Blackbelt Reviews

Make no mistake, BLACKBELT star Don "The Dragon" Wilson is the genuine chopsocky article. As an actor, he's merely adequate. But as a kickboxer, Wilson outclasses all the other martial arts heroes currently inflicting bodily harm. Content with teaching self-defense, only reluctantly does Jack Dillon (Wilson) heed his former police partner's call to become a bodyguard. Can Dillon save popular songstress Shanna (Deirdre Imershein) from a self-destructive relationship with her manager Bobby Machado (Jack Verell)? (In this low-rent version of THE BODYGUARD, Wilson has a better haircut than Kevin Costner, but Imershein doesn't sing as well as Whitney Houston.) Machado is actually fronting for slimy music promoter Eddie DiAngelo (Richard Beymer) who plans to put out a hit on Shanna if she doesn't re-sign with him. Matters are complicated by the appearance of John Sweet (Mathias Hues), a Vietnam vet, mercenary and serial killer who keeps his prostitute victims' ring fingers for trophies. Since Shanna has the misfortune of resembling Sweet's dead mother (Lord Kimberly), whom he seeks to kill over and over again, she's in double jeopardy from the psycho and DiAngelo. As the body count mounts (including Shanna's best friend and Dillon's ex-partner), Dillon and Shanna barely escape a mob hit. Although they survive the de rigeur car chase, Dillon has to defeat a kickboxing champ hired by DiAngelo and then go limb-to-limb against dozens of Sweet's bar buddies. In preparation for the kill, Sweet dresses Shanna up as his mom while Dillon is busy fighting a platoon of martial artists. When Dillon finally tangles with the massive Sweet, he conquers him with the help of Shanna who just happens to pick up a sword that Sweet impales himself upon. Unfortunately, while BLACKBELT deserves credit for examining the seamier aspects of the glamorous record industry, writer-director Charles Philip Moore's screenplay raises some disturbing questions. Did the film really need to plumb the psychological depths in order to create credible motivations for both Shanna and Sweet? This may be the first martial arts movie to use incest as all-round psychological shorthand--Shanna was raped by her father; young Sweet was seduced into an affair with his mother--not that it develops these tragedies with any insight. The graphic scene of mother-son sex seems sorely out of place in an assembly-line action film. It's a shame that Sweet's sordid background seems intended to give the film a kinky undercurrent. Overlooking that one major reservation, audiences will find that BLACKBELT goes about its high-kicking action business with the expected powerhouse fight sequences. (Violence, sexual situations, adult situations.)