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The Karate Kids Aren't Alright - Shootfighter (1993) vs. Fallen Angels (1995) · Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films

• 0:09
  Tonight on Meet Your Double feature, two young fighters are
• 0:13
  forced to compete in a deadly martial arts tournament.
• 0:17
  Bonds will be tested and blood will be spilled in Shoot Fighter
• 0:21
  Fight to the Dead. Then 4 lost souls wander the
• 0:26
  streets of Hong Kong undercover of night, searching for meaning
• 0:30
  and companionship in their troubled lives.
• 0:33
  Bonds will be tested and blood might be spilled in Fallen
• 0:37
  Angels. It's a dark and deadly double
• 0:41
  feature, and it starts right now.
• 0:51
  Hello and welcome to Meet Your Double Feature, a double-blind
• 0:54
  movie review podcast. My name is Thomas, joined as
• 0:57
  always by my brother Frank. Frank, how are you?
• 0:59
  As always, what do I say? Excited.
• 1:02
  I'm always excited. Excited.
• 1:04
  You're always excited, You're never not excited.
• 1:07
  Yep, I got you. Followed it up with the most
• 1:13
  unexcited tone. Anyway, for folks who are new to
• 1:19
  our show, our premise on Meet Your Double Feature is very
• 1:21
  simple. Each episode, Frank and I are
• 1:24
  going to exchange recommendations for films that
• 1:26
  neither of us has previously seen.
• 1:28
  We'll then review those on the show and find out in real time
• 1:31
  if the movies we picked were new favorites for the other person
• 1:34
  or a complete dud. And if you've been listening so
• 1:37
  far, we have had a few examples of both.
• 1:39
  But Frank, I think you're kicking us off today with the
• 1:41
  first review I asked you to watch.
• 1:44
  I don't remember the year but the film is called Shoot
• 1:46
  Fighter, Fight to the Death. Yeah, it's 1993.
• 1:51
  Shoot. Fight. 1993 OK, early early 90s
• 1:56
  If you caught the end of our previous episode, you'll know
• 1:58
  that I selected this entirely based on the cast and premise
• 2:01
  because it features a number of actors from the original Karate
• 2:04
  Kid movie, specifically like the Cobra Kai guys, Johnny Lawrence
• 2:08
  and Sensei Crease. Presumably this was like stunt
• 2:11
  casting. They took both of them and cast
• 2:13
  them in a different martial arts movie several years later, and I
• 2:17
  can only imagine it's a 12 out of 1011 out of 10.
• 2:21
  How did we do? It's Well, listen, I have to, I
• 2:27
  have to tell you about my experience watching Shoot
• 2:30
  Fighter, OK. Oh.
• 2:32
  OK. There's there's there's a
• 2:34
  preamble to this. So I did what I always do,
• 2:41
  right? Let's go on to Google just to
• 2:43
  see where the movie is streaming, right?
• 2:46
  You know, I'm like, where can I watch this movie?
• 2:48
  So I type it in and the only thing that pops up is it's it's
• 2:53
  showing on Sling TV, which is one of those like free with ads
• 2:57
  services, you know? So yeah, Sling TV, remember
• 3:02
  that. That'll be important.
• 3:04
  Wait, remember later. There's a quiz, folks.
• 3:06
  Yeah, and later is right now because I watched it.
• 3:13
  Gotcha. I watched it on Sling TV.
• 3:18
  And to Fast forward to the very end of the movie real quick, the
• 3:24
  movie ends on a freeze frame. Funny enough.
• 3:28
  It's like a freeze frame of this guy getting punched.
• 3:31
  And then the title card pops up over the freeze frame and it
• 3:36
  says shoot fighter two and I'll wait what?
• 3:40
  Wait a second? What?
• 3:40
  I was what? I was saying, did you watch Shoe
• 3:47
  Fighter 2? I watched the second movie
• 3:50
  first. Come on, there's no indication
• 3:57
  during the movie that something else had happened.
• 3:59
  None. None.
• 4:01
  I watched the whole movie without realizing it was a
• 4:04
  sequel. Cause were the two actors still
• 4:07
  in it? Well, Zakka's still in it.
• 4:11
  OK, Johnny Lawrence is in it. Yeah, exactly.
• 4:14
  But I got literally I watched the whole movie and I was like,
• 4:18
  I thought Chris was supposed to be in this movie too, but but it
• 4:24
  literally like the story gave no indication at there's like there
• 4:28
  was. No title card.
• 4:30
  Not at the. Beginning and early movie title
• 4:32
  card OK. And here's the thing, here's the
• 4:34
  thing. I blame Sling TV for this
• 4:37
  because I, I, this was, this was the difference here.
• 4:43
  I tested this afterwards because I, I did this on my computer.
• 4:47
  I was watching it on my computer.
• 4:48
  Like I said, just typed it into Google, clicked the link to
• 4:51
  Sling TV. And then like, you know, I
• 4:53
  paused the movie a couple times, like go grab a drink or go to
• 4:55
  the bathroom or something. And you know, like on the the
• 4:58
  video player like above the progress bar, it said the title
• 5:02
  of the movie and it said shoot fighter fight to the death which
• 5:05
  is the first movie so. Oh, so we had a legit like UI
• 5:09
  problem here. Yes, yes, that it like when I
• 5:13
  was sitting there watching it, it was telling me this is what
• 5:15
  you asked for. This is the first movie.
• 5:19
  And then it wasn't until the very end of that.
• 5:21
  My first thought was like, they really thought there was going
• 5:24
  to be a sequel already. And then I was like, Oh no, this
• 5:28
  was the sequel. Can you imagine just sitting
• 5:31
  through this whole review being like, I can't believe they
• 5:33
  thought there was going to be a shoot fighter too.
• 5:35
  Yeah, yeah. And I'm, I'm serious.
• 5:37
  Like there's one line in that second movie where they're like,
• 5:42
  oh, you know, that business back in Mexico or whatever.
• 5:45
  And I was like, I thought that that was just like to allude to
• 5:50
  this character's like past, you know?
• 5:52
  Yeah, world building. Yeah, exactly.
• 5:54
  But no, that was the first movie that they were talking about.
• 5:59
  But that's the only indication that this was a sequel to
• 6:03
  anything. So are we now reviewing Shoot
• 6:06
  Fighter two or did you watch the first one?
• 6:08
  Well, I'm a. Professional.
• 6:09
  So I went back and I watched this.
• 6:14
  This is why. This is why I asked to push a
• 6:17
  recording date to today instead of yesterday because I had to go
• 6:21
  back and watch the first shoot Fighter.
• 6:24
  Oh, that was yesterday. Oh.
• 6:25
  Yes, yes, I was like I got a whole nother freaking movie to
• 6:29
  watch here. You played that so cool.
• 6:31
  You were just like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, boss, can we can
• 6:33
  we wait like 12 hours? Yeah, I.
• 6:37
  Didn't want to tell you. I had to.
• 6:38
  I had to reveal it in this manner.
• 6:40
  That's awesome. You just watched.
• 6:43
  Double shoot fighter yes, you're getting a double feature.
• 6:45
  Double feature on my end because I got to talk about both of them
• 6:48
  so. Honestly, honestly, in a really
• 6:52
  weird way, that kind of applies to the movie you asked me to
• 6:54
  watch too. I didn't watch 2 films but I'll
• 6:56
  get into that when I talk about Fallen Angels.
• 6:59
  That's it. There's always some connection
• 7:01
  we can make between the movies somehow.
• 7:03
  Very loose and I will I will pull on that thread.
• 7:06
  OK, OK. Yeah.
• 7:08
  So OK, how should we review this though?
• 7:10
  Do we need to review Street Street Fighter Shoot Fighter Two
• 7:15
  first? Well, I was going to ask you.
• 7:17
  I mean, I, I don't know, I feel like we could do them in like
• 7:23
  honestly the main one I I want to talk about is the first one
• 7:26
  because the second one kind of sucks, but.
• 7:28
  Why don't we do the original Shoot Fighter, which you watched
• 7:32
  yesterday and then just like a brief touch in on on things from
• 7:37
  Shoot Fighter too, Because at that point I'll know the
• 7:39
  characters, you know? Yeah.
• 7:41
  Oh, they'll be. So yeah, of course.
• 7:42
  I'll know their story, their you know how they behave, that
• 7:45
  business in Mexico. Business in Mexico, man, that
• 7:48
  is. The first movie you remember in
• 7:50
  Avengers, like the first several Avengers movies they had was
• 7:54
  like Hawkeye and Black Widow kept saying like, oh, that
• 7:56
  business in Budapest, remember. And it was supposed to be just
• 7:59
  like a a bit. I feel like that's how they did
• 8:01
  it in Shoot fighter. That's what I thought.
• 8:03
  That's why I didn't even like it, didn't even register that
• 8:06
  that might have been events we were supposed to be familiar
• 8:08
  with, because they have no bearing on the second movie at
• 8:10
  all. It's just like basically a
• 8:13
  throwaway line in that second one.
• 8:16
  So yeah, so funny. I can't get over this the the
• 8:21
  the coalescence of factors that you had to use a resource that
• 8:25
  actually just auto played the wrong movie with the title of
• 8:27
  the other one. Yes, and by sheer coincidence
• 8:29
  the movie and its opening credits doesn't say the title,
• 8:32
  but at the end of the movie it does.
• 8:34
  Because if it hadn't shown the title at the end, you would have
• 8:36
  just been talking about this as if it was the first movie.
• 8:39
  Exactly, that was such a jump scare at the end of the movie.
• 8:43
  I was like the like the way my brain had to go through the
• 8:46
  steps to process what had just happened.
• 8:48
  Like shoot Fighter 2 and it's so abrupt too.
• 8:51
  The movie just ends. Like I said, it's like mid
• 8:54
  sentence almost. It's just somebody getting
• 8:56
  punched. Freeze frame title card.
• 8:58
  And I'm like, wait, what just happened?
• 9:00
  It's like the end of The Sopranos where he's like in the
• 9:02
  middle of saying something and then we cut to black, but then
• 9:04
  it pops up with Sopranos too. Yes, just as confusing as if
• 9:09
  that had happened. It's really funny.
• 9:12
  This is my favorite episode. It was it.
• 9:16
  Yeah, it was, it was a lot. It was a lot for me to deal
• 9:20
  with. I got, you know, I got, we got 2
• 9:24
  movies out of it though. Two.
• 9:25
  We got 2. Movies.
• 9:26
  OK, well let's I guess let's not waste any time.
• 9:30
  What happens in the 1st? One well also one last thing I
• 9:33
  want to say about finding the movie Sure the first movie is
• 9:36
  not streaming anywhere. I I thought I was gonna have to
• 9:40
  sail the high seas to find it, but thankfully some person shout
• 9:45
  out to whoever did this uploaded like a pretty decent like 720P
• 9:49
  version of the movie to YouTube. So that's where I saw the first
• 9:53
  one was just somebody uploaded it to YouTube.
• 9:55
  Thankfully. OK, yeah, that happens.
• 9:57
  I've seen many a good movie randomly added to YouTube by
• 10:00
  some rando. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:02
  And I feel like, you know, for a movie like this, it's like, who
• 10:04
  cares? Who even owns the rights to
• 10:06
  that? Just let it be.
• 10:07
  It's a. Good question.
• 10:08
  I don't think anybody's clamoring to be like what
• 10:10
  they're sharing Shoot fighter and then they're like, which
• 10:13
  one? What do you mean there's more
• 10:16
  than one? No, we just put that in at the
• 10:19
  end. That was shoot fighter too.
• 10:20
  It was just the credits. It could have been, who knows?
• 10:24
  All right, This is a very nebulous film series that is
• 10:28
  like is a Karate Kid like spin off sort of.
• 10:32
  Yeah, RIP off spin off. I mean, it's exactly, Yeah, to
• 10:35
  just get into it. It's exactly like you said it.
• 10:37
  It was stunt casting in this first one to bring in Billy
• 10:42
  Zapka and it's Crease's name I think.
• 10:45
  It's like Martin Cove. Yes, Martin Cove, the credits,
• 10:48
  it credits him as a special appearance by Martin Cove, even
• 10:53
  though he's like the main antagonist of the film.
• 10:55
  And I think the reason for that, if I was like, what I was seeing
• 11:00
  on the trivia, is that there was a different cut of the movie
• 11:03
  without him in it at one point, which so he was added in, which
• 11:08
  kind of leads to, you know, how in Heat, there's that scene
• 11:13
  where it's Al Pacino and Robert De Niro and it's like their
• 11:17
  first time on screen together, but they're not actually on
• 11:19
  screen together because their scenes were shot at different
• 11:21
  times. And it's just.
• 11:23
  Like I'm loving this comparison already.
• 11:25
  Pacino Dinero to the two guys from Shoot Fighter.
• 11:27
  Well that's exactly when those two icons sat across from each
• 11:31
  other. Everybody got excited and
• 11:34
  clapped before they said anything.
• 11:35
  This. Is awesome.
• 11:38
  No. Yeah.
• 11:42
  So they filmed Martin Cove in separately, presumably after the
• 11:46
  original shoot of the movie. Yes, because there's a scene,
• 11:49
  there is a scene where it's it's it's Billy Zapko and Martin Cove
• 11:52
  talking to each other. But it's it's shot in this like
• 11:55
  shot, reverse shot way where they weren't actually there at
• 11:58
  the same time, you know, and it's just like, oh, but these
• 12:01
  are the 2. This is your connection here.
• 12:03
  These are your two Karate Kid characters, you know, these are
• 12:06
  your Cobra Kai guys. Interesting.
• 12:07
  But but yeah, so Zapco was in from the beginning, but but
• 12:10
  Martin Cove was added in later. But he's great in it.
• 12:13
  He he's he's the main antagonist.
• 12:15
  And I think in the original cut of the movie, the guy who winds
• 12:18
  up being like his second in command was who was supposed to
• 12:22
  be when they originally shot it. He was the main antagonist.
• 12:26
  He got demoted. He got demoted, yeah.
• 12:28
  And so, but he has he winds up having some great scenes
• 12:31
  throughout the film that were presumably there from the
• 12:34
  original cut where he's the one sort of like interacting with
• 12:37
  the the protagonists of the film a lot.
• 12:40
  But he's played by Edward Albert, who you and I know from
• 12:47
  he is Mr. Collins from Time Force.
• 12:51
  It's oh, Wes's dad. The Red Rangers dad from Time
• 12:55
  Force man. See that's the other thing.
• 12:56
  We get a Power Rangers reference in every episode.
• 12:59
  Oh, and it gets better from there actually.
