Guilty Pleasure No. 61: Double Dragon (dir by James Yukich)

The time is …. the future!

The future looks a lot like a cheap music video. Due to repeated earthquakes, California is now an island and Los Angeles has been left in ruins. The city has been renamed New Angeles, even though the correct name would have been Nuevos Angeles but whatever. The important thing is that city is now a mess. The police allow the gangs to run rampant at night in return for not running rampant during the day. The nightly news, which is anchored by George Hamilton and Vanna White, is full of stories about the federal government refusing to send any more aid to California, despite the fact that Jerry Brown is the Vice President. For some reason, Andy Dick plays the weatherman and gives continual updates on the smog and rain.

Despite the fact that the city is the most dangerous place on Earth, Satori Imada (Julia Nickson) still makes the time to drive her teenage sons, Billy (Scott Wolf) and and Jimmy Lee (Mark Dacascos, who was clearly not a teenager when this film was shot) to and from their karate tournaments. However, that might all end because Sartori possesses half of a magic medallion and the evil Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick, looking oddly like Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath) has the other half. Satori gives her half of the medallion to Billy and tells him that he and his brother must keep it out of the hands of Shuko.

That’s not going to be easy because Shuko not only has control of the local gangs but also the police. Fortunately, rebel leader Marian Delario (Alyssa Milano) is willing to help out the Lee brothers. It all leads to a lot of fights, a lot of running, some campy humor, and stiffly delivered dialogue. For whatever reason, the filmmakers decided that the way to make this marital arts film a success would be to push accomplished martial artist Mark Dacascos into the background and instead focus on Scott Wolf, who spends most of the movie looking like he’s either confused by the plot or terrified as to what Double Dragon might do to his career.

Yeah, this movie is pretty stupid and the plot is pretty much impossible to follow. And yet, it is oddly entertaining in its own weird way. If you ignore the story and just focus on the visuals, it can actually be kind of fun. Look at all the bright colors. Look at Robert Patrick, with his goat-tee and his 90s pop star hair. Look at Alyssa Milano, who, surprisingly, seems to actually be in on the joke. Look at all of the Mad Max-inspired fashion choices. From a purely visual point of view, New Angeles is a huge improvement on Los Angeles. Along with the film visuals, the film is also worth watching just so one can witness just how over-the-top Robert Patrick goes in his performance. I don’t normally think of Patrick as being someone who chews the scenery but, in this film, he gives into every cartoonish impulse that he has and it’s actually a lot of fun to watch. There’s not a moment of subtlety to be found in either his performance or Alyssa Milano’s and thank the Angels for that. Finally, I have to appreciate the fact that the film’s main message appears to be that the government and all other forms of civil authority are basically useless. Not even Vice President Jerry Brown can be bothered to help out the people of New Angeles. That pretty much tells you all that you need to know.

In the end, Double Dragon is not a particularly good film but it’s fun in its own deeply dumb way.