Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight Reviews

In 1992 several films stood out for the searing urgency with which they addressed American racism and redemption. One was MALCOLM X, maverick director Spike Lee's epic depiction of the slain leader's controversial life. And then there was ... BLOODFIST III: FORCED TO FIGHT. No kidding. This sequel from the redoubtable Roger Corman's Concorde Pictures may not be scrutinized by pundits, civil rights leaders and social historians for years to come, but BLOODFIST III follows the best B-movie tradition of tackling larger issues and taboos within the framework of exploitation filler. Actually, this movie has nothing to do with the previous BLOODFIST entries, except all-star World Kickboxing Association light heavyweight champ Don "The Dragon" Wilson. Wilson is, sadly, a bit of an anomaly in recent martial arts pictures: a hero who actually is of Asian (Japanese/Irish) descent. The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Thais may have developed the ancient martial arts, and Bruce Lee popularized the chopsocky genre, but you have to look hard for any leading Asian actors in American action films. Usually they're villains, wise mentors or doomed sidekicks. It's hardly coincidental that Wilson has condemned pernicious racism from time to time in his fistfests, and the penitentiary-bound BLOODFIST III has timely impact. Wilson plays Jimmy Boland, a Japanese-American railroaded into the big house on a murder rap. When an acquaintance is sodomized and stabbed to death by the vicious jailhouse pusher, Boland retaliates by killing the drug lord in a martial-arts brawl. Both the victim and the pusher were black, but the bad guy was a partner of the prison's black gang commander Blue (Gregory McKinney), a self-styled militant whose walls are covered with Africa posters, and who wields power over the black inmate population through race baiting. He denounces Boland as a racist and orders revenge. Boland is offered protection by the Manson-like Wheelhead (Rick Dean), chieftain of the cellblock's white supremacists, but the hero refuses to be their homeboy. The calculating warden Taylor (Charles Boswell), seeing that Boland is a marked man, strategically places him in the same cell as Samuel Stark (Richard Roundtree), a self-taught lawyer (with Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed portraits on his wall) who's made enemies of the administrators by handling the convicts' legal appeals. "Knowledge is power," says Stark, indicating his law books. "This is my power," replies Boland, making a fist. Nonetheless, Stark recognizes that his new cellmate is a decent guy and finds him a job working with the non-hostile, ethnically mixed yard maintenance crew. Blue, meanwhile, despite his African-American rebel pose, is secretly an enforcer for Warden Taylor, and he now targets the meddling Stark for an attack. In the screenplay's sharpest irony, Blue allies himself with the avowed bigot Wheelhead; each rules through hatred and division, and both see Boland and Stark as threats to their standing in the prison community. The conspirators try to assassinate Stark during a Presidents' Day holiday, fomenting a full-scale prison riot in which Boland ultimately confronts his tormentors behind and outside the bars. The climax, in which Boland actually resists killing Blue and Wheelhead, confirms that BLOODFIST III is operating several notches above the level of mere mayhem. True, there are enough brawls to satisfy such tastes, but none of them are extraneous to the plot. This is a rare action story in which action serves the story, not the other way around, and the plot, characters and implicit politics provide the reason to watch, even when the going gets brutal (actor-turned-director Oley Sassone is a long way from his earlier writing/producing chores on the Disney family tale WILD HEARTS CAN'T BE BROKEN). As an actor the wiry Wilson has never been a terribly dynamic presence outside of the kickboxing arena, but here he stays within his range and gives a credible portrayal of a hardened tough. The screenplay is careful not to make him too much of a lamb, even when he sort-of-befriends a pathetic child molester Diddler (John Cardone), perenially tormented by the other prisoners. Richard Roundtree, best known for 1971's SHAFT, also lends a street-smart edge to Stark, a somewhat stock character who would usually be a prime candidate for plastic sainthood. Meanwhile villains Rick Dean and Gregory McKinney are given subtle shadings of humanity that balance their unchained malevolence. Richard Paul, commonly seen as stuffy Southern types on TV sitcoms, has a bit part as a Department of Corrections head whose double-dealings with the bowtied Warden Taylor inject a superfluous bit of cynicism. Although there are no major female roles, the picture neatly meets its female nudity quota without violating the reality of the prison environment, via an inmate showing (Diddler works the projector) of the vintage kung-fu drive-in pic TNT JACKSON, starring the awesome Jeanne Bell. (That was another Corman release, of course.) As for BLOODFIST III: FORCED TO FIGHT, it had a brief showing in theaters with a video release quick to follow. A generic ad campaign (as well as the needless tie-in to the rest of the BLOODFIST titles) ensured that the picture would get overlooked as just another karate throwaway, but it's a superior specimen of both the martial-arts and prison genres. (Violence, adult situations, substance abuse, sexual situations, profanity, nudity.)