• 13:02
  So this film was it was there's three credited writers, but the
• 13:07
  the the top billed writer is Judd Lynn.
• 13:12
  No way. Judd Lynn, dude.
• 13:14
  And not only that, this was his first writing credit and his
• 13:19
  only writing credit outside of Power Rangers.
• 13:22
  That's awesome. OK.
• 13:23
  I feel like we need to contextualize that.
• 13:25
  So yeah, Judd Lynn was a was a lead writer for the Power
• 13:28
  Rangers series in the 90s when it was like still kind of a big
• 13:31
  deal. I don't know if he was writing
• 13:33
  on it from the time that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first
• 13:36
  started, but he definitely carried through it all the way
• 13:38
  until, like, 2001, where he wrote Time for Us, which is the
• 13:41
  one you and I like the most as kids and as adults, yeah.
• 13:45
  I was gonna say that qualifier is not necessary.
• 13:48
  Sorry, put down my signed copyright.
• 13:49
  Now that's fascinating. So he if this movie was 93,
• 13:54
  that's also when Power Rangers started.
• 13:56
  So I guess maybe he did this and then immediately transitioned
• 13:59
  over and was like, yeah, I can write karate stuff.
• 14:01
  Yeah, well, I looked it up. He was a production coordinator
• 14:04
  on Power Rangers from the beginning of the series.
• 14:07
  And then this was 93 and then from 94 onward, he was a writer
• 14:12
  for Power Rangers. And he actually, he left the
• 14:15
  series after a certain point. It might have been after Time
• 14:20
  Force actually. I want to say it's around the
• 14:22
  time that Power Rangers became a Disney property sometime in like
• 14:25
  the early 2000s. Yes, but he's recently come back
• 14:28
  and now he's a writer for the series again.
• 14:30
  OK, anyway this is a huge pot for me.
• 14:33
  Big fan of Judd Lynn? Yeah, yeah.
• 14:35
  So it's him and Edward Albert, who was a major character from
• 14:40
  that series too. So there's a lot, there's a lot
• 14:43
  coming together. He also got Bolo Young, who's
• 14:44
  obviously. Like Bolo Young.
• 14:46
  Martial arts film royalty? Yeah, anyway, then the movie
• 14:50
  happens. Honestly I have no idea how much
• 14:54
  of that is going to make it into the episode.
• 14:55
  It's literally just 15 minutes of us going.
• 14:58
  Wow first Frank watch the long movie.
• 15:00
  Also Power Rangers. I just thought that was fun,
• 15:04
  yeah. That's super fun.
• 15:05
  Now I'm keeping that in. That's for the.
• 15:07
  That's for the real fans for. The sickos out there that.
• 15:10
  Yeah, chuckling heads in the house.
• 15:13
  OK, please continue. Yeah, so, yeah.
• 15:17
  So you got Karate Kid, you got the Power Rangers, you got
• 15:21
  there's a lot going on here. And the movie is honestly it's a
• 15:25
  lot of fun. Like you were saying before, 11
• 15:28
  out of 10 in terms of just sure sheer like B movie martial arts
• 15:32
  action, you know, OK, good. Because some of those are some
• 15:36
  of the B movie martial arts movies look like they're going
• 15:38
  to be like goofy fun and then they just get like real boring,
• 15:41
  you know, like just not a lot of action or like a really awkward
• 15:43
  story. Sounds like this avoided those
• 15:46
  problems. Yeah, the first one.
• 15:52
  The duology of shoot fighter. Yeah, shoot fighter too.
• 15:55
  My goodness. But yeah, no, it's it's there's
• 16:00
  been a million movies like this. I mean, even at one point I was
• 16:02
  talking to you about wanting to. I still kind of do want to write
• 16:05
  like a similar type of like martial arts film, but I think
• 16:10
  this one was kind of taking. This was around the time when,
• 16:15
  like UFC was first taking off. OK.
• 16:19
  And so there was like, you would see a pop up in a lot of media
• 16:23
  around this time where it was like this kind of mysterious
• 16:26
  thing where it was like, there's no rules and no weight classes,
• 16:29
  which early UFC was, was a mess. It really was like that, Yeah.
• 16:33
  They were shoot fighting. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 16:36
  So yeah, they talk about, that's how they talk about it in this
• 16:38
  movie, like shoot fighting. Like it's like, what is it so
• 16:43
  mysterious? So mysterious.
• 16:45
  How does it work? You fight the guy, Chief.
• 16:47
  I don't know what you. Yeah, yeah.
• 16:50
  But basically to get into the setup or the story of the movie,
• 16:55
  it starts with a flashback where it's like Bolo Young's character
• 17:00
  and Martin Cove are competing in like, I don't, I guess early
• 17:04
  shoot fighting and you know, it shows Bolo Young like he wins
• 17:09
  his fight and then Martin Cove is like fighting his friend in
• 17:12
  the next round. And he's like after this to me
• 17:14
  in the finals, you know, and then Martin Cove winds up like
• 17:17
  killing Bolo Young's friend in their fight.
• 17:20
  And he literally does the, I can't remember which John Claude
• 17:23
  movie this was, but you remember the one where like, I heard he
• 17:25
  ripped a guy's throat out and then he like actually does it
• 17:27
  later in the movie? Oh, that's actually from
• 17:30
  Roadhouse. Patrick Swayze.
• 17:31
  I'm sorry, you're right. Yeah, I was mixing it up.
• 17:33
  That is a Roadhouse thing, yeah. That is the entire first act of
• 17:36
  Roadhouse is them saying that Patrick Swayze, quote, ripped a
• 17:38
  guy's throat out. And you're supposed to be like,
• 17:40
  I don't know what that means, but don't worry, he doesn't.
• 17:44
  It's also like in Roadhouse, they set it up like it's like
• 17:47
  this like urban legend type thing.
• 17:49
  But no. Then he literally rips a guy's
• 17:51
  throat and so does Martin Cove. Martin Cove does the exact same
• 17:53
  thing. He just.
• 17:54
  Rips a man's throat out and kills him.
• 17:56
  And that scene is so awkward because like, Bolo Young is
• 17:59
  there and like the ref, like, like Martin Cove's like choking
• 18:02
  this guy out. And the ref is like, OK, it's
• 18:03
  over. You won.
• 18:04
  He's like, leave him alone. And Martin Cove is just like
• 18:06
  staring Bolo Young down this whole time.
• 18:08
  And Bolo Young just doesn't help his friend.
• 18:11
  I'm just like, what? What are you doing?
• 18:13
  Like he. Respects the rules I guess.
• 18:15
  He's not supposed to be in there.
• 18:16
  But the match is over. Like the ref is trying to pull
• 18:18
  pull Martin Cove off, but Bolo Young's just like, Nah, he's got
• 18:21
  this, my buddy's fine. And then?
• 18:23
  Jimmy's going to turn it around. Just a few minutes.
• 18:25
  Yeah, he just rips his throat out.
• 18:32
  Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. Jimmy, put that throwback in.
• 18:36
  Jimmy, we need you out there. Yeah, it's a bullion.
• 18:40
  Such an idiot, but good start. Yeah.
• 18:47
  Yeah. So then this sets off, I guess
• 18:49
  Martin Cove's whole thing is then he gets like ejected.
• 18:52
  They're like, you're done, you're done.
• 18:53
  You disrespected shoot fighting. You're never shoot fighting
• 18:56
  again, kid. Everything about this is so
• 19:02
  funny. It is, it is, it's it's honestly
• 19:06
  hilarious. And so, but then I guess he just
• 19:08
  really wanted to fight Bolo. Like that's his whole thing is
• 19:11
  like he wanted to fight him and he never got the chance to
• 19:14
  because he got kicked out of the league or whatever and like
• 19:17
  exiled to Mexico. I think is is what happened.
• 19:20
  Oh, the business in Mexico? Yeah, yeah.
• 19:23
  So anyway, then we we jump forward in time.
• 19:27
  Billy Zapka is like a student. It literally looks like a scene
• 19:31
  straight out of Cobra Kai. It's like the first time you see
• 19:33
  him, he's in like a karate Dojo, like teaching these kids karate.
• 19:37
  And it might as well be the same set they used from Cobra Kai.
• 19:39
  I'm like, what do we? Yeah, I'm like, this is the same
• 19:42
  thing. But this is so interesting.
• 19:44
  This is like, you know, you had like baby Billy Zapka and Karate
• 19:47
  Kid and then like like older in Cobra Kai.
• 19:51
  This is like his middle Pokémon evolution like.
• 19:54
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a peak peak SAP code,
• 19:57
  you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 20:00
  And honestly, he's great. He's such a good, like I, I,
• 20:03
  he's what carries that Cobra Kai show and like he carries this
• 20:07
  movie too. I'm like, he's had a good career
• 20:10
  specifically doing these types of like martial arts focused
• 20:13
  films, but honestly feel like he could have done more outside of
• 20:16
  that. He's not the strongest actor,
• 20:17
  but he definitely has a good charisma to him and he's just
• 20:20
  entertaining to watch. Yeah, there's something for
• 20:22
  being unlikeable. You know, you don't have to be
• 20:24
  like amazing dramatic actors as long as you have like kind of
• 20:27
  just on screen magnetism. And I agree, he got kind of
• 20:30
  limited by by typecasting here. Yeah, totally, totally.
• 20:34
  So anyway, he's he's teaching these kids at this karate school
• 20:37
  and, and Bolo is, is his sense. He calls him Shifu, which is I
• 20:41
  guess. I'm sure that's a term that's a
• 20:44
  thing. I'm just not.
• 20:44
  Familiar with? Yeah.
• 20:46
  Like sensei equivalent maybe? Yeah, I believe so.
• 20:49
  I believe so. And so then his friend, who is
• 20:54
  also a martial artist comes back to into town and he's like bad
• 20:58
  boy, leather jacket, cool guy. And Billy Zapka is dating his
• 21:04
  sister. So these are like your lead
• 21:06
  characters. It's, you know, Billy Zapka, his
• 21:09
  love interest and then her brother, who like the two of
• 21:13
  them are friends. And honestly, that guy's great,
• 21:16
  too. The actor's name is is Michael
• 21:18
  Bernardo. And he's also a martial artist.
• 21:22
  Oh, I want to point out too, Billy Zebka does like all of his
• 21:27
  own stunts in this movie, from what I can tell.
• 21:29
  Oh, neat. He like when when they're doing
• 21:32
  his action sequences, they shoot it wide, you know, so you can
• 21:35
  tell it's him and he's got some great moves.
• 21:38
  I didn't realize. Like, maybe it's been a while
• 21:41
  since I've gone back and I guess watched the original Karate Kid
• 21:44
  and, you know, I think they did a lot of stunt work, stunt
• 21:47
  double work for him in the in the new Cobra Kai series.
• 21:49
  But I was like, shocked at how much of like these, you know,
• 21:54
  sweet kicks that that Zapko was pulling out himself.
• 21:57
  That's really neat. I mean, I I would have assumed
• 22:00
  that he could do a lot, but like you said, even sometimes when
• 22:02
  the actors are capable, they still use a lot of stunt
• 22:06
  stuntmen in the same role just because of the worry that they
• 22:09
  might get injured. You know, like if your lead
• 22:10
  actor breaks his foot doing a kick then the whole production
• 22:13
  is halted even if he does know how.
• 22:15
  Of course, absolutely. But in this get out there, Zapka
• 22:19
  kicks. We'll just edit somebody else in
• 22:22
  if you get it. So we got this other, we got
• 22:24
  Bernardo 4 over here. We got Bernardo, we got Ralph
• 22:27
  Macchio in the wings. Also, this film was the same
• 22:34
  fight choreographer as The Karate Kid series.
• 22:37
  Interesting. So this is.
• 22:39
  Literally bridging the gap between like 80s martial arts
• 22:42
  classics like Karate Kid and Bloodsport to the 90s era stuff
• 22:45
  which is mostly Power Rangers. Well I was looking up that
• 22:50
  choreographer as well. He also did it was the he was
• 22:53
  the stunt and fight choreographer for the live
• 22:55
  action Ninja Turtles movies too. See.
• 22:58
  This is great. How do we not know this movie
• 23:00
  existed? I know it feels like something
• 23:02
  we should have watched like a dozen times when we were
• 23:04
  younger. Yes, yes, and the first one I
• 23:07
  would rewatch the second. One, I'm so excited.
• 23:13
  About the second one, the second one is upsetting, but the first
• 23:18
  one, the first one's fun. And I like like I was saying the
• 23:22
  other character too, Michael Bernardo, cuz he, he is not a
• 23:27
  strong actor by any means, but he again goes out there and does
• 23:31
  some sweet kicks, sweet kicks, but and they tell an interesting
• 23:34
  story with these two. So basically, like where the
• 23:36
  story of the movie goes is Martin Cove, like finds out that
• 23:41
  these two are the students of Bolo and so he wants to lure
• 23:47
  them to his shoot fighting tournament in Mexico in the
• 23:51
  hopes that Bolo will come with them so that he can fight Bolo.
• 23:57
  That's all he wants to do. It's just like throw hands with
• 24:00
  this. Man, so the villain of the story
• 24:02
  isn't even really concerned with the main characters of the
• 24:05
  story. He's concerned with, I mean, if
• 24:08
  you count Bolo Young's character as one of the main characters,
• 24:11
  even though he's really not no, but it, but it leads to some
• 24:15
  interesting developments for our main characters because like
• 24:19
  basically like Billy Zapka, he you know, he's running this
• 24:23
  karate school and I guess he like took out a loan from some
• 24:28
  loan sharks and they're like after him.
• 24:30
  And so he gets into some fights early on in the movie when his
• 24:33
  buddy Bernardo is back in town and they're like, you know,
• 24:36
  they're beating up these guys who are trying to come after him
• 24:38
  for this money. And so then Martin Cove sends
• 24:42
  Edward Albert's character to like recruit them and he offers
• 24:45
  them all this money to come be in the shoot fighting tournament
• 24:47
  in Mexico. And he and Michael Bernard, his
• 24:50
  character's name is Nick. It's it's Nick and Ruben, Billy
• 24:53
  Zappos, Ruben. And his friend's name is Nick.
• 24:56
  He's like, no man, this this seems sketchy as hell.
• 24:59
  I don't want to go to Mexico and do whatever shoot fighting is,
• 25:02
  but. They can't figure out the
• 25:05
  concept of a real fight. There's like, all I know is like
• 25:09
  pro wrestling tables, ladders and chairs.
• 25:12
  There's. Actually a lot because like,
• 25:14
  because the two of them early in the movie, like Ruben and Nick,
• 25:18
  they, they fight each other in basically like the all valley
• 25:21
  again. It's like it looks like the same
• 25:23
  locations it's all shot in, like the valley in California.
