Evidently,
there is some truth to the historical urban legend about the fugitive National
Socialist coming to Indochina as a member of the French Foreign Legion.
However, he is not the only dodgy foreign national taking advantage of the power
vacuum left after the French retreat. With the American military yet to arrive
in force, a veritable United Nations of thugs and mercenaries will fight among
themselves in Jesse V. Johnson’s Savage Dog (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in Los Angeles.
Sure,
there is a plot to Savage Dog, but
there is no question the film’s real attraction is getting to see Scott Adkins
square off against Cung Le and Marko Zaror. We will not have to wait long to
see the wanted IRA hitman Martin Tillman display his skills. Steiner, an
ex-German Foreign Legion officer turned warlord, quite profitably keeps him as
his personal pit-fighter. Eventually, Tillman earns his freedom, but he voluntarily
returns to Steiner’s employment, because it is really the best work available
in the 1958 Indochinese jungle.
Tillman
unleashes his inner demons in the pit, but the beautiful Isabelle appeals to
the better angels of his nature. She is the illegitimate daughter of Steiner
and a local woman, whom the Nazi Bond villain has never acknowledged. Tillman
starts to fall in love with her while temporarily working as a bouncer at the
tiny tiki bar owned by Valentine, an American expat. Inevitably, Steiner and
his Spanish enforcer Rastignac will rudely interrupt their brief respite with a
violent power play. They will leave Tillman for dead, but he won’t be dead
enough.
There
is no question Adkins is currently one of the best in the martial arts cinema
business. Throughout Dog, Johnson has
the good sense to step out of the way and showcase the chops of his cast. The
fight between Adkins’ Tillman and Cung Le playing a corrupt cop in Steiner’s
employ is pretty impressive, but the climatic face-off against Rastignac
(portrayed by Zaror with gleefully sinister flare) is a no-holds-barred
barn-burner. While the ending of the Cung Le fight might slightly disappoint
purists, the Zaror battle builds to a deliriously over-the-top got-to-see-it climax.
Arguably,
Adkins has the sort of quiet brooding charisma of the great 1980s action stars.
He also develops some rather touching romantic chemistry with Juju Chan’s
Isabelle. However, it is somewhat frustrating Savage Dogs fails to capitalize on Chan’s real-life talents as a
martial artist, merely casting her as a damsel in distress, much like the Roger
Corman-produced Fist of the Dragon.
On the plus side, Keith David (narrator of Ken Burns’ Jazz) comes to play as the flamboyant-in-a-cynical-world-weary-kind-of-way
Valentine.
