Overkill (1987)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, Alex watches the wrong movie.

whoops

So, today I had actually intended to watch Overkill, a 90s movie starring Chuck Norris' ill-fated brother Aaron Norris. What could be better than watching a man try and fail to live up to his brother's B-movie stardom, I figured? However, due to my own carelessness and a misleading Netflix description, I ended up watching Overkill, an 80s movie starring nobody you've ever heard of. It ended up being blog-worthy material anyway, so I'm rolling with it.

Overview: Mickey Delaney is a no-nonsense L.A. cop who's convinced the Yakuza are out to take over the West Coast. He doesn't play by the rules, but he always gets his man. He teams up with a Tokyo cop visiting the U.S. after family tragedy to bring the fight to the Yakuza's doorstep. No jurisdiction, no warrants, no authority, no fucks given. That's Delaney's style.

no uniforms either

In case you haven't caught on, this is the quintessential 80s American action film: a rogue cop out for justice who doesn't care how many he buries to do the right thing. More after the break!



Notable moments/quotes: Opening noir-style narration assuring us it's not racist just because it hates the Yakuza: "Most that came from the Orient worked hard."

Our hero, Detective Delaney: "Some of the guys down at the station think that I'm a little rough on the Orientals. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, organized crime's organized crime. It don't make a fuck to me if it's goopswaps, beaners, or honkies. It's all the same."

Delaney, master of romance: "I'm trying to seduce you."
Sort-of love interest: "Again?"

Delaney and his original partner, a lazy Brit, catch on to a drug smuggling operation hidden in a brothel. Their brilliant plan is to get laid, then raid the place.

Delaney, back at the station, goes on one of his many tirades (there are at least seven) about how evil the Yakuza are, saying that at least the Italian Mafia kept the money in the U.S.

It's revealed around 15 minutes in that the Chief of Police is getting paid off by the Yakuza to ignore their activities. It takes the main characters almost another hour of movie to learn this... and they learn it offscreen!

Delaney: "Can't you take anything seriously?"
Partner who only sometimes has a British accent: "Yeah: sex, drugs, and rock n' roll."

the movie finds his lack of work ethic disturbing moments later

At one point, a furious police sergeant pulls Delaney off the case and tells him to take a vacation. Delaney keeps working on the case anyway.

After teaming up with the cop from Tokyo, the two try to protect a young boy from the Yakuza. They fail, and he gets shot at least seven times. Instead of taking him to a hospital, they take him to... uh...

what the hell is this, anyway?

In the middle of all this craziness, Delaney calls up his sort-of girl. They talk about how they miss each other, then make plans to meet the next day. Literally seconds after she hangs up the phone, assassins break in and kill her.

Dirty Chief of Police, to Delaney: "Go ahead and shoot, you trigger-happy asshole." Delaney obliges and puts a hole in the corrupt cop's head.

Adorable orphan Delaney takes in: "Do you think I'll ever be able to walk again?"

My thoughts: Just when I think I've seen the full gamut of bad, a movie comes along and shows me another aspect. Most of this movie is action sequences just kind of happening, listlessly strung together with rants about how evil the Yakuza is. There doesn't seem to be much point or cohesion to the scenes, since 99% of the time Delaney's objective is "get the Yakuza's attention." I find myself wondering why this couldn't have simply been done in a montage, since the action is sloppy at best. Except for the one scene where the Tokyo cop beheads a gangster with a katana in a casual, offhand manner. For about three seconds, the movie is amazing, but then...

not so much

I think one of the biggest issues I have with this movie is its inconsistency with how it treats the Yakuza. For much of the movie, they're ruthless gangsters who will stop at nothing to expand their territory, but in the movie's ending, they make a truce with Delaney and go away. This apparently solves the problem for now. It's rather maddening to watch that the movie's main conflict is resolved in a few minutes by a static, flat scene with no direction beyond "The ACTORS are LOOKING at EACH OTHER. Adorable CHILD sits in WHEELCHAIR."

However, more persistent than that is the movie's downright baffling decision to spend a lot of time with the Yakuza. At least to my recollection, they get more screentime than the hero himself. Now, for American actions flicks of this era, it was common enough to show the bad guys plotting. It gave the filmmakers chances to show their villainy as well as show the developing threat the good guys are posing by showing a progression from "Ha! That clown? Ignore him" to "I WANT HIM DEAD." However, when this movie shows us the bad guys, we're privy to very calm, sedate meetings held entirely in untranslated Japanese. Maybe it's just a quirk of where I watched it, but in scene after scene after scene, I had to watch agonizing minutes tick by as a language I don't understand was said and entertainment value died a slow, slow death.

Speaking of a slow, slow death, let's talk about poor Akashi, the nephew of the Tokyo cop. You'll recall how he was taken to some kind of faith/spirit healer after getting shot repeatedly. The movie likes to hold him up as a symbol of the tragedy of the gang violence, even having him mournfully ask, "Do you think I'll ever be able to walk again?" towards the end of the movie. Even when they do finally move him from the faith healer to the hospital, they're warned that him walking is unlikely. Gee, dipshits, if only you'd taken him to a hospital!

bro I keep telling you a couple Cure 3s and he'll be fine

So the movie's greatest tragedy is made worse by the bungling of our heroes. Fantastic.

So, the action sucks, the audio quality is inconsistent at best, and the plot is almost nonexistent. This all equals a really shitty 80s movie. Seriously, this can't even manage a fun level of bad. Avoid this one; it aspires to be a gritty cop action film, but ends up having about as much substance and grit as the average Teletubbies episode.

I give this movie a Nic Cage Versus CGI out of five. Remind me to check to make sure I'm watching the right movie on Facebook and Patreon.