• 25:26
  So it it just looks like Cobra Kai and Karate Kid.
• 25:30
  But it's it's like, you know, there's a lot of dialogue
• 25:33
  between them where they're like there's no points.
• 25:35
  There's no points in shoe fighting like kill or be killed.
• 25:38
  Yeah, Yeah. It's not the like first to
• 25:40
  three, Yes, OK, that is a difference.
• 25:42
  I mean all of Karate Kid was built around the like point
• 25:45
  system fighting. Yes, exactly.
• 25:47
  And so like the two of them have like kind of a playful fight
• 25:49
  where they compete against each other in some kind of like
• 25:51
  competition and Billy Zaco wins that one three points to 1.
• 25:56
  He kind of squashed Nick, but. Wow, not making Nick look good.
• 26:01
  But this leads to something later in the movie.
• 26:04
  But so then they they, you know, because he needs the money
• 26:07
  because the guy has these loan trucks after him.
• 26:09
  Nick doesn't want him to go, but he's like, I'll go with you.
• 26:11
  And then he like lies to his girlfriend about, you know, what
• 26:15
  they're going to do. So they wind up and they go do
• 26:17
  this shoot fighting. It winds up being really
• 26:19
  dangerous The whole time. Nick is like, we got to get out
• 26:22
  of here, man. Like this is crazy.
• 26:24
  And it leads to this. Interesting intersection between
• 26:29
  our two late characters where like at the beginning of the
• 26:31
  movie, Nick is like the bad boy, Like he was like out of town
• 26:34
  because he was like on the run from some people, Like he had
• 26:36
  to, you know, ditch town for some reason.
• 26:40
  And Billy Zapka is the one who was kind of like the more like
• 26:43
  straight and narrow, you know, he was like teaching this karate
• 26:46
  school and stuff. And they kind of start to go in
• 26:48
  like opposite directions as the movie goes on.
• 26:51
  Nick is like, dude, I don't want to do this man.
• 26:53
  He's like, I'm going to go train with Bolo to do like actual
• 26:56
  competition martial arts. And Billy Zach was like, Nah,
• 26:59
  man, shoot, fighting like you. Got a taste for it?
• 27:04
  Yeah. Man, that's funny.
• 27:06
  He's an addict. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:08
  Well, it's just, it's interesting because I was like,
• 27:10
  oh, this is kind of fun, like to see these two characters like
• 27:13
  kind of go in these opposite directions.
• 27:16
  And there's like, there's even like a montage, you know, near
• 27:19
  the end of the film where it's like young is like training the
• 27:23
  other guy and they're doing like kind of like classic Karate Kid
• 27:26
  type montage training. And then Billy Jack is just like
• 27:30
  fighting dudes in the street, like, Oh no.
• 27:36
  And so anyway, this culminates with them winding up in the
• 27:41
  finals of this shoot fighting thing.
• 27:43
  Like, and it had it's this fun sequence where it's like Billy
• 27:46
  Zapka. He's like competing in it where
• 27:49
  is like, you know, his friend Nick didn't want to, so he he
• 27:52
  like stayed behind, But then he goes later to try and basically
• 27:56
  save Billy Zapka because when they're fighting in the finals,
• 27:58
  you know, they're like fighting to the death.
• 28:00
  So he's like, he's going to die out there.
• 28:02
  And there's this whole thing, there's this funny like
• 28:06
  recurring thing where it's like Billy Zapka just kind of, you
• 28:09
  know, he left his girlfriend behind.
• 28:11
  And then there's just like a series of scenes where she's
• 28:13
  like, where'd he go? And they're like to Mexico.
• 28:16
  And then like Nick leaves and then she asks like somebody
• 28:19
  else. She's like, no, where did Nick
• 28:20
  go? And they're like to Mexico.
• 28:24
  So much business down there. And then Bolo is the last one.
• 28:28
  Then he leaves and then she's asking somebody else.
• 28:29
  She's like, no, where did Bolo go?
• 28:30
  And like to Mexico, She's like, damn it.
• 28:32
  And then she's out of the movie. Part of the movie there's.
• 28:36
  No, there's no resolution with her character.
• 28:40
  Like you think it's going to lead to like Billy Zappa kind of
• 28:43
  having this redemption and then like patching things up with
• 28:45
  her. But past a certain point in the
• 28:47
  movie, you do not see her again. And.
• 28:49
  She's kind of in line with The Karate Kid tradition, too.
• 28:52
  For some reason, Larusso in those movies never has, like, a
• 28:55
  real resolution with his love interest, and then they just
• 28:57
  tell you in the next movie that she disappeared at some point.
• 28:59
  Yeah. She's not in the next movie
• 29:01
  either, which is funny because Nick is in the next movie and
• 29:04
  like that that's his sister, but she's not mentioned at all in
• 29:08
  the second movie. Didn't you have a sister?
• 29:11
  What? Not Mexico.
• 29:14
  That's got a shoot, fighting, shoot.
• 29:15
  Yeah. So anyway, it leads to a fun
• 29:18
  ending sequence where, like, Billy Zakko is like, fighting in
• 29:20
  the finals of the shoot fighting tournament.
• 29:23
  And, like, Nick is like backstage, like fighting these
• 29:27
  other guys trying to, like, break in and, like, save him.
• 29:30
  And he winds up backstage fighting the champ of the shoot
• 29:35
  fighting Arena, who's kind of been this, like, background
• 29:37
  character hanging around with the bad guys.
• 29:39
  Interesting. Yeah.
• 29:40
  I'm like, this is fun. Just a little backstage fight
• 29:43
  with the champ back here between Nick.
• 29:46
  Now we are doing pro wrestling again.
• 29:47
  Yeah, yeah, exactly so. But the conclusion of the movie
• 29:51
  leads to like Nick gets captured and Martin Cove like makes a
• 29:57
  deal with him. He was like, you know, he's like
• 29:59
  you go out there into the cage, you fight one of my fighters.
• 30:02
  And if you win, you know, you and and Ruben Billy Zapka can go
• 30:06
  free. And then he makes them fight
• 30:08
  each other. So it's like the two friends
• 30:11
  fighting, like shoot fighting and and Nick wins this time.
• 30:15
  So this is. Like.
• 30:17
  You know, cuz he kind of got beat very easily by Ruben in the
• 30:20
  beginning, but now Ruben's gone down this dark path.
• 30:22
  Just the shoot fighting dark side.
• 30:24
  And so Nick wins. But then the the end of the
• 30:27
  movie, Bolo finally shows up and then Martin Cove's like forget
• 30:31
  everything that's I got to fight this dude.
• 30:33
  And so then like those two wind up fighting in the cage and then
• 30:37
  Bolo wins and then it's like hard cut to credits, movie is
• 30:41
  over. There is no resolution for our
• 30:43
  lead characters at all. They just sit on the sidelines
• 30:46
  for the like the end of the movie.
• 30:49
  So weird. Such a like cheap movie thing of
• 30:53
  like just end on a on a high beat and don't spend money
• 30:57
  filming anything afterwards. Well, it's also like talking
• 31:00
  about like, The Karate Kid. They were seemingly trying to
• 31:04
  make Bolo their Mr. Miyagi because like, oh.
• 31:08
  That's a hard sell. It is and it doesn't work like
• 31:12
  because like hard cut after he beats Martin Cove and then it's
• 31:16
  like over the like the credits are over this like footage of
• 31:19
  him like practicing his karate on the beach or whatever.
• 31:22
  And it's like the way they present his character throughout
• 31:26
  the movie, like he almost never talks.
• 31:28
  But I think that's more of like a language barrier thing than
• 31:30
  anything else. That's what I mean, Bolo, yeah,
• 31:32
  Like your wise and mentor character needs to be more of
• 31:36
  like someone who can speak to the main character and kind of
• 31:39
  offer guidance than someone who is just physically capable and
• 31:43
  probably still close enough to their prime that it doesn't even
• 31:46
  make sense. Like Bolo works as a bad guy.
• 31:49
  He could work as the good guy in the movie, but he should be more
• 31:52
  involved. Not not.
• 31:53
  He's not Master Splinter. Yes, exactly.
• 31:55
  And that's how they present him in this and this.
• 31:59
  And I mean, this is one of his rare good guy roles.
• 32:01
  I think he's usually cast as like the intimidating bad guy
• 32:04
  character. There's a hilarious scene where
• 32:09
  when it's like during the montage where it's Bolo, he's
• 32:12
  training ZAP, his friend Nick. And they like there's no
• 32:17
  dialogue in the scene because it's like music is playing over
• 32:19
  it. And they come upon this kid.
• 32:21
  He's like playing basketball and Bolo's like, let me show you
• 32:24
  something, you know, But it's all like pantomimed out.
• 32:25
  He's you're just watching this happen.
• 32:27
  And he like shows the kid how to do this like trick shot.
• 32:30
  And then he tries to get like Nick to do the trick shot and he
• 32:33
  can't do it. But like Bolo and the kid can do
• 32:35
  it. And then as they're like like
• 32:37
  jogging away from that scene, there's just this really awkward
• 32:41
  ADR where like the kid like makes the trick shot and then he
• 32:44
  just goes a Magic Johnson. Just like what the?
• 32:52
  Heck, was that? See, now if they'd paid that off
• 32:57
  at the end of the movie and the guy had like punched a dude
• 33:00
  through the heart. That does happen.
• 33:02
  What he says that Magic Johnson? No, no, no, not the Magic
• 33:06
  Johnson part. Oh, why you can't take me like
• 33:10
  that? Sorry, that was unclear.
• 33:12
  That was unclear there there is there is a part where a dude
• 33:17
  gets punched through the chest and has his heart ripped out,
• 33:21
  but he. Doesn't say, OK, that's the part
• 33:23
  I'm picturing a scenario where you're catching the end of what
• 33:26
  you don't realize is shoot fighter two.
• 33:28
  Somebody punches a man's heart out, winks at the camera, says
• 33:30
  I'm Magic Johnson, and then shoot fighter two pops up and
• 33:33
  you're like, am I dead? What's happened?
• 33:40
  Yeah, it was pretty close to that already, even without the
• 33:42
  Magic Johnson part. That just that just made me bust
• 33:45
  out laughing. I was like, why did they put
• 33:46
  that in there? Like that's really weird.
• 33:48
  Like I get it, he was a popular basketball guy, but that's so
• 33:51
  not, that's not what this is about.
• 33:53
  It's. Just yeah, yeah.
• 33:57
  So anyway, I don't even know where to go from there.
• 34:02
  There's so little you need to say.
• 34:04
  Like anyone who likes martial arts films is probably already
• 34:08
  hooked just because they know who's in this one and they know
• 34:10
  that it's not like a total mess. I think if you get some good
• 34:14
  action out of it and a serviceable enough story like
• 34:17
  that's all you need, right? Yeah, and honestly, the fact
• 34:20
  that they're like, again, considering I watched the second
• 34:22
  one first and then this one, I was like, oh, there's a story.
• 34:24
  That's a nice thing to have, I guess.
• 34:26
  That is part of a movie now that I think about.
• 34:30
  It checks checks my notes like oh interesting.
• 34:34
  Title card too. Did not get that for a while.
• 34:39
  Yeah. So yes, the first one is fun and
• 34:44
  a lot of intersection of interesting on screen
• 34:47
  connections between actors with different franchises and like
• 34:51
  behind the scenes too. So this one really kind of like
• 34:55
  you said it, this seems like something we should have seen
• 34:57
  already. Absolutely.
• 34:59
  This feels like a movie we should have gotten from a
• 35:00
  blockbuster and been over the moon about and watched like 50
• 35:04
  times and then come back to it later and been like, was this
• 35:07
  actually any good at all? Yeah, yeah.
• 35:09
  But I don't know. I mean, we used to watch, what
• 35:13
  was it? We used to watch 3 ninjas all
• 35:14
  the time. We had avhs of three ninjas that
• 35:16
  we wore out and then I think one of us sat down to watch it more
• 35:19
  recently and we were like, wow, this is like a home video.
• 35:21
  It's so bad. Oh yeah, 3 ninjas is a tough
• 35:24
  rewatch. This, I think this would I think
• 35:26
  hold up. It's it's fun, good, like the
• 35:30
  action sequences are good, like the kind of visuals of when
• 35:33
  they're, you know, they put them in some kind of interesting
• 35:37
  locations for this shoot fighting stuff.
• 35:41
  It's just silly, like, you know, B movie martial arts action, but
• 35:47
  in a good way. Yeah, a good way.
• 35:48
  It's a good way. It's elevated by the all those
• 35:50
  other factors, you know, like by the cast, by like.
• 35:53
  Oh, there's also just one more thing.
• 35:55
  There's a pretty interesting sequence in the end where when
• 35:57
  Bullo is fighting Martin Cove, like he has these like 2 like
• 36:01
  sticks. Like they're both fighting with
• 36:03
  like these two sticks. And for some reason, I don't
• 36:06
  know why he did this, but Bullo Young starts like kind of
• 36:09
  clapping them together to this like beat in the middle of the
• 36:13
  fight. And the audience that's there,
• 36:16
  they start clapping along with him to the beat.
• 36:19
  And then he starts like speeding it up, you know, and they start
• 36:21
  speeding up their clap. So he's like hyping the crowd up
• 36:24
  with this. And then he just like stops and
• 36:27
  then like goes back to like fight, fighting Martin Cove.
• 36:30
  But then like the score of the film, like picks up that beat
• 36:34
  that he started with the sticks. And I was like, oh, interesting.
• 36:37
  That was actually fun. I don't know what the hell he
• 36:39
  did that for, but like, that was cool.
• 36:42
  Yeah, that's a good blend of like diegetic sound and then
• 36:46
  feeding that into the score. That's cool.
• 36:47
  Yeah, yeah. It was just, it just didn't work
• 36:50
  that like the end fight of the movie was not with our main
• 36:54
  characters. It was just the way they had to
• 36:56
  like, put BOLO over at the end. I don't know.
• 36:58
  It was yeah, that that part was. And the second movie ends the
• 37:03
  exact same way. Wait.
• 37:05
  What the hell? The Matthew Fighter one 1993?
• 37:08
  First off, how soon after did they make the next one?
• 37:12
  The second one is 96. Oh, OK.
• 37:14
  So a little while later, yes, probably got some sort of good
• 37:18
  home video return. So we get to the second one,
• 37:20
  Martin Cove is gone, do we? And we get Zapka back.
• 37:24
  Is there anybody else from the first one who who makes it to
• 37:27
  the sequel? It it, it's just, it's Zapka,
• 37:31
  Bolo and Bernardo. His friend Nick is also in the
• 37:34
  second one. OK.
