Ironheart

Director - Robert Clouse (Enter the Dragon, Black Belt Jones)

Starring - Britton K. Lee (Fatal Revenge), Bolo Yeung (Legacy of Rage, Double Impact), and Richard Norton (Mad Max: Fury Road, Lady Dragon)

Release Date - 1992

Genre - Action/Crime

Tagline - "Only the strong will survive"

Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     Sometime back I saw that MVD was releasing a Bolo Yeung double feature on blu as part of their MVD Rewind Collection.  Both of these films were films I had never seen before but I had seen a bunch of films with Yueng in them.  After I took a dive into Bloodfight I couldn't wait to spin Ironheart in hopes that it would be a better film than the first.  It was but still not that great.

     The film follows an L.A. cop who just happens to be a martial arts master.  He has targeted a local gang that has a knack for kidnapping beautiful women and uses his martial arts skills to stop them.

     I went into this hoping it would be better than Bloodfight and I was greeted with a superior film but being better than Bloodfight doesn't make this one a good movie.  In fact, it was better than the first one but it was still a tough one to finish.  The acting in this one is absolutely laughable.  Yeung is a secondary character but he, along with the lead and the rest of the supporting cast, delivers some unintentional funny performances.  Their horrible dialogue delivery, cheesy acting, and one sided fight scenes made for a very rough movie to sit through.  The cast, along with the lack of action, made this one funny at time and boring the rest.  The story for this one lacks depth and it painfully generic.  I love no budget action flicks because they are simple and straight forward.  Ironheart is simple and straight forward but the story is so simple it could have been told in 30 minutes.  Instead, it's stretched so thin that the last half of the film is just filler.  The editing and run time really needs worked out in order for this one to be anything other than a forgettable martial arts flick.  Finally, this one has some blood and extremely one sided fight scenes.  In fact, the main character doesn't get hit the first time in any of the fight scenes.  If he did it was out of focus of the camera.  Overall, Ironheart is a better film than Bloodfight but that's not saying much.  Bolo Yeung is billed as star in both of these films but he is not.  Honestly, MVD has released some much better films than these that I would recommend.  Skip them.