Xtreme Fighter – Sci Fighter (2004)

Directed by: 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 on his son Brad (Dan Mayid). He feels that Brad should try harder 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 to blame. She still had to get things for Jack’s birthday cake, because Brad had failed 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 very advanced game for Brad’s birthday with real-life 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 and save Brad an unfortunate fate. But it’s not just the various opponents that cause problems, a malicious computer virus also seems to do everything it can to thwart Jack and Brad and thus keep them captive.

The film is a series of extremely poorly executed battles, especially by Don Wilson. Compared to him, Steven Seagal is a light-footed ballerina. The rest isn’t doing much either and with that the heart of the film has disappeared in one fell swoop. The storyline is also almost endearingly bad. Lorenzo Lamas apparently had some time left or was desperately in need of some extra income, because throughout the film it is not clear what his character is actually looking for here. The love line for widower Jack should not be missing either, but it is certainly not inevitable.

A martial arts film with poorly executed fights and a storyline and plot that make no sense. Most of all, save yourself the trouble.