Like a porcupine fucking a basketball, Samurai Cop must be seen to be believed. From the editing to acting, it's a pastiche of all varieties of cinematic incompetency. Little wonder it rendered lead Matt Hannon's career stillborn.

The film oozes sexual innuendo from front to back. No situation is too bizarre for some sort of ribald exchange. Often these come out of nowhere. As in this case, where a nurse - apparently finding it impossible to resist Hannon's smokey eyes and cascading hair - engages in some wildly unprofessional crotch grabbing. I smell a lawsuit.

The Movie: American Yakuza 2 (1996)
The Perp: Koji (Ryo Ishibashi)
The Victim: Psycho (Bobcat Goldthwait)

American Yazuka 2 is a remarkably forgettable mobsters-and-coppers romp remembered by few save Danielle Harris’ semi-pedophilic cult. It does, however, provide sweet schadenfreude for all you haters of 1980’s comic curiosity Bobcat Goldthwait. Bob has a brief cameo as “Psycho,” a mentally imbalanced terrorist-without-a-cause who straps himself with dynamite and holds the local greasy spoon hostage. Little does Bob know, two Yazuka are among the clientele - and Koji (Ryo Ishibashi) and Hideo (Kô Takasugi) don’t appreciate anybody getting in between them and their Moons Over My Hammy®...

The Movie: The Hitman (1991)
The Perp: Cliff Garrett (Chuck Norris)
The Victim: Hassan (Michael Benyaer)

Learn wisely from this hapless Iranian mobster's fatal lesson: Chuck is slow to forgive the Iranian hostage crisis and never, ever curse in Chuck's presence. This brief excerpt, over the course of a mere 19 seconds, singlehandedly summarizes the entire Norris ouvre: dull, witless and above all, Pro-Amurrican.

When you hear the title Soft Target, you're probably expecting some steamy late-night potboiler starring Shannon Tweed's rack. You'd be wrong. This one stars Michelle Kauffman's rack and another pair of boobs (rimshot) Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson and Olivier Gruner.

Director Art Camacho, apparently hot to recapture the magic that was X-Treme Fighter, teams up with Donny the Dragon again for another sure-fire snooze ride - and like that DVD-saster, he takes the more is less approach and crams the silver disc full of half-familiar second-raters and never-wuzzers.

Black Caesar himself, Fred Williamson shows up for five minutes. So do Martin Kove (of Karate Kid fame) and adult star T.J. Hart (of Only the A-Hole 8 fame). Art also roped in Gary Busey - but come on, these days that guy will do anything (and I do mean ANYTHING) if you give him a ham sandwich and half a freezer bag of untrampled Peruvian cocaine.

Anyhoo, Dragon and Olivier are two cops, who really don’t like each other, assigned to track down high-class escort Angel (Kauffman), the only witness to a brutal police slaying. Turns out the hit was an inside job, the result of a collaboration between mobster Frankie Nugentti Jr. - played with cartoonish panache by apparent cosmetic dentistry victim, Michael Cavalieri - and a crooked cop.


After tracking down Angel, the unlikely pair is on the run - the Mob cutting them off at every turn. Thankfully, they still manage some time for some soft-focus sex scenes. Porn cover girl T.J. and softcore Internet model Kauffman are obvious game for a little on-screen gratuitous nudity; Don, on the other hand, has the slightly ill-at-ease ‘Oh gee, my wife is gonna kill me’ look on his face as Michelle dangles her silicones mere inches from his eyes. This may explain why he gave the ol’ ball-and-chain an Associate Producer credit.


All in all, there’s not much to distinguish this so-so effort from the glut of other quickie Direct-to-DVD actioners out there. Unless of course you’re that one drooling lunatic locked up in their parents' attic who’s been clamoring for the day that Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson and Olivier Gruner FINALLY teamed up. Then my friend, this dud’s for you.

Everyone else, you may find THIS a bit more stimulating.

Stallone had his marble-mouthed street savvy. Arnold had his ironic sense of humor. Jean-Claude had his Gallic sex appeal. None of ‘em had real acting chops, neither did say, Gary Cooper, but charisma not dramatic abilities maketh a star. Then what the hell did Chuck Norris have? Long before he become a Right Wing politico and a long-running Internet MEME, there was the man, the stubbly red beard and those unwaveringly monotone line-reads.

Whether he’s making a cold-blooded threat or cracking a sardonic joke, Chuck always sounds the same. But whereas the similarly lacking Steven Seagal often found interesting vehicles to mask his dramatic deficiencies, Chuck always managed to stumble upon material as juiceless as himself. The Hitman, while better than say, Sidekicks, isn’t really the exception.

It starts in Seattle, Officer Cliff Garrett (Norris) and his partner Del Delaney (Michael Parks) are embroiled in a dockside skirmish with local baddies. After the gunsmoke clears, Del turns on Garrett - riddling him with bullets and leaving him for dead.

Deep in a coma, Cliffy waivers between life and death in the county hospital. The attending doc tells Garrett’s boss Chambers (Ken Pogue) that he might be a “different man” if he recovers. Boy, is he ever! Three year later, the new Chuck has ditched the mustachioed and blown dry cop crop - now he wears a full beard and a long, slippery Kentucky waterfall! He’s also become awful trigger happy as of late.

See, Garrett has become Grogan, undercover hitman for the Seattle Mafia. Never mind that his itchy trigger finger probably would have rendered the State’s case inadmissible in court and resulted in Chuck’s dischargement from the police force. None of it matters, really. By film’s end, all the targets of the State’s case are dead and Chuck, he’s become too disillusioned about the criminal justice system to give two shits about his career anyway.


How did it all come to this? Well, a new breed of hood has muscled into town: the Iranian Mob! They’re suspiciously Un-American: they practice a strange religion, eat strange food, speak a strange language and enjoy bellydancing. I smells evil, and it smells like chelow kabab! The presence of the Iranians sparks an all out gang-war involving both the Italians and the French-Canadian Mob (?) and somewhere, pulling all the strings, is Chuck’s former partner Delaney.

It’s all really bloody and all really boring. To break up the tough guy posturing and rampant xenophobia, there’s a saccharine plotline with a fatherless kid-next-door. I suppose this is meant to imbue Chuck’s character with a drop of humanity, but more likely you’ll just be giving the fast-forward button a work out. You can do the same for most of this witless, unmemorable actioner and trust me, you won’t be missing much. Still, it’s much better than THIS.