Two brothers have half of a powerful ancient Chinese talisman. An evil gang leader has the other half and determines to get the brothers’ half and have a complete medallion so he can gain absolute power.
The ’90s were synonymous with video game movie adaptations and for the most part, their big screen counterparts were awful. For proof, look no further than “Super Mario Bros.” (1993), “Street Fighter” (1994), “Mortal Kombat” (1995), and “Wing Commander” (1999). You can also add “Double Dragon” (1994) to that list. The problem, I believe, is that studios realized that with the advent of new video game consoles, such as Play Station and Sega Saturn, which employed advanced graphics the likes of which had never been seen before, adapting video games to the big screen would be a cinch. The main issue is that some video games have no discernible narrative, in the case of Double Dragon, you fought your opponent and if you won, you advanced to the next level and so it went. Simple. When studios adapted them to movie screens, a backstory and character development were needed but fans of the games lost interest because instead of our main protagonists constantly fighting bad guys, there had to be moments of levity and dormancy, something the video games never afforded their players.
In “Double Dragon,” Mark Dacascos and Scott Wolf play brothers Jimmy and Billy Lee, respectively, and they live in a post-apocalyptic New Angeles, which is governed by the police during the day and overrun with gangs at night. Robert Patrick plays Koga Shuko, a crime lord who wants to take over New Angeles. When he steals a magic medallion called the Double Dragon and realizes that it has been split into two and discovers that when the two pieces are combined, it will give him the ultimate power in the universe, he sets out to find the other half, which just happens to be owned by Jimmy and Billy, and will stop at nothing to claim his power.
Robert Patrick was hot after the success of his bad guy role in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and while he tries to bring the same level of menace here, sadly, it falls way short. The problem is not with the actors, rather, the story, or lack thereof. The film is just a means for our heroes to go from one scene to the next, fighting their way as they go, so they can reach the inevitable finale and team up together to fight the main bad guy, just like its video game counterpart. The movie never takes itself too seriously and while that plagues many films these days, even back in the ’90s, while it is a video game adaptation, it panders to the audience every chance it gets, proclaiming, “Hey, look at us, we’re based on a video game” and even though, for the most part, it is all tongue-in-cheek, every film requires a certain amount of gravity and here, there is none. Characters never feel authentic, just cardboard cutouts so no matter what level of danger of peril befalls them, you realize that should they succumb to the threat, it won’t be too serious. After all, here is a film with magic medallions that can give the owner unlimited, universal powers, which could also mean the ability to resurrect the dead so no amount of menace can be taken too seriously.
Mark Dacascos and Scott Wolf are likable as the titular protagonists, quarreling and fighting as all siblings do and while Mr. Dacascos is a real-life martial artist, Mr. Wolf is not so when both are fighting the bad guys, or each other, it is embarrassing to watch a trained fighter and an actor who was trained solely for the movie, pretending to be real-life martial artists. Why not just hire another martial artist like Mr. Dacascos to make the film a little more credible? After all, this is a video game adaptation so acting abilities are not really required, fighting skills are. Alyssa Milano appears as Marian Delario, the leader of a street gang and while there is undeniable chemistry between her and Mr. Wolf, her character has nothing much to do other than play the love interest. While “Double Dragon” has some impressive visuals, sadly, that is about all the positivity it has going for it, even 25 years later.
Now available on a Special Collector’s Edition Blu-ray