• 37:35
  So I mean your three leads, your main cast comes back, I guess
• 37:39
  that's good. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 37:41
  And they make friends with a third guy in the second movie
• 37:46
  who dies. So like, so like watching it,
• 37:55
  watching the second one and then watching the first one, I was
• 37:57
  like, I kind of get the feeling that they wanted to make like a
• 38:00
  bunch of shoot fighter movies, you know, and like these were
• 38:02
  going to be your recurring characters.
• 38:04
  So it really felt like they brought that second guy in or
• 38:07
  that third guy in the second movie just just to die.
• 38:10
  Like that's why you're here. Yeah, we just needed to get some
• 38:14
  tension, yeah. Yeah, but man, like, I guess I
• 38:18
  won't talk about the second one for too long because I wasn't
• 38:20
  supposed to watch it, but we were not this.
• 38:22
  Was not the homework. But it was so much worse.
• 38:29
  It was so much worse. And just like I feel like I had
• 38:34
  a much smaller budget. I don't know if the second one,
• 38:35
  I didn't look into it too much. The second one might have been
• 38:38
  like maybe this first one got like a theatrical release.
• 38:40
  And the second one was like a straight tone video thing.
• 38:42
  But I mean, you could feel it. It was just so rough around the
• 38:45
  edges. And like the main thing that
• 38:47
  stands out to me about that one is endless, like when the
• 38:51
  fights, the fights in that one are so dull and they are just
• 38:57
  endlessly cutting away to these extras in the audience that that
• 39:02
  clearly have no idea what they're reacting to, You know,
• 39:05
  right. Like it's just, it's just like B
• 39:07
  roll basically that they they probably shot later and they're
• 39:10
  just like. Well, cuz how else am I supposed
• 39:15
  to know how I feel about it? Dude it's comical how many times
• 39:19
  they cut to these people and it's like you got to know those
• 39:22
  extras better than the main characters in the movie.
• 39:26
  See, now in the third shoot fighter, it's about all those
• 39:28
  extras. Yes, yes, and it's like it's so
• 39:31
  obvious too, because in like the beginning of the movie, they're
• 39:34
  there for this like exhibition cage shoot fighting match or
• 39:38
  whatever. And you know, it's all these
• 39:40
  extras that they're constantly cutting to and then the end of
• 39:42
  the movie is in the same location and it's all the same
• 39:44
  extras because they clearly filmed it at the same time.
• 39:48
  And so you're just, I'm like, oh, so I guess the exact same
• 39:51
  people showed up to this fight in the exact same seats wearing
• 39:53
  the exact. Same tickets, season ticket
• 39:56
  shoot fighting fan. Yeah.
• 39:59
  And so it's just that one is so rough around the edges.
• 40:01
  And the main villain in the second movie, It almost felt
• 40:06
  like they were like playing a mean prank on this guy by
• 40:09
  putting him in this movie because what?
• 40:13
  Does that mean? Because he's so he's
• 40:15
  intimidating, looking like he's like a big dude, but his voice,
• 40:21
  he's so low and soft spoken, but he's trying to be like this
• 40:25
  intimidating bad guy character and it just doesn't work at all.
• 40:28
  It's almost like a comedy thing. Like to try and hear this guy
• 40:33
  like deliver his like villain dialogue with his like it's just
• 40:37
  like little baby voice. Oh, yeah, That feels like
• 40:41
  something you would do is like an intentional joke.
• 40:43
  You have like, you're like, we're gonna introduce him to
• 40:45
  Tiny, and then this super big guy shows up and you're like,
• 40:48
  why is he called Tiny? And then he says like a mouse
• 40:50
  cartoon voice. And you're like, that's why.
• 40:52
  It's almost that. It's so close to like literally
• 40:55
  being that. But yeah, I don't even know.
• 40:59
  The second one tries to do this whole thing where the police are
• 41:02
  trying to like break up like a shoot fighting thing and like
• 41:06
  that's why they go and get Billy Zapka and his friends cuz
• 41:09
  they're like that business back in Mexico, right?
• 41:11
  Like we need you guys so much business, so much business so.
• 41:16
  Many forms filled out. Exactly.
• 41:20
  That's why they need them. They're just like, we don't
• 41:22
  understand all this paperwork. Yeah.
• 41:24
  These dates don't add up at all. You guys are getting audited.
• 41:28
  So it's like this like that's like the setup for the second
• 41:31
  one is they need them to like go undercover to like break up this
• 41:34
  like shoot fighting thing. And like it's just it's like
• 41:37
  hilarious how boyly executed everything is in that second
• 41:40
  movie. Like Billy Zapka has like a new
• 41:42
  love interest in this one who's just this woman who like barely
• 41:46
  has any dialogue. She has like 5 lines in the
• 41:49
  whole movie and then she gets like killed unceremoniously and
• 41:53
  it's just like what what is happening?
• 41:54
  What are we doing here? Like and then that one also like
• 41:58
  Billy Zapka doesn't even like fight anybody in the end of that
• 42:01
  one. That one also ends with like
• 42:03
  Bolo Young, like fighting this main bad guy dude, and it's the
• 42:08
  same thing. It's just like that fight ends
• 42:09
  and the credits start rolling immediately.
• 42:11
  It's like we got to get out of there as fast as possible.
• 42:14
  Again, that's what you do. Yeah, but that that was the one
• 42:16
  that literally ended with like, like a joke because it was like
• 42:19
  the undercover cop guy who like recruited them.
• 42:23
  They had this like informant guy with them who kind of like he
• 42:26
  was basically like Benny from the Mummy.
• 42:28
  He kept like double crossing them, you know, And like the
• 42:31
  literal end of the movie is like the cop guy making some kind of
• 42:35
  like pun at him and then like punching him.
• 42:37
  And that's when you get that like freeze frame, shoot Fighter
• 42:40
  2 and that's the actual end of the movie.
• 42:43
  Those are so lame. That never works.
• 42:45
  I feel like it's either, like we said, they don't want to budget
• 42:49
  filming any sort of like falling action after the movie peaks, or
• 42:53
  they know the movie kind of sucks and they're worried that
• 42:55
  like, well, maybe if we end on the highest note, it'll be like
• 42:58
  a recency bias and it'll be like, I think it was exciting.
• 43:02
  Yeah, yeah, it really, it does feel like they're trying to
• 43:04
  trick the audience in that way. And yeah, maybe that was like in
• 43:08
  editing, they looked at what they've got and they're like, Oh
• 43:09
  my God, this is terrible. We got to try and like punch
• 43:12
  this up somehow with. That's exactly what it feels
• 43:14
  like. I wouldn't be surprised if they
• 43:15
  did film stuff, but they were like, it's, you know, we got to
• 43:19
  keep the energy up. Cut back to those extras.
• 43:22
  Those extras, man, Oh my God, there's just like, oh, there's
• 43:25
  that guy again. Yep, he doesn't know what's
• 43:27
  going. On again, he spilled ketchup on
• 43:29
  himself in between fights. Yeah, it was.
• 43:34
  It was just, it was especially funny in the first one that
• 43:36
  there was no falling action of any kind because of Billy
• 43:39
  Zecker's love interest character who had a big part in the first
• 43:42
  half of the movie, and then it's just completely absent from the
• 43:44
  second. Half.
• 43:45
  I wonder if that and that I could see being that the
• 43:49
  original cut of the movie had a resolution, but they added this
• 43:51
  whole bit when they got Martin Cove signed on and they added
• 43:54
  the whole new conclusion. And probably at that point we're
• 43:57
  like, we're out of money. We don't want to get these
• 43:59
  actors back out here. Let's just not even show it.
• 44:02
  Yeah, no, I, I think, yeah, exactly.
• 44:04
  I think that's exactly what happened.
• 44:06
  And then again the whole thing. Was there from the start.
• 44:08
  It's not that bad. Even the original Karate Kid
• 44:10
  ends pretty suddenly, but you get a moment where Ralph Macchio
• 44:15
  wins and then his girlfriend runs up and gives him a hug.
• 44:17
  There's no dialogue, but they're at least physically there.
• 44:20
  Yeah, and again, it's just it's like it's almost like a rule of
• 44:23
  threes thing with her where it's like she keeps getting mad that
• 44:26
  people keep leaving from Mexico and then there's just like no
• 44:30
  follow up with her. So it's just like.
• 44:33
  You know, we could have done, we could have had a scene at the
• 44:35
  end where Bolo and the two guys are getting on a plane and
• 44:39
  they're walking off at the airport like back in America.
• 44:42
  And then we pan across and she's boarding a plane to Mexico.
• 44:46
  Like she's like, Dang it, if they're all in Mexico, I'm going
• 44:49
  to. And then like, they don't see
• 44:51
  each other. And it's just like, uh oh, Shoe
• 44:53
  Fighter 2. Yes, that would have been
• 44:59
  amazing. That would have been way better.
• 45:00
  That would have been anything with her, really.
• 45:02
  Cuz she wasn't bad. That's funny.
• 45:04
  Yeah, yeah. If we if we can't end on
• 45:06
  anything, we could end on a joke.
• 45:10
  That's movies. If you got nothing, just end on
• 45:12
  a joke. Just end on a joke.
• 45:15
  Doesn't matter what the movie was about or what the tone is.
• 45:20
  OK, so just to just to reset the board and clarify.
• 45:23
  Frank was asked to watch shoot Fighter One for the show and he
• 45:28
  did shoot Fighter Two. Technically out of bounds can't
• 45:32
  factor into any scores. I wish I could give you credit
• 45:34
  for watching an extra movie, but unfortunately no.
• 45:40
  That's OK. That's OK.
• 45:43
  I blame not myself. Sling TV.
• 45:46
  Anybody else? Yeah.
• 45:47
  Sling TV. I mean I thought this was you
• 45:52
  being a bit of a goof but no, that's that is on Sling TV if it
• 45:55
  showed you the correct title from the first movie and the
• 45:57
  movie doesn't show you a title. It was just a comedy of errors
• 46:02
  that led to honestly such a great like punchline literally
• 46:05
  at the end. Of oh, that is a punchline, see,
• 46:08
  and that's something funny. And something funny.
• 46:11
  I got something funny. See, watch.
• 46:13
  We're going to do it right now. It's it's about time for us to
• 46:15
  head into our intermission. So, Frank, let's end on
• 46:18
  something really funny. You always set me up.
• 46:22
  You're always just like, now you be funny.
• 46:26
  That's why it's funny to me and there.
• 46:43
  Hey, coming back now from intermission.
• 46:45
  Frank, it's time for me to review the film that you
• 46:48
  selected, 1995's Fallen Angels. Do you recall why you asked me
• 46:53
  to review Fallen Angels? I think I was looking at the
• 46:57
  director who this was like one of his last big films that he
• 47:02
  filmed in China. And I remember, I don't know if
• 47:05
  I said this on air, but I know I said a viewpoint that I wanted
• 47:07
  us to just every now and again do some foreign films just to
• 47:11
  mix it up, you know, and like broaden our horizons for the
• 47:15
  show. Absolutely.
• 47:17
  I will say I think this movie is going to expose me because it's
• 47:21
  a foreign film. It's a lot more of an
• 47:23
  experimental film. It's it's higher up on the scale
• 47:26
  of art film than anything we've talked about on the show before.
• 47:30
  And I think I said a lot more competent talking about
• 47:31
  Jean-Claude Van Damme than talking about this stuff.
• 47:36
  Well, we're going to find out. We're going to find out when I
• 47:39
  have to talk about vague, ambiguous, really visual
• 47:43
  storytelling and make it make sense to the listener and kind
• 47:46
  of summarize what it's. About Good luck everybody.
• 47:51
  Good luck if the video, just if the audio just stops here, it's
• 47:54
  because I failed. So you were spot on.
• 47:59
  The director for this. Some people might recognize the
• 48:01
  name Wong Korwai, who I think his most famous movie is In the
• 48:05
  Mood for Love, which is just an extremely well regarded Chinese
• 48:10
  like romantic drama from I think that one might be from 2000.
• 48:14
  So after this one, he also directed a film called Chunking
• 48:17
  Express the year before Fallen Angels.
• 48:20
  And this is what I wanted to mention off the bat.
• 48:22
  You were talking about the unintended duology of having to
• 48:25
  watch both shoot fighters. This movie that you asked me to
• 48:28
  watch, Fallen Angels, is in many ways part of a duology with
• 48:31
  Chunking Express, which came out the year before, and I did not
• 48:35
  actually see that one. So it kind of feels like I
• 48:37
  watched the second-half of something, you know what I mean?
• 48:39
  Oh see, I was under the impression it was like
• 48:42
  thematically similar, but are you saying that they're like
• 48:45
  actually narratively? Related.
• 48:48
  It's thematically similar is the main thing, but they're so
• 48:51
  connected in what they were about.
• 48:53
  I, I looked at the IMDb trivia when I was done watching it
• 48:56
  because Chunking Express is a movie I've wanted to see for a
• 48:59
  while. I just, for a long time it
• 49:01
  wasn't streaming anywhere in the US and I couldn't find it at the
• 49:04
  library, so I didn't see it. And after finishing this one,
• 49:07
  Fallen Angels, I looked at the IMDb and it was explaining that
• 49:10
  part of the story for this movie was originally part of the plot
• 49:14
  for Chunking Express. It was like one of the vignettes
• 49:16
  covered in that film. And then they felt they didn't
• 49:19
  need it to finish that movie and so they just expanded on this
• 49:22
  idea to make another movie. Does that make sense?
• 49:25
  Oh, well, that's interesting. OK, Yeah.
• 49:27
  There's also multiple of the same actors are in it.
• 49:31
  One of the actors is playing two different characters, but they
• 49:33
  have the same name and there's like illusions to what the other
• 49:36
  one did in each film. There's also, I think the
• 49:40
  director even said that he considers it kind of like a
• 49:43
  connected idea because most of the imagery in Chunking Express
• 49:46
  from 94 is a lot of like outdoor daytime stuff, whereas every
• 49:49
  single frame of Fallen Angels takes place at night.
• 49:51
  So it's kind of like a two halves of a whole.
• 49:55
  And I think that one of the things I want to talk about is
• 49:57
  that I really might like fallen angels more if I'd seen the
• 50:00
  other thing first, because I think the balancing act of that
• 50:04
  would make each one better, you know, like more than the sum of
• 50:07
  their parts. Not to say I disliked fallen
• 50:10
  angels, but as soon as I read that I was like Dang it,
• 50:13
  probably should have watched that other one.
