Year: 1996
Runtime: 97 min
Director: Robert Tiffe
Starring: Steven Vincent Leigh, Sophia Crawford, Angelo Tiffe, Jerry Tiffe, Jeff Pruitt.
I won’t lie, if you name your movie Sword of Honor, I am going to expect at least one sword fight, hopefully dozens of them, and possibly ninjas. That last bit is negotiable, but the sword fights aren’t. I mean, c’mon, if the movie wasn’t about sword fights you would have named it Cop Kick 2: The Revenge of the Kick, right? Well, I guess the filmmakers behind this little direct-to-video gem should have used that name, because we have exactly zero sword fights in a movie with sword in the freaking title!
What do we have? A lot of kick fighting and low-budget martial arts scattered about Las Vegas. So, you know, that’s cool. Not as cool as a bunch of badass sword fights, but cool.
Sword of Honor tells the age-old story of two renegade cops, Johnny and Alan, who “play by their own rules” (aka, disobey their direct superiors, commit any number of smaller crimes to stop a larger one, and utterly ignore due process). It’s a timeless story and if you thought the soon-to-be retired partner was making it out of this movie alive you’re so adorably naive that you might actually be a small puppy.
During an absurdly well-armed robbery of an auction house (these guys have freaking rocket launchers, for crying out loud!), our secondary cop is tragically gunned down, leaving our hero, Steven Vincent Leigh, to seek revenge against the criminals, who were using military grade weapons to steal a sword. Yeah, seems a little disproportionate to me as well, but hey this sword is apparently a priceless artifact that single-handedly defeated the entire Mongol empire. Probably don’t use that for your history thesis without checking Wikipedia first.
The villains are a man named Rudy who looks like he should be selling you a used car and his sociopathic henchman who would never, ever betray his boss. Pinkie swear. They plan on selling the sword to whoever has the most cash. Or killing those buyers and taking their money because did I mention used car salesman and sociopath?
As for our departed Alan, don’t weep too long, because experienced stunt man Jeff Pruitt might be gone on screen, but he handled the stunt coordination for the production. And for such a low-budget film, there are a lot of stunts on display. Some of them good, some of them less good, but none of them really terrible.
Make no mistake, this is a martial arts flick through and through. The shoot-out scenes may suffer from a terminal case of bland, but there is a lot of variety to the kicking and punching on display, as Steven Leigh, rogue cop on a mission of vengeance, obliterates most of the Las Vegas underworld with his bare hands.
He’s joined on his quest by his dead partner’s sister, played by stunt woman and Hong Kong action film damsel Sophia Crawford. Sophia isn’t Cynthia Rothrock, but she’s more than mere eye candy. She has some decent fight scenes against a variety of mooks and even manages to sneak in a little romance with Steven before she is unceremoniously shot and left to recuperate in a hospital for the remainder of the film. Whoever was responsible for this decision made a big mistake, as Sophia and Steven have acceptable chemistry and worked well as an odd couple pair of vigilantes. A movie that focused on their relationship and their mutual love of ass-kicking would have been fantastic.
Instead, we get dozens of incidental scenes that don’t so much as propel the plot forward as they do drag it around like a leash around its neck.
Our hero wasn’t a great cop but he’s an even worse vigilante. He stumbles about, ruining a federal sting, failing to spot traitors directly in front of him, and basically missing every single clue he’s presented with, until the movie takes pity on him and has the bad guys lead him directly to their hideout. I mean, if the bad dudes wanted to get away with their scheme, all they would have had to do was leave Steven alone. He would probably still be bumbling about, trying to solve his partner’s murder without their clumsy attempts to do away with him.
I’m not saying Detective Johnny has suffered one too many concussions, but he’s definitely more than a little weak in the wits department. Fortunately, so is everyone else in this nutty romp.
This movie has so many crazy and outlandish scenes it would take an entire essay just to catalog them. We have a convenience store robbery committed by eight gentlemen who were going to split the take evenly, I presume. We have Steven, shirtless and playing with a handgun while cooking dinner, as though we might forget that he is meant to be a tough guy if he was without a weapon for even a single scene; heck, Steven alone has plenty of weird scenes, including a doozy where he is bemoaning the ambush that nearly cost him his life while eating pasta in his boss’s office! This movie truly exists in its own world.
Not strange enough for you? There’s more.
We have two guys flexing their martial arts chops at a dance club in what almost looks like a semi-shirtless dance-off. Of course then there’s the hot dog vendor who keeps a pistol in with the buns in case he needs to whack a cop. And don’t even get me started about the “comical” Russian character who wants to buy the sword from the baddies—his entire character can be summed up by the fact that he is not in a single full minute of footage without food in hand.
It’s a viciously silly movie is what I’m getting at, which works in its favor, because no matter how dumb the situation or character, you can almost see the director winking through each encounter.
Almost.
Speaking of direction, Robert Tiffe, the man who wore that hat for this production, also stars as a minor cop and several other members of the cast share his last name, including both villains. It’s hard to find solid information, but I’ve got to assume they could be Robert’s brothers, one of them looking very familial indeed. An older couple are also credited as Tiffe and I would bet they might be his parents. And that’s a bit charming to me. It reminds me of how Sam Raimi would always fit his family and friends into his movies.
And most of Sword of Honor is fun, if totally brainless. Unfortunately, the action frequently takes place at night, and poor lighting hampers the ability to see what is happening. Even the daylight shots are sloppy, often with poor backlighting and awkward blocking that hinders our view of the martial arts on display. I mean, c’mon, if they weren’t going to give us a sword fight the least they could do is not screw up the punching and kicking!
Sword of Honor is a notch below most of what PM Entertainment published back in its heyday, and that’s really saying something, but it’s definitely watchable. There’s a fun MST3K vibe to the whole thing and with beer and friends it makes for a funny time.
Even without any damn sword fights.
