Rotten Tomatoes score: 0%
I really wanted to review the notorious Street Fighter movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme, but when I searched for it on Netflix, I was told it was unavailable. Instead, Netflix helpfully directed me to this gem I recall seeing in the mid-90s.
Is it as bad as Street Fighter? Take a deep breath—it's worse. Double Dragon is to Street Fighter as Three Ninjas is to Surf Ninjas. Or is it the other way around?
It's never a good sign when a movie begins with a narration that was obviously tacked on because the story didn't make sense without it. It has something to do with an ancient Chinese medallion that gives you power over body and soul or something. Then, in the present day, an evil ninja woman and her band of ninja friends steal half the medallion.
She brings the medallion home to her sinister boss Koga Shuko in Los Angeles, in the year 2007. The city, still recovering from a devastating earthquake, has been renamed New Angeles ("from the Hollywood Harbor to the Tijuana border"). Since this is a futuristic action movie, 2007 looks exactly like 1994, but with lots of pollution and an ineffectual government that abandons the city to criminals every night after 7.
Now we meet a host of main characters. Billy and Jimmy Lee are two brothers who look absolutely nothing alike. They are a couple of martial arts dudes who enjoy kicking butt with the help of a woman named Satori, who is supposed to be their adoptive mother, but she looks exactly the same age as them. She also possesses the second half of the Chinese medallion. Billy and Jimmy are menaced by a "steroid freak" named Abobo, who works for Koga Shuko. They also encounter a gang called the "Power Corps," led by Alyssa Milano. All she wants is to free the city from other, more evil gangs, but her police chief father considers the Power Corps "terrorists."
All this confusing plot development finally results in some punching when Koga Shuko attacks to take Satori's half of the medallion. Billy and Jimmy have to contend with Abobo, who has taken "sub-molecular steroids" to make him stronger, and to make him look like he does in the video game. Koga Shuko uses his half to possess Satori, but then he decides to blow her up instead. Anyway, she dies, but the Lee brothers keep her half of the medallion. Unfortunately, they don't know how to activate its magic.
Koga Shuko's medallion gives him supernatural abilities, including the ability to strangle someone with the Force like Darth Vader. So like all omnipotent superbeings with unlimited cosmic power, he decides to enlist a bunch of incompetent thugs to do his dirty work. The thugs chase Billy and Jimmy around Hollywood on jet-skis (we're told Hollywood now has a river so filthy it's flammable, even though it's not in Cleveland), but the boys escape alive.
The Lees team up with Alyssa Milano and break into Koga Shuko's lair, where Koga Shuko ultimately overpowers them and takes Jimmy hostage. Billy and Alyssa Milano attempt to rescue him, but by this time Koga Shuko has possessed Jimmy's body. The two Lee brothers must now duke it out (like in the video game if you set it to the mode where you can hit the other player), crashing through walls and knocking over Double Dragon arcade cabinets in the process. Because the plot requires it, Billy's half of the medallion chooses this moment to start granting him superpowers, so he delivers a kick so fierce it dislodges Koga Shuko's sinister shadow-being out of Jimmy's body.
Now, with the two medallion halves united at last, the Lee brothers transform into the Double Dragon, which means that they get to wear their video game costumes for the last five minutes of the movie. Jimmy possesses Koga Shuko's body and uses it to forge a $129 million check to the police department, and to make Koga Shuko slap himself in the face. (Wait a minute. If Jimmy is possessing Koga Shuko's body, isn't he only hurting himself? Forget it.)
The credits begin to roll as Abobo, now turned good, takes the wheel of the Double Dragon brothers' car.
I started out by saying this movie was worse than Street Fighter, and I think I'm going to have to stick to that, but it wasn't as bad as I feared based on my childhood recollection.
It obviously aspires to the kind of dystopian comedy that was done so well in RoboCop, but the plot and action scenes just can't hold it together. Still, some of the gags made me laugh, especially the final shot of Koga Shuko's now-unemployed goons carrying cardboard signs that say "Will Hench for Food. Thugs Seek Ruthless Boss."
Also, the early scenes treat us to some truly bizarre cameos, including George Hamilton and Vannah White as newscasters, Andy Dick as a weather man, and the Furniture Guys as jackhammer salesmen. (God help me, I did not look up this reference—I actually recognized the Furniture Guys just now when I watched the movie. You may as well click the link now that you've read this far.)
Overall, I would recommend this to anybody who can't find Street Fighter.
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