• 50:15
  Yeah, I could see. Well, I didn't, I didn't realize
• 50:17
  they were so closely related like that.
• 50:20
  That seems they're very like, literally like a day and night
• 50:24
  thing between these two. Movies it's a day and night
• 50:26
  thing with that tackles similar themes and was made one after
• 50:30
  another. It's like 9495 S again.
• 50:32
  It's not advertised as such and they are supposed to be stand
• 50:35
  alone stories but I just found those connections really
• 50:39
  interesting. And ironically my wife has seen
• 50:41
  Chunking Express and not this one and now I've seen this one
• 50:44
  and not that one. And I was like maybe by talking
• 50:46
  about it we can kind of figure out and like Nope Nope never
• 50:48
  mind. These movies are way too visual.
• 50:50
  I would just need to watch it. I was gonna say you guys could
• 50:54
  do an episode of Double Feature. That would be funny yeah trying
• 50:57
  to watch like both halves of the of the duology, but to focus
• 51:01
  back in on fallen angels. I just wanted to start with that
• 51:03
  to put a button on the comment I made earlier when you're talking
• 51:06
  about the double double feature thing with with Shoot Fighter.
• 51:09
  Yeah, but what you what you do get with Fallen Angels?
• 51:13
  It is a story about the lives of 5 or 6 characters who basically
• 51:18
  live their lives at night in Hong Kong.
• 51:22
  And it tackles a lot of themes related to like social isolation
• 51:26
  and people trying to make meaning in their lives when they
• 51:28
  feel that there is none. It's about like, love and
• 51:31
  obsession and lost connections and all the kind of things you
• 51:34
  get from a fancy art movie that I have to pretend I understand.
• 51:40
  You keep you keep downplaying your your.
• 51:43
  I'm gonna try. I just listen, there's
• 51:45
  somebody's gonna come in here, we're gonna get our comment on
• 51:48
  this video, and they're gonna be like, clearly you misunderstood
• 51:50
  the point. And I'm like, yeah, I agree.
• 51:56
  So I mean, that's something about art though, right?
• 51:57
  It's interpretive. My interpretation is valid but
• 52:00
  maybe I'm not. So I only want to preface all
• 52:05
  this because if you hear the description of the movie and you
• 52:08
  feel like you don't really get it, it's because it really is
• 52:10
  something that is meant to be viewed.
• 52:12
  Like for example, most of the characters don't have like clear
• 52:15
  names. Like some of them say their name
• 52:18
  once or have like a nickname to reference them.
• 52:20
  They don't really address each other by name at all.
• 52:23
  There's a ton of like mid 90s visual techniques and editing
• 52:28
  choices that make the whole thing very trippy.
• 52:30
  Not like unintelligibly so, but to the point where I can't
• 52:35
  really convey exactly the feel of the movie with.
• 52:37
  Unless you like, watch a trailer or something and then listen to
• 52:40
  this, you know what I mean? OK, yeah.
• 52:43
  So this will this will test your descriptive abilities.
• 52:46
  That's kind of what I'm coming around to.
• 52:47
  It's like, how do I explain the movie when I literally in my
• 52:49
  notes was writing down pretty much every single thing that
• 52:52
  happened because I wasn't sure which parts were important until
• 52:55
  later? It's like a puzzle.
• 52:58
  Yeah, put the pieces. Together I also like usually
• 53:01
  I'll just write notes alongside the first time I see the movie
• 53:04
  just to kind of like make sure I'm like latching onto any ideas
• 53:06
  and they don't escape me. But I often use character names
• 53:09
  and I swear some of the character names I had to use
• 53:12
  were like Hitman guy, crazy lady, other crazy lady.
• 53:20
  Crazy lady too. Crazy lady too, the crazy name
• 53:23
  and crazy man. It's a whole family.
• 53:27
  So I'm going to try to explain because the movie has
• 53:30
  essentially 2 main plots that do intersect, but only very
• 53:33
  briefly. So most of the movie they're
• 53:35
  they're kind of separate ideas. The first plot is that two of
• 53:39
  your characters, who I would call this maybe the a story, is
• 53:42
  a duo that works together to arrange professional like hits.
• 53:46
  Like the guy is a hit man, he carries out the murders and this
• 53:49
  woman is essentially his handler.
• 53:51
  She arranges everything. She tells him where to go and
• 53:53
  what to do. She sort of like, cleans up
• 53:57
  scenes after him. She's always arranging, like the
• 53:59
  hideout spaces that he's going to use.
• 54:01
  And you get some voice over narration from each of these
• 54:05
  characters throughout the film, kind of just pontificating about
• 54:08
  their life and their role in it and the nature of their
• 54:11
  partnership. Because the thing that's clear
• 54:13
  right away is that these two don't communicate very well.
• 54:16
  They rarely see each other, but they both have this like, mild
• 54:21
  obsession with each other. Like the woman, he's deeply
• 54:24
  obsessed with this man. She like, digs through his trash
• 54:27
  and like, looks at all of his stuff.
• 54:28
  But he also has feelings developing for her and he's
• 54:31
  worried that it's going to threaten their working
• 54:33
  relationship. So his big inciting action in
• 54:36
  the movie is that he tries to end their hitman business by
• 54:41
  essentially ghosting this person.
• 54:43
  Oh wait, what? But he likes her, but he's just
• 54:46
  going to ghost her now, like. Essentially it's it's the
• 54:49
  classic, like, I don't know how to communicate and I think this
• 54:52
  is getting too complicated. So it's all done so vaguely like
• 54:55
  the opening shot of the movie is a snippet of a scene that you
• 54:59
  don't actually get until much later in the movie.
• 55:02
  And we open with these very strange angles, like visually
• 55:06
  every shot in the movie, the camera is like inside this
• 55:10
  person's personal space. You know what I mean?
• 55:12
  It's so up close and at odd angles.
• 55:14
  And they use super wide lenses, like not like a little fisheye
• 55:18
  lens, but not terribly far removed from that.
• 55:21
  So it's made to be very like unsettling and kind of jarring
• 55:25
  right away. And we just open on this close
• 55:27
  up of this one woman smoking and like her hands all shaking and
• 55:30
  she's trying to talk to this guy while he explains.
• 55:32
  Like, we've been working together a long time, but I
• 55:35
  think we're too emotionally invested.
• 55:36
  And I got to, I got to break it off now and then.
• 55:38
  We don't hear the resolution to that until much later in the
• 55:40
  story because we go backwards in time after that.
• 55:43
  Got it. OK, well, that's interesting.
• 55:44
  I mean that's a like, fun way to open the film though.
• 55:47
  It's very visually interesting. It's also very snappy at times,
• 55:50
  like that scene hard cuts to a shot of the woman walking up out
• 55:54
  of this like empty subway. The title card for the movie,
• 55:57
  which shows up at the beginning, believe it or not, is on screen
• 56:01
  for like half a second. It's like, boom, fallen angels,
• 56:04
  short music, sting, and we're out.
• 56:05
  Like, there's a lot of intentionally jarring editing
• 56:09
  choices, but at the same time, the movie will occasionally slow
• 56:12
  down and play these kind of, like, jazzy music.
• 56:15
  And it feels the whole thing feels like a rumination on,
• 56:17
  like, the chase that people go through trying to find what the
• 56:20
  movie often refers to as, like, the right partner in their life.
• 56:23
  And mostly that's romantic partners.
• 56:25
  But in the case of these other two, they had, like, they were
• 56:27
  business partners. They had a working relationship
• 56:29
  that their emotions were complicating.
• 56:31
  So it's very classic East Asian reflective kind of filmmaking.
• 56:37
  It's something you see a lot in films made in China or Japan.
• 56:40
  The whole thing is very like mellow and kind of sad.
• 56:45
  Well, I mean because I've seen In the Mood for Love and this is
• 56:48
  already starting to sound similar like stylistically or
• 56:51
  tonally. Tonally, yes, I think the main
• 56:54
  thing that's different is that In the Mood for Love, I've seen
• 56:56
  that one as well, is shot in what I would call a more like
• 56:59
  traditional kind of like Western filmmaking style.
• 57:01
  The cameras usually grounded. There's still a lot of close up
• 57:04
  shots to like sell that these people feel kind of constrained
• 57:08
  in their lives. But the Fallen Angels is like
• 57:10
  mostly handheld cameras that are kind of tracking around and
• 57:13
  following these people. So it's a lot more like
• 57:16
  dreamlike and kind of hazy and it's camera movement.
• 57:20
  I, I mean, like, I kind of like that though.
• 57:23
  I mean, obviously I haven't seen this film, but I, I like sort of
• 57:27
  like experimental filmmaking. So maybe I would have enjoyed
• 57:31
  this movie more than you actually.
• 57:33
  I don't mean to say any of this off the bat is like, I didn't
• 57:36
  like this. I just want to give the a clear
• 57:39
  impression as clear as I can about what made this film
• 57:42
  unique. I mean, even the cover art on
• 57:45
  IMDb, there is a pull quote from a reviewer that says like Wong
• 57:48
  Kar Wai, you know, breaks every rule of filmmaking and like to
• 57:51
  great success. There is a very strange like
• 57:55
  experimental quality to it. I mean, there's frames in the
• 57:58
  movie that will suddenly be like partially in black and white.
• 58:02
  Like certain portions of the frame are in color and certain
• 58:05
  ones aren't or individual objects are in color.
• 58:07
  Even that opening shot of the close up of the woman smoking
• 58:10
  with the other guy framed behind her, they're all in black and
• 58:12
  white except that like you could see the red of like her lipstick
• 58:15
  and her fingernails and like the cigarette.
• 58:18
  So they just, they're, there's just a lot going on.
• 58:20
  That's cool. And it's, that's really
• 58:21
  difficult to pull off too, cuz like I yeah, to it's the kind of
• 58:24
  thing where, you know, I've heard it said you have to
• 58:26
  understand the rules before you can break them.
• 58:29
  So cuz otherwise this would just look like a mess of mistakes and
• 58:34
  contradictions. Yeah, it'd be incoherent.
• 58:37
  Yeah. So it's actually very difficult,
• 58:40
  I think to be able to pull that off in a way that has
• 58:44
  intentionality behind it. I.
• 58:46
  Agree. And I do think that despite all
• 58:48
  of these things, those elements like the camera movement and the
• 58:51
  colorization and all that, that doesn't really disorient.
• 58:54
  Like those are just odd little choices.
• 58:55
  The thing that at times makes the movie kind of hard to follow
• 58:59
  is just the overall ambiguity and the strangeness of all these
• 59:01
  characters. I think one of the guys from
• 59:04
  like the B plot has a line near the beginning where he says
• 59:07
  something to the effect of like, the people you find out on the
• 59:10
  street at night are all kind of crazy and that's who all these
• 59:13
  people are. I also kind of like said it's
• 59:17
  all at night. I mean is it literally like
• 59:18
  every scene of the film is night time?
• 59:21
  Yeah, no, I don't think every single frame of the movie is
• 59:24
  dark and lit by, you know, cigarettes and neon St. lights.
• 59:28
  And it's it's very visually interesting.
• 59:32
  And on top of that, the space that all these people live in,
• 59:34
  it's these terrible tiny little apartments or hotel rooms like
• 59:38
  super boxed in, reflecting the kind of just like simbering
• 59:43
  tension of of people living in there, in that place at that
• 59:46
  time. Yeah.
• 59:47
  I mean, this all sounds great, actually.
• 59:50
  Like it sounds like it's really using.
• 59:53
  I mean, you know, film's a visual medium, and so this is
• 59:56
  like kind of pushing that to its natural limits, I think.
• 1:00:00
  It is. I do think all these elements
• 1:00:02
  are interesting. Also to kind of place it at a
• 1:00:04
  point in time, the lighting in the movie kind of tries to use
• 1:00:08
  the same like sickly green that they used in the Matrix.
• 1:00:12
  Does that kind of make sense? OK, yes.
• 1:00:15
  I don't know if I'd love that though.
• 1:00:18
  It's not the whole thing, but there's a number of individual
• 1:00:20
  scenes that have that kind of like washed out green lighting
• 1:00:24
  over the whole thing. Again, it's supposed to be kind
• 1:00:26
  of uneasy. These people are all very
• 1:00:29
  strange and they're living strange lives, and they're none
• 1:00:31
  of them are happy because they haven't found the right person
• 1:00:36
  to go through their life with. And they're all kind of adrift
• 1:00:40
  because of that. They're trying to form
• 1:00:42
  connections and they're dealing with like, terrible
• 1:00:45
  relationships with people who aren't right for them because
• 1:00:47
  they're so desperate to just have someone else validate that
• 1:00:51
  they exist. You know what I mean?
• 1:00:53
  That's so much of the language in the movie is will you
• 1:00:56
  remember that I was ever here? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:59
  And I mean, that also seems to tie in with the fact that it's
• 1:01:01
  all at night time as well. Like that's usually the time
• 1:01:07
  that people are like the most reflective.
• 1:01:08
  And also, if these people are only operating at night, then
• 1:01:10
  they're not being seen by everyone else during the day.
• 1:01:13
  Exactly. And we really do have very few
• 1:01:15
  characters. I think there's like 6
• 1:01:17
  characters and almost nobody else in the movie has any
• 1:01:20
  dialogue I guess to to set up the other half of the story,
• 1:01:24
  which really, and again this is a criticism, ends up being more
• 1:01:27
  than half of the story goes to this other plot.
• 1:01:30
  So we have the Hitman guy. That's plot A.
• 1:01:33
  The other one is about this guy who introduces himself through a
• 1:01:36
  voice over. He says his name at one point,
• 1:01:38
  but I started calling him Crazy Man.
• 1:01:41
  OK Crazy Man explains that when he was a kid, they often end up
• 1:01:46
  talking about their childhoods here.
• 1:01:47
  He says that when he was a kid, he loved to talk, but then he,
• 1:01:49
  quote, ate an expired can of pineapple and lost the ability
• 1:01:54
  to speak. So for the whole movie he never
• 1:01:56
  says anything out loud even though we're hearing from him in
• 1:01:58
  voice over. I'm sorry, he ate.
• 1:02:01
  An expired can of pineapple, correct?
• 1:02:05
  This is just like Soldier. This is like the kid from
• 1:02:07
  Soldier that couldn't speak because he got bit by a snake.
• 1:02:10
  It is kind of like Soldier. That's that's the point in its
• 1:02:13
  favor. So he says this and this is the
• 1:02:16
  connection to Chunking Express. That actor is a different
• 1:02:20
  character in Chunking Express who's always worried about the
• 1:02:22
  expiration dates on food. And specifically he's like
• 1:02:25
  looking at a can of pineapple and worried about eating it
• 1:02:27
  because the expiration date. Wow, that's so interesting.
