| Firepower (1993) Cast:Chad McQueen, Gary Daniels Two cops go to the wasteland to take down "The Swordsman" the guy who killed their partners and massacred a police station, in order to do this they must prove themselves in the ring where "The Swordsman" awaits. Oh and there's also an AIDS counterfeit cure that makes no sense whatsoever in this sloppy, knuckle headed martial arts clunker. Chad McQueen may hold the record for appearing top billed over a better martial artist, this happened in the atrocious Martial Law (When Jeff Wincott took over in M.L 2 things actually got entertaining.) and now it happens here in Firepower, one of the lamest actioners PM ever produced. I haven't seen all of PM's efforts but I have seen my obligated share, being that my stock-in-trade is action and being that PM was the most prolific company of the 90's, our paths have crossed many times. I was looking forward to Firepower, because of Gary Daniels. I loved Rage, so much it got a rare four star write up. I enjoyed Recoil and thought Riot was an interesting failure. Firepower on the other hand is just a failure. The problem is with the main star Chad McQueen. McQueen sufffers from the Sasha Mitchell-effect, in that he seems like too much of a nice guy and that he doesn't look like he'd start kicking ass at a moment's notice. However Sasha Mitchell could at least fight and was polished enough to look impressive when fighting on screen. McQueen at times looks like a overweight blue belt trying to fight his way through a pack of kickboxing champions. As an actor he lacks any charisma that Mitchell possessed and overall McQueen is far to lackluster to headline a martial arts actioner. Gary Daniels (The poor man's Dolph Lundgren) at least can fight and his fight with The Swordsman is indeed a great fightscene, because you can see that both fighters have great knowledge in martial arts and are stylish when throwing kicks and punches. The McQueen showdown with The Swordsman comes off as if McQueen accidently won and the effect is just terrible. Firepower also suffers from an awkward plot that gives us gibberish about a counterfeit AIDS cure. Think about it, what the hell is a counterfeit AIDS cure? I mean if it's phony medicine made to dupe poor people who can't afford the real thing, your marketing is bound to maybe make say fifty thousand dollars at the most...and that's if everybody in the city buys it. Who writes this stuff? And secondly who casts these movies and makes the decision that, hey I think Chad McQueen is a better martial artist than Gary Daniels. Who knows? All I know is that Steve's son is probably the worst actionstar in the market today. I mean at least David Bradley seems to know what he's doing. Movies like Firepower are irritating because they keep thinking that we the audience are dumb and each blow we think we see land, is really the hammer of stupidity hitting us on the head and making us, all that much dumber. D.Richard Pepin* |