Deadly Target

Gary Daniels can not do a bad film, and quite honestly, his movies offer something for everyone for different movie tastes. In Deadly Target, Gary Daniels plays a specialist cop named Charles Prince who is hired to track down a ruthless Chinese gangster for his crimes. Soon Charles befriends another cop and a beautiful lady who knows some secrets regarding the notorious gang. The film is a great action film but also has some great comedy, including a hilarious car chase, the romantic relationship Gary Daniels shares with Susan Byun, some beautiful filming locations, and funny and powerful dialogue making it a very enjoyable film. If you haven't seen this film, rent it, buy it on DVD or VHS, whether you've just discovered the talented Gary Daniels or are in the mood to kick back and enjoy an entertaining film, this film is for you. This is definitely a new favourite of mine and I'm glad I discovered this rare gem of talented moviemaking. :)

Its kinda hard to rate this film, as it has both good moments and some bad ones. I rather liked the cast, as many of the faces (especially the Asians) are familiar, and appear in many other martial art films. The action is satisfying, when it occurs, which is only abundant at the beginning and ending of the film. The story however, is not original and quite predictable. It gets slow at times, and even strays away from the focus of what its actually suposed to be about.The positive things about Deadly Target are the cast and the action. Gary Daniels not only plays lead, but shares the role with Ken McLeod (Showdown, Street Fighter) who is also skilled in martial arts. As for the baddies, there are only two that really get to show off some skill. Ron Yuan is one of my favorite martial art movie villains, and once again makes an appearancein this film. He has probably been in more movies than almost anyone else I know, including titles such as Ring of Fire 1 & 2, White Tiger, To Be The Best, Bloodfist V, and Street Crimes to name a few. The other guy in this movie I am not familiar with, but he gives the Ken McLeod charcater a coupld of good one on one fights in this movie. Ron Yuan, by the way, has 2 fights against the Gary Daniels character, and is even involved in a lengthy car chase. Unfortunately, the action is onyl abundant in the beginning of the film and end. Both are quite exciting scenes, but in between there isn't anything worth while expect to kill time.As for story, that is where the movie begins to fail. A Hong Kong cop (Daniels) comes to L.A. and teams up with a local cop (McLeod) to bust a triad drug operation from H.K. They fail, and that leads to an hour of runaway story that eventually comes back to the predicatble, yet somewhat exciting, conclusion. We get to see memebrs of the triad throughout the film, bit scarcely at times, and you wonder when the bad guys will even show up again. The acting is actually somewhat decent, but as far as camera work and editing, they goofed on many action scenes, making things appear too rehearsed.I thought Gary Daniels has actually had some better performances in movies such as White Tiger and Rage. His role here is decent, but a bit bland at times. Overall, this is enjoyable, but the movie may loose your interest in between the good stuff. It has its flaws, and comes out as an average martial arts film in the end.

Awesome movie. The action was good

"Deadly Target" is one of several examples why Gary Daniels is a good guy of DTV action cinema. It's a fairly cheap movie with a lazy script directed by someone without much experience (Charla Driver), but through the efforts of the talented members of the cast ad crew, it ends up being an above-average fight flick in the B-movie crowd that thoroughly earns its rating. It's not Daniels' best (nor that of most others involved), but it is nevertheless among his personal top ten.The story: Hong Kong detective Jack Prince (Daniels, The Expendables) follows the Triad crime lord Chang (Byron Mann, Street Fighter)to Los Angeles. Paired with a renegade American cop looking to do good (Ken McCleod, Showdown), he must stop the mobster en-route to taking control of the entire Chinese mafia circuit.The biggest qualm that I have with the film is that while its martial arts scenes are stellar, they're polarized to the opening half-hour and final fifteen minutes of the movie. The forty minutes in-between are mainly given over to Jack's romantic relationship with a cocktail waitress (Susan Byun, Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD), which I guess is played well enough but isn't really what action fans are looking for. Luckily, the quality of the fight scenes bolster you through these long periods of shmooziness and exposition. Disappointingly, Byron Mann hardly fights, but the kicking ensemble includes B-movie dragon Ron Yuan (White Tiger), martial arts mainstay Bill Ryusaki, and - for a single encounter - the always-welcome James Lew (Balance of Power). You're entering Kick City here, with everybody in immaculate fighting shape and having been given good choreography to work with, not to mention having been shot by a competent camera crew who actually seem interested in getting the best angles of the brawls.Some of the stuntwork is over-exaggerated (guys will sell an ordinary kick like they've been hit by a cannonball), and the car chase late in the movie probably sets a record for how long it goes on without anything exciting happening, but I don't hold these things against the film in the long run. On the dramatic side of things, the acting isn't something you should get excited about: everybody either slightly underperforms (Daniels), overperforms (McCleod), or occasionally gets it right for a little bit only to screw it up in the next scene (Byun). Emmy nominee Max Gail (Barney Miller) gets to expound a bit on his role as the crotchety police captain but eventually isn't more than a one-note character. The biggest disappointment here is Byron Mann, who'd evolve into a fine actor but can't really hide that this is his first major film role. Production values are much the same: at times, it looks like the team had the run of the city, but other scenes are uncomfortably cramped.In short, the movie has it where it counts (action scenes) and manages to fudge or limp its way through the less important stuff (acting and production), which cumulatively makes it a treat for Gary Daniels fans, a surprisingly strong showing for the later career of the ever-underappreciated Ken McCleod, and a decent little trip back in time to before Byron Mann achieved coolness. Give it a buy!

Not one of my favorite Gary Daniels movies. His movies seem to be hit or miss and this one was pretty much a miss.

This movie put out all the stop none stop action good fight scenes and the story plot is not so bad. to be true Gary Daniels has made better movie but in this movie they let him do all his martial arts tech.

good movie

good