• 1:02:31
  So very specific, even though those aren't the same person,
• 1:02:34
  but they're played by the same actor and have the same name.
• 1:02:37
  Yes, but yeah, it's like a meta narrative there.
• 1:02:41
  That's fun. Yes, I can.
• 1:02:43
  I'm seeing now why these are kind of a duology.
• 1:02:47
  Exactly. The connections are very strong.
• 1:02:49
  I find Crazy Man to be an interesting part of the movie,
• 1:02:52
  but the one that maybe frustrates me the most because
• 1:02:54
  he takes up so much screen time for what feels like a very easy
• 1:02:57
  to understand bit that doesn't need this much time spent on it.
• 1:03:01
  His main thing when the movie opens, you're hearing from him
• 1:03:04
  and he's this like super unreliable narrator because he's
• 1:03:07
  clearly a bit not all there and he's always explaining his
• 1:03:10
  version of events, but you're visually seeing what's actually
• 1:03:12
  happening because the first thing he explains is because I
• 1:03:15
  never learned how to speak or lost the ability to.
• 1:03:18
  I had trouble making friends. I had trouble holding a job and
• 1:03:21
  so I live my life at night running other people's
• 1:03:24
  businesses in the night time when they're closed.
• 1:03:26
  So we just see that he is like broken into somebody's business
• 1:03:30
  and is like messing with their stuff.
• 1:03:32
  He'll randomly go around like he grabs a pair of scissors and
• 1:03:36
  starts trying to aggressively cut people's hair who haven't
• 1:03:38
  asked him to. And then eventually they just
• 1:03:40
  have to pay him to stop cutting their hair.
• 1:03:43
  Oh. Oh, OK, so he's yeah.
• 1:03:47
  This guy's a lot. He's completely not
• 1:03:49
  understanding what other people are saying to him, but he still
• 1:03:51
  has these very like, coherent personal narrations about what's
• 1:03:56
  happening. You just always are being shown
• 1:03:57
  visually that it's not what he's saying.
• 1:04:00
  And his whole story, again, a lot of it's supposed to be this
• 1:04:03
  very dry comedy, but it goes on for so long.
• 1:04:06
  There's this really long scene where this guy walks up to an
• 1:04:10
  ice cream truck, sees the crazy man is inside the ice cream
• 1:04:13
  truck, and he's like, Oh, no, this guy again.
• 1:04:15
  And so a crazy man, like, grabs him by the collar and drags him
• 1:04:18
  into the ice cream truck and just starts making ice cream
• 1:04:21
  cones and feeding him to this guy over and over again.
• 1:04:23
  And he won't let him leave. He's like, keeps forcing him to
• 1:04:26
  eat more ice cream. And so the guy ends up calling
• 1:04:30
  his wife and who's clearly wondering where he is.
• 1:04:32
  And you hear his side of the conversation where he's like,
• 1:04:34
  yeah, it's that guy again. He's not going to let me go.
• 1:04:37
  He just keeps feeding me ice cream.
• 1:04:39
  I know you don't believe me, but, you know, come see for
• 1:04:40
  yourself if you don't. And then we cut to like, for
• 1:04:43
  some reason the guy's wife brought like their entire
• 1:04:45
  extended family. And so now we have a scene where
• 1:04:47
  the crazy man is feeding like 6 people ice cream that they don't
• 1:04:50
  want. How is he holding them all there
• 1:04:54
  like? They show you a couple instances
• 1:04:56
  where people are trying to physically escape him and he
• 1:04:58
  just like, is too tenacious and they can't get away.
• 1:05:00
  And then it becomes this like, sort of resigned thing.
• 1:05:02
  And that's part of the joke is that they just can't get away
• 1:05:06
  from this guy because he's so persistent about it.
• 1:05:09
  And then that scene goes on way too long.
• 1:05:12
  It's not very funny. I mean, like some of it is maybe
• 1:05:14
  lost in translation, like the timing of the dialogue that
• 1:05:17
  would maybe get a laugh. But then that also transitions
• 1:05:21
  into an interesting shot where we cut 2 crazy guy driving the
• 1:05:24
  truck at night, and the interior in the back is all lit up
• 1:05:28
  because all the people are still sitting back there.
• 1:05:29
  And he's just like driving through the streets.
• 1:05:31
  And there's some interesting cinematography going on.
• 1:05:33
  And that moment's like, actually kind of pretty, but it is
• 1:05:35
  supposed to be contrasted with this super bizarre scene that we
• 1:05:39
  saw right before it, where like the family's actually kind of
• 1:05:41
  happy at the end. Like they're all having a good
• 1:05:43
  time eating the ice cream by the end of it.
• 1:05:45
  Yeah, I mean, when you describe it, it sounds funny.
• 1:05:48
  But it just, I don't know for me, not if it landed.
• 1:05:50
  It's funny because the joke is so obvious and it's mostly
• 1:05:53
  supposed to be funny because they don't let up.
• 1:05:55
  Like the bitches keeps going and he runs into the same guy like
• 1:05:58
  several times and is always doing stuff to him like trying
• 1:06:02
  to cut his hair or feed him ice cream and it just takes up so
• 1:06:05
  much time. And I was while watching the
• 1:06:07
  movie before I knew about the connection to Chunking Express,
• 1:06:10
  I was like, this B plot is like 75% of the movie and it should
• 1:06:14
  have been the other way around. We do not get enough time with
• 1:06:16
  the hitman and his partner and their story feels like if you
• 1:06:19
  told just that part of it, it'd be a short film.
• 1:06:21
  And then when I read that, that part was what was originally
• 1:06:25
  going to be a portion of the story of the previous movie,
• 1:06:27
  Chunking Express, I was like, this lines up for me because I
• 1:06:30
  feel like this movie, Fallen Angels is stretched too thin.
• 1:06:33
  It didn't have enough mean it to cover a full story.
• 1:06:40
  Yeah, because I thought. The idea was they took this
• 1:06:43
  small concept and expanded it into a feature length, but it
• 1:06:46
  seems like they just took what was going to be a small piece of
• 1:06:49
  another film and made it a small piece of this film.
• 1:06:52
  Feels like it. I mean, I don't know for certain
• 1:06:54
  that the Hitman story is the one that was part of chunking
• 1:06:56
  originally, but I would assume so because that is framed as
• 1:06:59
  like the A plot. And again, we do get very brief
• 1:07:03
  crossover of these two stories because Crazy Man's whole thing
• 1:07:06
  ends up being that he finds this similarly crazy lady, crazy lady
• 1:07:10
  number one number one and has a sort of like relationship with
• 1:07:13
  her even though they can't really communicate.
• 1:07:15
  Like none of these characters know how to say anything.
• 1:07:17
  They never look at each other in the eyes.
• 1:07:19
  They never speak directly to each other.
• 1:07:21
  There's so much key information exchanged like over the phone or
• 1:07:25
  through these abstract means. It's people who are too caught
• 1:07:29
  up in their like, small internal bubbles to actually reach out
• 1:07:32
  and make a connection. But we do get some crossover
• 1:07:36
  where, like, I think the hitman guy briefly has a scene with the
• 1:07:39
  crazy guy where he just talks to him for a minute and then they
• 1:07:41
  go their separate ways. And then at the very, very end
• 1:07:43
  of the story, we see a crossover between the hitman partner lady
• 1:07:49
  from the a story meets the crazy guy again, and they have a thing
• 1:07:51
  at the end. But again, I just, I don't know,
• 1:07:54
  like pace. The movie's pacing loses me by
• 1:07:57
  the middle of it. This, you know, this is
• 1:07:59
  reminding me of like especially with comedy, there's a thing
• 1:08:03
  where like some types of movies will perform better in other
• 1:08:08
  countries. Like if it's made here, for
• 1:08:09
  example, and then and then screened in another country.
• 1:08:12
  It it's stuff that is more universal, like horror or
• 1:08:15
  action, I guess. But comedy is always very
• 1:08:18
  subjective. And like, especially like might
• 1:08:22
  have some like cultural connotation too.
• 1:08:25
  Because this is reminding me of like, I just watched this Jackie
• 1:08:28
  Chan movie Miracles, which is a great movie, but this is a
• 1:08:32
  common thing I always run into with a lot of a lot of Jackie
• 1:08:34
  Chan's old films that he made in China where it was like like in
• 1:08:39
  this movie, it was like some of the best like on screen, like
• 1:08:42
  action choreography I've ever seen.
• 1:08:44
  And then it would go for that to like 45 uninterrupted minutes of
• 1:08:49
  these comedy gags that like didn't land, you know, because
• 1:08:53
  it's like some of it was kind of humorous, but it's like, Oh my
• 1:08:58
  God, this is so much of the movie is this.
• 1:09:00
  And and I don't I'm not like engaging with this.
• 1:09:03
  I feel like in the way that it's intended to be engaged with.
• 1:09:08
  Yeah, the comedic timing is so different.
• 1:09:10
  Like, I understand that some of the stuff in Fallen Angels is
• 1:09:13
  supposed to be funny because we keep coming back to it so much,
• 1:09:16
  or because we just don't ever let go of this one idea.
• 1:09:21
  And I can understand why that's maybe amusing, but in the moment
• 1:09:23
  of watching it, the movie kind of starts to drag by the
• 1:09:27
  second-half and that carries through until almost the end,
• 1:09:30
  where it picks up again in the last like 15 minutes.
• 1:09:32
  Yeah, yeah, because it's because you said that that B plot takes
• 1:09:37
  up more of the film than the A plot.
• 1:09:40
  Way more like the the shot. The story about the hitman is
• 1:09:44
  super brief for the most part. He performs a couple of hits
• 1:09:49
  which are shot interestingly like it.
• 1:09:50
  It almost feels like almost like John Woo style, but it like not
• 1:09:54
  exactly the same. You have these kind of slow
• 1:09:56
  motion shots of him with his dual pistols, like shooting all
• 1:09:58
  these people up and it kind of does the effect of using like
• 1:10:01
  almost like a slower frame rate kind of slow motion.
• 1:10:04
  Does that sound familiar? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 1:10:07
  So that styling is like, it's not literally what John Woo was
• 1:10:10
  doing, but it felt almost like inspired by that kind of thing
• 1:10:13
  and and modified from that and those scenes take place.
• 1:10:15
  And then we learned that he doesn't want to do this job
• 1:10:19
  anymore because he wants to. He originally took it on because
• 1:10:24
  he was like, I just like being told where to go and what to do.
• 1:10:26
  I don't like having to make these choices for myself.
• 1:10:28
  But then he starts to grapple with that, and he wants to have
• 1:10:30
  more agency and what he does with himself.
• 1:10:32
  So he breaks it off by telling the woman he works with to
• 1:10:36
  listen to some song on a jukebox that'll explain everything and
• 1:10:41
  then just leaves. And he never says anything to
• 1:10:43
  her. And she gets all increasingly
• 1:10:46
  obsessed about this and is trying to track him down.
• 1:10:48
  The hitman then has another short relationship with Crazy
• 1:10:51
  hit #2 whose whole thing is essentially that she just
• 1:10:56
  approaches this guy and immediately tries to like, win
• 1:10:58
  him over and be like, hey, come back to my place, come up to my
• 1:11:00
  place. And then we she reveals that
• 1:11:03
  they already had some sort of a fling in the past, and she's
• 1:11:05
  convinced that he just completely forgot who she is.
• 1:11:07
  She's like, you know, I changed my hair.
• 1:11:10
  And I bet that you don't even remember that it's me now, do
• 1:11:12
  you? And he says that he does, but he
• 1:11:14
  clearly doesn't. And so she's kind of going
• 1:11:16
  through a similar bit of anguish where she just thinks that
• 1:11:18
  nobody sees her and she's not, she's not real because she
• 1:11:22
  doesn't have somebody there to kind of validate that she
• 1:11:24
  exists. And then those two women cross
• 1:11:27
  paths and set up a meeting where the hitman and his old partner
• 1:11:30
  finally, like, finally get to speak.
• 1:11:33
  That's what we see at the beginning of the movie.
• 1:11:35
  And then his partner, I think in a fit of like jealousy, asks him
• 1:11:40
  to do one final job for her and turns it into a setup so that he
• 1:11:43
  gets killed. Oh, she she intentionally got
• 1:11:47
  him killed. Yeah, she sent him in to do a
• 1:11:49
  hit. And then all of these other
• 1:11:50
  people show up. And clearly it's like, and it
• 1:11:53
  almost is played that like, he knew this was going to happen.
• 1:11:56
  And so he just comes to terms with the fact that he thought he
• 1:11:59
  was still searching for the real partner that he needed in his
• 1:12:02
  life. And he thought that if he could
• 1:12:04
  find them, that might really complete things for him.
• 1:12:07
  And he's thinking through his voice over like, I wonder who
• 1:12:09
  that person would be. And then we just see that he
• 1:12:11
  doesn't get to find out because he gets killed.
• 1:12:13
  And then the tail end of the movie is that that woman who
• 1:12:17
  betrayed him, the original partner, she's adamant now that
• 1:12:20
  like she's like, I don't make these emotional connections
• 1:12:22
  anymore. I'm still doing the same work,
• 1:12:23
  but I try to keep it all really distant.
• 1:12:25
  But then she crosses paths with crazy man.
• 1:12:28
  And then they like ride off together to end the movie.
• 1:12:30
  And she has a short bit kind of monologue where she's like, once
• 1:12:34
  again, I'm chasing something that's like going to end poorly
• 1:12:37
  and is not good for me. But it's nice to feel like this
• 1:12:42
  warm swell. It lasts.
• 1:12:44
  Oh, crazy man. Being the ice cream guy.
• 1:12:47
  Ice cream guy. Yep, yeah.
• 1:12:49
  Wow. See this?
• 1:12:50
  This feels like a very like somber, contemplative emotional
• 1:12:55
  film mixed with some dark ice cream stuff.
• 1:13:00
  Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be dark because this guy's clearly
• 1:13:04
  all messed up. Crazy man has a lot of problems.
• 1:13:07
  He you feel sorry for him, but they just try to use these weird
• 1:13:11
  beats to be to show how eccentric he is.
• 1:13:14
  Yeah. And another interesting element
• 1:13:15
  you get for him is that he has this whole relationship earlier
• 1:13:17
  in the story with crazy lady number one, who, again, is like
• 1:13:21
  herself, obsessed with some man who doesn't want her and is
• 1:13:24
  behaving like a genuinely, like, manic person.
• 1:13:26
  Like, I'm not saying like a crazy lady, like she's insane.
