Review: X-treme Fighter – Sci-Fighter (2004)

Director: Art Camacho | 90 minutes | action, science fiction | Actors: Don Wilson, Dan Mayid, Rebecca Chaney, Cynthia Rothrock, Aki Aleong, Samantha Lockwood, Chris Casamassa, Gokor Chivichyan, James Kim, Lorenzo Lamas, Eric Lee, Michael Matsuda, Christine Rodriguez, Maurice Smith, Brad Verret, Robert Wall, Ray Wizard

Fighting guru Jack Tanaka (Don Wilson) is way too strict with his son Brad (Dan Mayid). He believes that Brad should do his best to become good at martial arts and denies him any pleasure. In Brad’s eyes, Jack completely ignores what’s going on inside him. He struggles with great grief over his mother’s violent death and believes he is indirectly guilty of this. She still had to get supplies for Jack’s birthday cake because Brad had neglected to do this. Jack’s father (Aki Aleong) tries to compromise between his son and grandson. He is a professor of artificial intelligence and has designed a highly advanced game for Brad’s birthday with lifelike martial arts combat.

Brad loves the game, but suddenly he gets stuck in it. Jack has little choice but to defeat opponents on all levels within a limited amount of time using his martial arts skills to save Brad an unfortunate fate. But it’s not just the various opponents that are causing problems, a malicious computer virus seems to do everything it can to thwart Jack and Brad and keep them imprisoned.

The film is a series of extremely poorly executed fights by Don Wilson in particular. Compared to him, Steven Seagal is a light-footed ballerina. The rest does not make much of it either and with that the heart has disappeared from the film. The storyline is also almost endearingly bad. Lorenzo Lamas apparently had some time to spare or was in dire need of some extra income, because throughout the film it is not clear what his character is actually doing here. The love line for widower Jack could not be missing, but it is certainly not inevitable.

A martial arts movie with poorly executed combat and a storyline and plot that don’t make sense. Save yourself the trouble.