Tiger Heart Reviews

TIGER HEART is a juvenile, direct-to-video knockoff of RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, designed for the Tiger Beat set, starring pint-sized teen T.J. Roberts as a martial-arts expert who takes on a gang of thugs. Eric (T.J. Roberts) and his buddy Brad (Timothy Williams) are looking for some summer fun before they start college. They go to a party but get kicked out by a rich kid named Steve (Brian Gross) who's in Eric's martial-arts class. Meanwhile, a greasy hood named Paulo (Robert LaSardo), meets with a corrupt developer who orders him to scare a group of restaurant and store owners on a block where he wants to build a property. Paulo and his gang go to a convenience store where a pretty girl named Stephanie (Jennifer Lyons) works. Paulo tries to scare her uncle into selling his store, but he refuses. Eric just happens to be at the store buying some soda, so he comes to the rescue and beats up the gang. Eric and Stephanie start to date and one night while they're out, Paulo and the gang go back to the store and threaten Stephanie's uncle, who has a heart attack. While he's recovering in the hospital, the developer convinces Stephanie to sell the store, but Eric shows up at the last minute and starts to fight the gang. Paulo escapes and takes Stephanie with him. Eric and his whole martial-arts class track the gang to a nightclub where a giant fight ensues. Eric saves Stephanie, and Paulo and the developer are arrested. TIGER HEART is a thoroughly routine release from schlock-video purveyors PM Entertainment, whose films are notable for their explosions and huge fireballs, and little else. Roberts, who used to be known as Ted Jan in his previous movies, is apparently trying to cultivate a hipper, tougher image, so he is billed as T.J. here. Unfortunately, with his skinny build and high voice, he's downright laughable as a wannabe teen martial-arts master, single-handedly defeating gangs of huge, leather-clad bad guys with tattoos and Hispanic accents. The script is simply a formulaic RUMBLE rip-off, with little except teen fantasies, bad rock music, and puerile humor to fill in the time between the requisite fight scenes, which occur like clockwork about every 10 minutes. Like most of its ilk, there is an abundance of offensive ethnic and gay stereotyping and the acting is embarrassingly amateurish. (Violence.)