• 1:13:30
  Yeah. But she leaves the story and
• 1:13:32
  then at the end, one of the last scenes we get with crazy guy, he
• 1:13:35
  sees her again. But she has a boyfriend now and
• 1:13:37
  is like a totally normal person and doesn't even recognize him.
• 1:13:40
  Like, she's dressed as like a flight attendant and she isn't
• 1:13:42
  behaving strangely anymore at all.
• 1:13:44
  And she's just like a totally functioning adult now.
• 1:13:46
  And there's something there about like how lost these people
• 1:13:50
  feel when they don't have someone to go through their life
• 1:13:52
  with and how kind of crazy and it makes them and how it drives
• 1:13:56
  them to make all these bad decisions.
• 1:13:58
  But they show you, by contrast with someone who has found like
• 1:14:01
  a real partner can kind of pull everything together.
• 1:14:05
  Oh, that's really huh? Yeah, that's really.
• 1:14:09
  Huh. It's about my review of Fallen
• 1:14:11
  Angels. Like, I can't assail this movie
• 1:14:16
  for anything. Like I it's really well made.
• 1:14:18
  It's clearly made with a lot of intention.
• 1:14:20
  Everything that Wong Kar Wai wanted this to be, it is.
• 1:14:24
  And it gets a lot of credit for being really unique, but any
• 1:14:27
  given person's experience with the film is basically like, how
• 1:14:30
  in the mood for you are this right now?
• 1:14:33
  How in the mood for love are you for this?
• 1:14:35
  For this currently and does it connect with you at all?
• 1:14:40
  Sure. Yeah.
• 1:14:41
  I mean, it almost sounds like a it's funny when you were
• 1:14:44
  mentioning the guys like that doesn't speak, but you hear his
• 1:14:47
  monologues. I was.
• 1:14:48
  It's making me think of like Rorschach from Watchmen.
• 1:14:51
  Yeah. And this movie, The way you
• 1:14:53
  described it, almost sounds like a Rorschach test of like, what
• 1:14:57
  do you see when you watch that's.
• 1:14:59
  What I said I was, I was talking to my wife about it because
• 1:15:01
  again, she'd seen she has seen Chunking Express and was like as
• 1:15:05
  she heard me talk about this, she was like, oh, they're the
• 1:15:07
  same. Like she was going to include me
• 1:15:08
  in like these are very much the same kind of story.
• 1:15:10
  And I said to her, I was like, it's like asking someone to
• 1:15:12
  review a kaleidoscope. It's like, I mean, I don't just
• 1:15:18
  look at it like I can't. Did you see like?
• 1:15:20
  I'm did you see that blue though?
• 1:15:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just see the part where it was
• 1:15:23
  like Prismatic Illusion. All I could say is like Fallen
• 1:15:29
  Angels here it is like I normally my view of the film
• 1:15:34
  kind of lines up with whether I'd recommend it to someone else
• 1:15:36
  or recommend it back to you, but with this one, it's so personal.
• 1:15:41
  I think whether anyone would glean anything specific from it.
• 1:15:43
  The things it gets credit for are for being really uniquely
• 1:15:46
  made and well shot and well directed.
• 1:15:51
  As far as whether the story is boring or not, that's totally
• 1:15:53
  going to vary person to person. Yeah, and I mean, I, I've maybe
• 1:15:57
  said this on the show before, but I, I'm trying to avoid
• 1:15:59
  describing a film as boring because I feel like it's, it's
• 1:16:02
  like a reductive type of analysis, especially for a film
• 1:16:06
  like this too. But that's undoubtedly how
• 1:16:11
  people are going to react to certain films.
• 1:16:13
  Yeah, some people find martial arts movies boring.
• 1:16:16
  Right. Exactly.
• 1:16:16
  Yeah, Yeah, it's. Just those people are wrong and
• 1:16:19
  stupid. Yeah, wrong.
• 1:16:23
  And stupid, as it turns out. As it turns out, the results are
• 1:16:26
  in. You're an idiot.
• 1:16:29
  If you didn't interpret shoot fighter the way I interpreted
• 1:16:31
  shoot fighter, what's wrong with you?
• 1:16:34
  Maybe look in the mirror buddy. Yeah, oh, that legitimately
• 1:16:38
  you've you've reminded me of something else.
• 1:16:40
  So visually, Fallen Angels, huge amount of the movie deals in
• 1:16:44
  reflections. Like I mentioned that a lot of
• 1:16:46
  the characters genuinely don't make eye contact when they speak
• 1:16:48
  to each other. It's that kind of artful
• 1:16:51
  arrangement where someone's like staring down the camera and
• 1:16:53
  someone else is in profile. And we also see a ton of imagery
• 1:16:57
  shot through mirrors and camera lenses and other reflections,
• 1:17:01
  which I just thought was really interesting, like visual motif.
• 1:17:04
  So many of the shots we will be there'll be a person framed in a
• 1:17:08
  reflection, but the camera views them through the reflection
• 1:17:11
  instead of just in the space. Yeah, see, that's the kind of
• 1:17:14
  stuff like that's actually great because.
• 1:17:18
  And that that ties into what kind of where I was going to
• 1:17:20
  with like describing the film or like in terms of like
• 1:17:22
  recommending it to somebody. Because like my personal
• 1:17:25
  philosophy, even, you know, like when like when we were making
• 1:17:30
  our own film too, is like, I was always pushing for more like
• 1:17:36
  visual experimental things and like not so much caring how the
• 1:17:43
  audience would feel, you know, like, in terms of like if they
• 1:17:47
  would resonate with that or not. Just because that's that's to me
• 1:17:51
  is like one of the biggest strengths of the medium of
• 1:17:55
  filmmaking. Yeah, art.
• 1:17:57
  I feel like art as meaning it's supposed to be kind of
• 1:18:01
  challenging. If the movie does not challenge
• 1:18:04
  your thinking or your emotions at all, like, you know, AKA
• 1:18:08
  maybe shoot, fight or fight to the deaf, it could be
• 1:18:10
  entertainment, but it's not necessarily going to move you in
• 1:18:14
  any specific way. Whereas despite my experience
• 1:18:17
  watching Fallen Angels being kind of conflicted of like, I
• 1:18:20
  don't really think I'm resonating strongly with this,
• 1:18:22
  I'm going to remember that movie forever.
• 1:18:24
  Like I will be able to recall the strangeness of it.
• 1:18:27
  And I think that in that moment of conflict with what the movie
• 1:18:31
  is showing you and trying to make sense of it, you can glean
• 1:18:34
  your own meaning from it. So that's when the movie works
• 1:18:36
  best is when it is almost at odds with you.
• 1:18:39
  It's not making things easy to understand and is asking you to
• 1:18:42
  kind of meet it halfway. And that can be great.
• 1:18:45
  But again, it's such a mood based thing.
• 1:18:47
  Sometimes I really want that and sometimes I want to watch shoot.
• 1:18:49
  Fighter Oh, of course, yeah, yeah, 'cause I remember this
• 1:18:53
  might have been back in film school, honestly.
• 1:18:55
  But like, like I'd heard it said that it's like entertainment is
• 1:19:00
  meant to reinforce the ideas you already have and art is meant to
• 1:19:07
  challenge your way of thinking. And films are both.
• 1:19:12
  And so it's like those two things are like inherently
• 1:19:17
  contradicting to each other. But great films still somehow
• 1:19:21
  managed to be both, you know. So that seems to be the, the,
• 1:19:29
  the case primarily. So here with Fallen Angels,
• 1:19:31
  where it's like, it's almost like you said, like I feel like
• 1:19:35
  somebody who what like was really feeling isolated or
• 1:19:41
  lonely would watch this film and and respond to it in a
• 1:19:44
  completely different way. Yeah, I think they might really
• 1:19:47
  get something out of watching it.
• 1:19:49
  I mean, I remember being a pretty lonely, you know,
• 1:19:53
  teenager finishing up high school and being kind of
• 1:19:55
  personally isolated and attaching to a lot of movies
• 1:19:59
  that were about this sort of thing.
• 1:20:01
  And I think I'd have the same trouble going back to those.
• 1:20:04
  As I had watching this for the first time where I'm like, I get
• 1:20:06
  what's happening here, I appreciate what you're doing.
• 1:20:09
  It's not really at the speed that I'm at currently.
• 1:20:11
  And so it doesn't really land as strongly.
• 1:20:14
  Although the way you just described the conclusion sounds
• 1:20:16
  a little almost like, well, you know what would fix your
• 1:20:19
  problems, just don't be lonely anymore, just go find someone
• 1:20:22
  like it's like. Yeah, but these people are also
• 1:20:25
  all going about it. It's challenging them for going
• 1:20:28
  about it the wrong way. They are all defined by their
• 1:20:32
  own inability or refusal to communicate how they feel.
• 1:20:37
  The interactions between crazy man and crazy woman number one
• 1:20:42
  are defined by the fact that like they're never really
• 1:20:44
  talking to each other. They're not really together.
• 1:20:47
  They just spend time around each other and they don't communicate
• 1:20:50
  clearly at all. And the main couple, I guess the
• 1:20:53
  a story group, they refuse to communicate how they feel and
• 1:20:56
  like push each other away. And for the hitman, that ends
• 1:20:59
  poorly because the woman when spurned like chooses to get him
• 1:21:02
  killed because she can't handle him being separated from her.
• 1:21:06
  And then he essentially again refuses to make his his
• 1:21:09
  intentions clear and just won't pursue the feelings that he has.
• 1:21:13
  So it puts all of his blame back on the characters, but does also
• 1:21:17
  frame. The alternative is like you
• 1:21:19
  would all be much more normal if you could just get your act
• 1:21:22
  together. Well, because I was thinking of
• 1:21:25
  the, the one character you mentioned, you said she became
• 1:21:27
  like a flight attendant at the end when she was like once she
• 1:21:30
  was in a stable relationship. I I don't know it like I guess
• 1:21:33
  that was just maybe the resolution for that one
• 1:21:35
  character. We also don't know.
• 1:21:37
  I mean, given how the rest of the story is framed, we don't
• 1:21:40
  know that that's actually the same person necessarily.
• 1:21:42
  I think it's the same actor and the guy crazy guy says it's her
• 1:21:45
  but he might just still be tilting at windmills about it
• 1:21:49
  and like just seeing her as other people.
• 1:21:52
  But his impression is that she like, found someone and now it's
• 1:21:54
  behaving totally normally again. Yes, yeah, OK, yeah.
• 1:21:58
  And then I'm sorry I got my crazy ladies mixed up.
• 1:22:01
  So ice cream man and crazy lady one or two.
• 1:22:05
  Ice together and is with Crazy lady #1 Crazy Lady number 2 is
• 1:22:09
  the short haired woman who had a previous fling with the hitman
• 1:22:12
  and is like devastated that he doesn't seem to remember she
• 1:22:14
  existed. And which one becomes the flight
• 1:22:16
  attendant? The one that he ran.
• 1:22:18
  Off with. Oh, so they don't stay together
• 1:22:21
  that that film doesn't end with them together?
• 1:22:24
  No, we actually end the movie with the start of a new
• 1:22:27
  relationship between crazy man and the hitman's partner, woman.
• 1:22:31
  Oh gosh, so there's so. There's so again, the trading
• 1:22:34
  partners, yes, the A and the B plot don't come together until
• 1:22:38
  the very end essentially. Like there's some brief
• 1:22:40
  interactions between the characters in both stories, but
• 1:22:43
  it resolves that way at the end. And then crazy lady number one
• 1:22:48
  becomes the flight attendant. So like some of the characters
• 1:22:50
  end on a higher note and Hitman is very dead.
• 1:22:56
  I'm so annoyed that I don't know these people's names.
• 1:22:58
  I know they all got a name at some point, at least a first
• 1:23:01
  name, but it wouldn't have been any less confusing me trying to
• 1:23:04
  use those than just call him Crazy Man Crazy Lady.
• 1:23:06
  Sure. Yeah, that.
• 1:23:07
  Yeah, that's fine. I don't mind.
• 1:23:11
  So yeah, I don't know. I don't know that I have
• 1:23:13
  anything else for for fallen angels.
• 1:23:16
  Any any pending questions from you I.
• 1:23:19
  Mean it's it's a hard one to like follow up on because I
• 1:23:23
  think, like you said, it's it's very like it to me sounds like
• 1:23:28
  the type of film I would really appreciate from like a film
• 1:23:31
  making perspective, you know, yeah, totally.
• 1:23:35
  But, and I'm also with you in the sense that it's like I gotta
• 1:23:40
  be in the right mood or mentality to sit down and watch
• 1:23:43
  a film that is that is going to be challenging in some way.
• 1:23:47
  You know that there's not just going to be your sort of
• 1:23:51
  standard entertainment that you're familiar with.
• 1:23:54
  Exactly. So hopefully I'm gonna give the
• 1:23:56
  movie a score that's gonna be based on how I felt about it.
• 1:23:58
  You have to. But in terms of the, yeah,
• 1:24:00
  exactly, we are contractually obligated to do something we
• 1:24:03
  normally don't like doing, just ranking things out of 10.
• 1:24:06
  But the real take away is you kind of have to see for
• 1:24:09
  yourself. If you've seen Chunking Express,
• 1:24:11
  definitely watch this one. They're really, really deeply
• 1:24:15
  connected films. Even if you've seen In the Mood
• 1:24:18
  for Love or something, or just like other films in this
• 1:24:21
  ballpark and you liked them, Fallen Angels is a great movie.
• 1:24:24
  But if you're more like me and are not really up to this kind
• 1:24:27
  of speed right now, watch Shoot fighter two or one not. 2, not
• 1:24:31
  2. Yeah, not 2.
• 1:24:32
  Not 2. All right, Frank, I think we can
• 1:24:40
  roll right from there into final scores.
• 1:24:43
  You're going to be up first. What what What are your closing
• 1:24:46
  thoughts and scores for Shoot Fighter 1, not 2?
• 1:24:50
  Not 2. I mean, you can give 2A score if
• 1:24:53
  you want, but it's not going to count for anything.
• 1:24:55
  No, yeah, that would just be for funsies.
• 1:24:58
  I guess I should have thought about this before we got to this
• 1:25:00
  point, huh? Aw.
• 1:25:05
  Man, I never knew this was going to happen.
• 1:25:11
  This is tough. This is tough.
• 1:25:12
  I'm trying not to conflate the two films in my head and just
• 1:25:17
  stick to the first one. I honestly just like a gut
• 1:25:22
  feeling. I want to give shoot fighter a
• 1:25:24
  nine out of 10. A9 Gosh, I.
