be the new Sam and Diane? Or will he prove once and for all that he is BORN TO FIGHT? Man, Bruno Mattei was sure on a roll in the late '80s. To think that this one man, in this one short span of time, turned loose on the world Strike Commando (1987), Double Target (1987), Cop Game (1988), Robowar (1988), Strike Commando 2 (1988), and the movie up for discussion today, is just insane. Sure, he may have recycled a bit of footage here and there, but who's counting exploding huts? And this is just ONE guy! Never mind all the many others churning out video store-era gems at the time. Yeah, this never came out on VHS in the U.S., but you get our point.Both Huff and Mary Stavin return from Strike Commando 2, and while there is some standard bickering between them, this is truly Huff at his best and coolest. As some sort of lost-in-translation-from-the-original-Italian cross between Indiana Jones and Sonny Crockett - when he's not channeling Clint Eastwood with his low-slung cowboy hat and cigar stub - he drinks snake venom at a bar and massacres countless people with his machine guns and grenades. He has a lot of funny lines, mainly after he kills some baddies: "Shut up!", "Shove it!", "You started it!", etc., though it could be forgiven if it seems like his dialogue was written by one of those push-button insult machines of the time. Still, this is the Huff you want, unlike The Bad Pack (1997), which was disappointing Huff.Werner Pochath is notable as the evil baddie named Duan Loc, who has an 'Evil German' accent. Helpfully, he cries, "Sam Wood isn't like other people. He thinks he's inWINCEable! He was born to fight!" It's also handy to know there are massive battalions of Viet Cong soldiers still on the attack in 1989. The hotel assault scene is a movie highlight, as is the climax, with a mega-kill count and exploding huts galore. It's amazing the jungles of the Philippines were able to survive after all that was blown up there. But it's all for our entertainment, and even with the repeated footage (both dialogue scenes and blow-up scenes), it all adds up to a golden age of filmmaking never to be repeated. We should really treasure the output of this time and place.The soundtrack by Al Festa certainly won't be confused for John Williams anytime soon, no matter how hard he tries. We certainly preferred the non-ripoff synthesizer themes. That's what these movies are all about. Blow-ups, shooting, and the craziness in between. You gotta love it.God bless Bruno Mattei and all his hut-exploding ilk. The reverberations from the explosions that they created are still being felt today.
Bezenby
One of several hundred films Bruno Mattei made during 1988, this one features the entire cast of Cop Game (Romano, Massimo, Brent, Werner...well those four anyway) in a film that may or may not be set in Vietnam, involving POWs, Brent's Rambo type character, and revenge against a German turned Commie officer, Werner Pocath. To be honest, since Strike Commando, when I see a Bruno Mattei action film (also involving Clyde Anderson aka Claudio Fragrasso), I just send my brain on a walk to the shops and straps myself in. Non- sensical script? Check. Bamboo huts blowing up? Check. Filipino extras who by no stretch of the imagination look Vietnamese? Check. Massimo Vanni? Check. Who cares about anything else? Some of reviewer here beat me to the "And all the others..." slow motion speech which for me was the funniest part of the film, but this one is full of madness, from Werner's attempts to kill Huff followed by a "I want him alive", and the refusal of any baddie to take a shot at Huff while he strolls about in the open. Ah, Bruno, you're sadly missed. This is no Strike Commando, but nothing is Strike Commando - this one is also well worth a watch. Remember: It CAN be done.
bertom7
Born to Fight by Bruno Mattei, 2.7 on IMDb. I remember watching this movie on an early afternoon, a few years ago. It was on television, and I just happened to catch it from the beginning. For an moment I thought I was watching The Deer Hunter, but the guy wasn't playing Russian roulette, but he was squeezing the venom out of a cobra into his glass, and drank it, bottom's up. The Vietnamese people around him were horrified. Yes, he was really some hard piece of sh-t. Following the angry man throughout the movie, searching for the guy who was responsible for the death of his platoon members. When he finally gets the bastard, he takes his M16, or whatever big ass gun he's got, and starts shooting at him. Here we have the best part of the movie, he starts shooting and the picture gets into slow-motion, probably to get some nice shaking Rambo-muscles effect. And then he starts talking... in slow motion. "This is foooorr Joooohhnnyyy, and thiiis is foooor Peeeeete... and he sums up all his platoon members in slow motion. The bad guy, still standing, hands up, and shaking in slow motion under the impact of the bullets. After seven names or so, probably for budget reasons, the rest of the platoon is summarized as ...aaaand aaalllll the ooooothheeerrrrrrs....! hilarious.
HaemovoreRex
The ever watchable Brent Huff headlines here as super tough Vietnam Veteran Sam Woods, a one man army ala Rambo, in this typically entertaining action flick from the one and only and very sadly missed, Bruno Mattei.Yes, the result as expected is explosions galore (with the usual quota of 'borrowed' footage from various other Mattei flicks), gun fire aplenty (including some cool slow-mo shots of our main man firing off his M-60) and a plethora of one liners as mumbled by our hero whenever he takes out one of the enemy.This also benefits immensely from its great assembled cast of recognisable faces including the ever creepy Werner Pochath (playing, yep you've guessed it, a villain again!), Romano Puppo and Massimo Vanni.Well worth checking out for fellow Mattei fans. Note: The film goes under the title of Born To Fight here in the UK if you're lucky enough to find a copy.
