Nonureva Really Surprised!

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

saighor-1 As I was reading some harsh reviews of Hawk's Vengeance here, I was wondering what their authors were looking for? As a b-movies lover and GaryDaniels fan, I know what to expect from the start, I just want to be entertained for one and half an hour, nothing more! And as most of Gary Daniels flicks from the 90's, like Firepower, Deadly Target, Rage or Recoil, this one delivers! With plenty of action scenes, some funny lines and an overall decent story line, this TV movie kicks the butt of most blockbuster's Hollywood have to offer in this decade.

Comeuppance Reviews Captain Eric "Hawk" Kelly is a British cop who travels to Montreal, Canada because his stepbrother, Jack "Soldier" Kelly - yes, the infamous "SnakeEater" himself (we'll explain later) - has died in the line of duty. As it turns out, the streets are being overrun by rival gangs - the neo-Nazis (their gang is called, scarily, the Death Skulls) and the Asians. However, the big boss man is the intimidating Elias T. Garr (Magda). Teaming up with Soldier's former partner Lizzie (Heitmeyer), and Li Po Chung (Chiang), a scrappy street dude, Hawk seeks...well...VENGEANCE on his beloved stepbrother's killers. Will he succeed? Confusingly enough, this is the fourth film in the SnakeEater series popularized by Lorenzo Lamas. Sadly, and without warning, however, the SnakeEater has eaten his last snake and died. Don't worry, it's not a spoiler - at the opening of this movie, it's like, "Oh, SnakeEater is dead. Ho hum." No flashbacks, no blaze of glory, nothing. Perhaps Lamas was too ensconced in taping an episode of Are You Hot? (A real show, and the pride of the U.S.A.) to care to be involved.His loss is our gain, as the super-likable Gary Daniels fills in. Sure, they try to justify SnakeEater (1989) having a British step-brother plotwise - and, preposterously, a character even says to Hawk, referring to Soldier, "You look like him." Never mind that it's supposed to be his stepbrother. But it really doesn't matter, because the presence of Daniels and his martial arts are all that's really important here. There should have been some more action scenes, and this movie lacks the intensity of Daniels' PM work, especially the excellent Recoil (1998), but Hawk's is still worth seeing.Thanks to his Asian sidekick, there's plenty of good-natured racism that, once again, you'd never see today. Plus, if you've ever wanted to see an Asian gentleman and Gary Daniels dressed as Orthodox Jews and shooting people, your lucky day is here. Thanks to that, and some "cheesy" (you'll see) lines, there are some laughs in store. Cass Magda plays the baddie who stick-fights in his spare time, and you know the white supremacists are evil because one of them sports a "Satan" tattoo and their band Hatebeast plays at Club Anarchy on the weekends.The bottom line is this: Hawk's Vengeance is fairly dumb, but the charm of Gary Daniels carries the day.For more action insanity, please visit: www.comeuppancereviews.com

krantzstone The story is basically this: Eric Hawke (a British Marine) attends the funeral of his policeman brother who he discovers has been attempting to investigate the mysterious kidnappings and murders of a local Asian street gang. The clues seem to point to a rival neo-Nazi white supremacist gang as the culprits, but Lizzie (Hawke's brother's partner in the police force) is not so sure: she suspects a larger conspiracy which involves one of the city's most powerful crime bosses, a man by the name of Garr. As the body count rises, Eric, Lizzie and young Asian gang member Lipo Chung race to uncover the truth behind the murders, before more missing gang members wash up on the beach with missing organs...While _Hawk's Vengeance_ is not by far the worst movie I have ever seen, it does rank as one of the more generic and cliched budget action films I have seen. Its hackneyed script, banal dialogue and ridiculous plot cannot even begin to justify the production costs for this movie.Nevertheless, it is not without its saving graces: Gary Daniels, despite his 'Dick Van Dyke' "British" accent (he sounded more Aussie to me), is an appealing actor, with the makings of a charismatic action star whose (sadly) badly-written dialogue and poorly constructed character "development" relegate him to the status of a one-dimensional martial arts stick figure. Although some of the fight choreography (not to mention filming and editing) were laughably amateurish (there were some kicks and punches which obviously did not connect with their opponents), Daniels still comes across as an impressive martial arts hero. The only one more impressive than Daniels in terms of stage combat is the main villain Garr (played by Cass Magda), who unfortunately is killed off in a rather anticlimactic fight near the end of the movie, without a sufficiently mind-blowing tete-a-tete knock-down-drag-out martial arts fight ever occurring between Garr and Eric Hawke.The only truly interesting actor in this movie would have to be Jayne Heitmeyer (Earth: Final Conflict), who convincingly portrays your typical Hollywood female cop with beauty, brains and brawn in equal proportions. I was happy to see that although she had few fight scenes in the film, the ones she did have were not ones where she had to resort to hitting people from behind with props or having cat fights with a female villain, but actual stage-fighting. There is, of course, a typically gratuitous love scene between Hawke and Lizzie, which may be one of the only reasons you might even consider watching this movie.The story is convoluted, full of ridiculously unbelievable red herrings, unconvincing villains (neither the Asian gang members nor the neo-Nazi skinheads look remotely frightening, and are often unintentionally amusing despite their murderous ways and their semi-automatic weapons), stereotypical characters and plot holes galore. There are attempts at moments of levity, including a couple of 'Rosencrantz' and 'Guildenstern'-type characters in the form of two incompetent hitmen working for Garr, but aside from a few poorly executed jokes about Asian racial stereotypes (in banter between Hawke and Lipo) and female gender stereotypes (between Hawke and Lizzie), there is very little to laugh about, except for the aforementioned unintentionally amusing scenes.As I said, it's not the worst movie I have ever scene, but halfway through the movie I had already guessed that this movie was a Canadian production, and I was disappointed that I was proven correct. Once again, yet another movie that gives Canadian film-making a bad name. I give it two out of five stars, and that's pushing it.

Estraven Daniels plays a Special Forces Royal Marine, Hawk, whose stepbrother has been murdered, and who comes to the US exact vengeance. His opponent is played by martial arts choreographer and JKD practitioner Cass Magda. Daniels had no control over the fight scenes and they, like the film, are no great shakes. The plot is completely unbelievable - he goes on the rampage with impunity and no-one, not even the law intervenes. His character simply murders in cold blood and gets away with it. Didn't enjoy it.