• 1:25:30
  Just went I just in terms of like, I guess just the premise
• 1:25:35
  of the show, like if you had just seen this movie or whatever
• 1:25:41
  and like recommended it to me, I'd be like, yeah, no, that was
• 1:25:44
  yeah, that's laps. You're right.
• 1:25:47
  Yeah, shoot, fighter. Fight to the deck PG Like they
• 1:25:51
  shoot it, they fight it. All right, I saw it.
• 1:25:53
  Yeah, exactly. It was all there, Mexico
• 1:25:55
  business, you get it, Mexico. Business.
• 1:26:00
  I do want to make the like full blown comedy version of Shoot
• 1:26:03
  Fighter though, because I feel like we really could have filled
• 1:26:04
  the gaps in that with some good slapstick humor.
• 1:26:07
  I mean, it made me laugh out loud at several points.
• 1:26:10
  The the I'm Magic Johnson, that's gonna stick with me.
• 1:26:13
  That's. Can't I can't the I'm Magic
• 1:26:16
  Johnson. This is not a basketball movie.
• 1:26:19
  It's. Just so unprompted and clearly
• 1:26:23
  ADR too that they just threw over the scene.
• 1:26:25
  I was just like, yes, no, no, it's you are magic Jackson,
• 1:26:29
  correct. So, yeah, I mean like a nine
• 1:26:32
  gosh. It just like, I don't know.
• 1:26:34
  It's like you look at it and it's kind of almost like you
• 1:26:37
  said about fallen angels. It's like I think it knew what
• 1:26:40
  it wanted to be. It did that and I agree.
• 1:26:44
  I agree. Yeah, it's a shameless coming
• 1:26:48
  together of popular action karate movie concepts with
• 1:26:52
  actors people would know. I mean, really, if you told
• 1:26:54
  someone in 1993 you're like, hey, you want to watch the bad
• 1:26:56
  guy from Bloodsport fight the bad guy from Karate Kid?
• 1:27:00
  And then they actually do. You'd be like, yeah, it it has
• 1:27:03
  the fulfilled, right. It has the exact same appeal as
• 1:27:07
  Cobra Kai, where it's like no one would ever accuse Cobra Kai
• 1:27:11
  of being an amazing television show, but it's.
• 1:27:17
  Great nonetheless, you know, like, it's great for people who
• 1:27:22
  like that kind of thing. That's maybe the similarity
• 1:27:24
  between the two movies today. Like, if you are a fan of this
• 1:27:26
  kind of filmmaking, here's one for you.
• 1:27:29
  Yeah, because I honestly like, I mean, I don't know what you're
• 1:27:31
  going to score fallen angels, but I feel like I would, I would
• 1:27:34
  score fallen angels really high too, like given the.
• 1:27:38
  Type of film it is I. Would I?
• 1:27:40
  Would. But you tell me, buddy.
• 1:27:45
  Tell me. Gosh, I'm, I'm torn.
• 1:27:49
  So when I finished the movie, because we, we've said before
• 1:27:51
  that the review score comes after the conversation about it
• 1:27:54
  because that can change how you feel.
• 1:27:56
  I finished watching Fallen Angels a couple days ago and I
• 1:27:59
  think at the time I said it was a six because as much as I liked
• 1:28:04
  what it was doing, the movie did leave me feeling kind of bored.
• 1:28:07
  And I was almost frustrated that we didn't get more development
• 1:28:10
  with the A plot and ended up with so much of that B plot,
• 1:28:13
  considering the part we got less of was much more interesting.
• 1:28:16
  But this is definitely a movie that you ruminate on over time
• 1:28:21
  and in your opinion immediately softens.
• 1:28:23
  Like right away, I'm like a six, come on, you can do better than
• 1:28:26
  that, even though it's my score. What about all the ice?
• 1:28:30
  Cream. Yeah.
• 1:28:31
  What about all that ice cream? Oh my God.
• 1:28:32
  The ice cream scene was shorter, and maybe I could rate it
• 1:28:35
  higher. I don't know.
• 1:28:36
  I'm torn between a six and an 8 because sevens aren't real.
• 1:28:41
  Nothing's A7. I mean, we can, you can give it
• 1:28:44
  a 7 if you wanted, but yeah. No, it's not a real 7A7 out of
• 1:28:48
  10 is. I have nothing to say about this
• 1:28:50
  movie that we decided a 7 out of 10.
• 1:28:52
  Stare blankly at the microphone and don't say anything.
• 1:28:54
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, 90 minute upload of
• 1:28:58
  like light breathing. I don't know, I guess I could
• 1:29:03
  give Fallen Angels an 8 because again, while watching it I had
• 1:29:10
  conflicted feelings about it, but as soon as the movie's done
• 1:29:12
  and it's just a memory in my head, it feels a lot.
• 1:29:16
  Better. And I honestly feel like that's
• 1:29:17
  one of the strengths of a film like that because if you watch
• 1:29:21
  it like something that is, that is shot more traditionally,
• 1:29:25
  especially shot traditionally is like like standard American film
• 1:29:29
  making, like you're so used to that, that your brain's just
• 1:29:33
  going to kind of filter that out very quickly.
• 1:29:35
  But like something like this where it uses those interesting
• 1:29:41
  visual and like storytelling elements that is going to stick
• 1:29:44
  with you longer just inherently just because it's something your
• 1:29:47
  brain's not as familiar with. That's exactly why I want to
• 1:29:51
  give Fallen Angels a higher score, because we talked about
• 1:29:54
  how that conflict is productive. To be approached by something in
• 1:29:58
  an art form you're used to watching really easy movies in
• 1:30:01
  and be given something a lot harder to digest is meaningful.
• 1:30:04
  And I'm going to remember that so much more than a lot of other
• 1:30:10
  movies that I would say at the time felt easier to get through.
• 1:30:13
  And I think it would be genuinely unfair to write off
• 1:30:15
  Fallen Angels, considering I did have a lot to say about it.
• 1:30:17
  I talked about it for like 40 minutes.
• 1:30:19
  Right. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:30:21
  OK. So that's an 8 out of 10 for
• 1:30:22
  Fallen Angels, a nine out of 10. Unbelievable for sure.
• 1:30:27
  To the death. This show is just a couple of
• 1:30:31
  hacks about these two movies as being anywhere in the same
• 1:30:35
  ballpark. This also means that I, for the
• 1:30:40
  5th episode in a row, have won me your double feature.
• 1:30:46
  OK, just to recap. So when this show started our
• 1:30:49
  first episode, our scores were pretty similar.
• 1:30:51
  Second episode, Total Bomb went off where I gave your pick an 8
• 1:30:55
  and you gave mine a three. So I was in the hole for a
• 1:30:57
  while. I spent some time crawling back
• 1:30:59
  out of there and now I'm just pulled pretty far ahead.
• 1:31:03
  The difference is now pretty much the same, but in the
• 1:31:04
  opposite direction. Where you in season 1 Overall,
• 1:31:08
  your movies have scored a cumulative total of like 6
• 1:31:10
  points fewer than mine. Yeah, you just like don't get
• 1:31:12
  it, man. Like I just don't.
• 1:31:14
  Get it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:16
  Like if you liked it more and you weren't so stupid, then, you
• 1:31:19
  know, maybe you'd say the right numbers.
• 1:31:22
  Yeah. Just like what?
• 1:31:22
  What are you doing? Like, all right, I just want to
• 1:31:25
  give that context again, because we're in the second-half of
• 1:31:27
  Season 1, we're planning on doing 12 episodes.
• 1:31:30
  If we don't face any production delays, I think the end of
• 1:31:33
  Season 1 will be basically the end of this calendar year.
• 1:31:37
  So stay tuned for the rest of 2025.
• 1:31:38
  Frank has some some some room to make up.
• 1:31:42
  And with that in mind, why don't we get into our picks for next
• 1:31:44
  time? Yeah.
• 1:31:46
  Am I going first? I was just about to ask OK
• 1:31:48
  sorry. So per the rules of the game,
• 1:31:50
  whoever gets a higher score in the episode gets to pick their
• 1:31:52
  next movie 1st and we forget about that every single time we
• 1:31:55
  record. So as much as I was about to be
• 1:31:59
  nice and be like no you go first.
• 1:32:01
  Not allowed. So I believe I could be wrong.
• 1:32:05
  So when episode 8, our next episode releases, it'll probably
• 1:32:07
  be the day before Halloween. And so with that in mind, I gave
• 1:32:11
  Frank the tip off to maybe select kind of a spooky
• 1:32:14
  Halloween season film. And I did the same.
• 1:32:16
  So Frank, your next movie is 1995's The Prophecy.
• 1:32:21
  Oh OK, tell me more. No, just fine.
• 1:32:28
  Yeah. See you later.
• 1:32:28
  No. So The Prophecy.
• 1:32:30
  I've been picking movies a lot lately based on who's in them,
• 1:32:32
  because I think that's the easiest way to gauge like, is
• 1:32:34
  Frank gonna like this if I if I give him a movie with so and so
• 1:32:37
  in it? And this is one of the weirdest
• 1:32:39
  combinations yet. So the Prophecy, First off, is
• 1:32:42
  marketed as, like, every genre imaginable.
• 1:32:43
  It's like an action fantasy horror mystery.
• 1:32:47
  Film. Wow.
• 1:32:48
  That's a lot. The main character is played by
• 1:32:51
  Christopher Walken, but in the rest of the cast we have Elias
• 1:32:55
  Couteus who a lot of people would know as Casey Jones from
• 1:32:59
  the 90s live action Ninja Turtles movies and Vigo
• 1:33:04
  Mortensen AKA Aragorn from Lord of the Rings.
• 1:33:08
  Together at last, you know. Together at last.
• 1:33:11
  Every time I watch Ninja Turtles I think What if Aragorn, son of
• 1:33:16
  Aragorn? I think that about most movies
• 1:33:20
  actually, but. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 1995's The
• 1:33:23
  Prophecy. That'll be for next time for
• 1:33:25
  what is essentially our Halloween episode.
• 1:33:27
  OK, cool. What?
• 1:33:28
  What year was that one? 1995. 95 all right, great cool
• 1:33:33
  do you want one do you want or should we just.
• 1:33:35
  Yeah, yeah, that'd be good. I mean, I could go watch shoot
• 1:33:40
  Fighter two or three or something.
• 1:33:42
  Oh shoot, Fighter five, no. Shoot fighter.
• 1:33:50
  They're not that clever. Don't give them.
• 1:33:51
  That. No, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:51
  It's not. They don't know how.
• 1:33:54
  Your movie if you want, if you want to watch it, if you.
• 1:33:57
  Want if you if you have time. Not busy is 1999 Tim Burton's
• 1:34:07
  Sleepy Hollow. Oh, interesting, interesting.
• 1:34:11
  I'm familiar with this movie. I haven't seen it.
• 1:34:14
  OK, good. I was.
• 1:34:15
  Yeah, I was like this one. Seems this one is verging on
• 1:34:18
  pretty like mainstream. So I was wondering if this is 1
• 1:34:21
  you hadn't seen before? Because this is Johnny Depp,
• 1:34:24
  isn't it? Right.
• 1:34:25
  Yes, OK, this will be funny. I'm going to, I'm going to show
• 1:34:28
  some vulnerability here. I historically am kind of a wimp
• 1:34:32
  about scary movies. I for some reason even if I
• 1:34:36
  watch the movie and I don't feel scared, it just like gives me
• 1:34:39
  nightmares sometimes if there's a movie with like particularly
• 1:34:42
  upsetting imagery in it. And I think I once was debating
• 1:34:46
  watching Sleepy Hollow with my wife and she was like looking at
• 1:34:49
  the IMDb parents guide and she was like I think this is too
• 1:34:52
  much for you. Because because of Johnny Depp,
• 1:34:55
  you're just. Like, because of Johnny Depp?
• 1:34:56
  Yeah. Aw, man.
• 1:34:59
  This never Woody Allen, Johnny Depp.
• 1:35:01
  Who else we got? They're going to be like next
• 1:35:02
  time Bill Cosby stars all these problematic men.
• 1:35:09
  Yeah, yeah. No, that's like you said, it's a
• 1:35:12
  Halloween episode. It's a Halloween episode.
• 1:35:15
  Episode. Also, I genuinely don't think
• 1:35:17
  it's going to be that bad at all.
• 1:35:19
  No, it's Tim. Burton like.
• 1:35:21
  It's Tim Burton. Although.
• 1:35:23
  What's the worst that could happen?
• 1:35:24
  I do remember when I was younger and I saw Edward Scissorhands,
• 1:35:28
  that movie kind of creeps me out a bit.
• 1:35:30
  Yeah. So.
• 1:35:32
  Well, we'll see. I mean, again, it's a spooky
• 1:35:34
  season episode. If I come back in like a cold
• 1:35:36
  sweat and I'm like, so I watched Sleepy Hollow when I freaked
• 1:35:39
  out. And did you say cuz the lead of
• 1:35:42
  the movie you recommended is Christopher Walken?
• 1:35:44
  You said yeah, cuz he's in this as well.
• 1:35:46
  So. Cool, TuneIn in two weeks for a
• 1:35:50
  Christopher Walken double feature.
• 1:35:53
  Maybe scary, maybe scary, but not too scary.
• 1:35:56
  Or else you'll never hear from me again.
• 1:35:58
  Tell me I'm under my bed forever.
• 1:36:05
  The Prophecy. Thank you for listening to our
• 1:36:21
  show. As always, if you enjoyed
• 1:36:23
  tonight's episode, please consider giving it a like,
• 1:36:25
  giving our show a review, recommending it to a friend, all
• 1:36:28
  the usual stuff. You can also find us on
• 1:36:30
  Instagram at Meet Your Double Feature or follow us on Blue Sky
• 1:36:33
  at Mydfpod. The other big announcement for
• 1:36:37
  tonight is that Meet Your Double Feature now has its own website,
• 1:36:40
  youcanvisitus@meetyourdoublefeature.com, spelled in full just like the
• 1:36:44
  show. In order to listen to full
• 1:36:46
  episodes, you can read some written movie review blogs based
• 1:36:50
  on films we covered on the show. There's going to be some more
• 1:36:52
  additional content landing there as well, and it's just a great
• 1:36:55
  place to find links on whatever platform you choose to listen
• 1:36:58
  to. So again, that's Meet Your
• 1:36:59
  doublefeature.com if you want to follow us and learn more.
• 1:37:03
  That's all for now. We'll be back in two weeks with
• 1:37:05
  our next episode. Until then, thanks for
• 1:37:08
  listening. Coming up next.
• 1:37:19
  It's. Sleepy Hollow followed by the
• 1:37:22
  prophecy on Meet Your Double feature.