Fist of Honor Reviews

This bland grab bag of mafia shenanigans begins on the celebratory eve of a truce hammered out between two rival crime families: the Maluccis, led by Victor (Abe Vigoda) and including his son Sammy (Jamie Alba), Frankie Pop (Frank Sivero), Eddie the Zipper (Scott Getlin), Johnny (Louis A. Perez), and Louie Juliano (Gino Dentie); and the Diamonds, led by Dino (Harry Guardino) and including Tucchi (Nicholas Worth), Bobby (Michael Andolini), and Jimmy Nickels (Jimmy Distefano). Working for Dino as conscientious debt-collector muscle and the family's top fistfighter (in regular, high-stakes matches with the Maluccis) is Colin "Fist" Sullivan (Sam Jones), who is in love with night-club singer and Dino's ex-flame Gina (Joey House). Fist also serves as a surrogate father to the abused adolescent girl Alex (Ali Humiston), who lives upstairs. The criminals' truce, which has divided the city's rackets equally, is an uneasy one, with Dino impatiently waiting to wipe out the Maluccis. After a number of skirmishes between the hoods, Dino's chance comes: when Frankie Pop and Eddie betray Victor, Dino's men kill him. Detective Johnson (Bubba Smith), who is on Dino's payroll, needs a fall guy; Dino chooses Fist and has Tucchi plant evidence in his apartment. Surprised by Gina, Tucchi kills her, and Fist is arrested for multiple murder. Sammy, running what's left of the Maluccis, vows revenge and springs Fist to help him, setting up a fight match as part of his plot. Alex, who witnessed Gina's murder, identifies Tucchi, whom Sammy kills. Dino's men flee, and Sammy douses Dino with gas and sets him on fire. Now retired from the rackets, Fist and Alex fish in the stream that cuts through the property he had bought for the dream house he and Gina had hoped to build. Normally reliable direct-to-video moviemakers Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi slip a notch or two with FIST OF HONOR, a routine Mafia mishmash. With its confusing overpopulation of similar if colorfully named characters, the script by Charles T. Kanganis barely shuffles the cliches, and Pepin's direction is lackluster. The many fight scenes are almost all pulled-punch-for-punch identical: Jones knocks his quarry around for a while, then is himself beaten almost senseless, before reviving for eventual victory. The film's heavily Italian culture, language, and characters also seem utterly foreign to its unnamed but familiar Los Angeles setting, making the entire movie somewhat unbelievable. Jones, who seems visibly more beefy and pumped with every new low-budget outing, is adequate as the tender/tough fighter who entirely eschews kung-fu for his meaty fists, a welcome rarity in the video urban crime genre. The picture features a relatively distinguished, if underused cast, with the warring crime lords played to the hilt by veterans Harry Guardino and Abe Vigoda. The picture's only highlights are some graceful bursts of editing (by Paul G. Volk, Richard Gentner, Ron Cabreros, and John Weidner) which rhythmically link simultaneous but disparate events, GODFATHER-style, like Tucchi's evidence-planting and killing of Gina cut against Fist's family-competition fistfight, and Joey House's sultry pair of jazzy songs (the excellent vocals are actually by Nancy Buche): the Kaempfert-Gabler standard "L-O-V-E" and Kelly Salloum's "Let's Start Over." (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.)