Blu-ray + DVD

Double Dragon Blu-ray Review

Breaking Mediocre.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, February 22, 2019

In a way it's kind of refreshing to hear producer Don Murphy and writers Michael Davis and Peter Gould unabashedly admit in some interviews included on this new Blu-ray release as supplements thatjust doesn't work, even though all three of them insist there's "fun" to be had for viewers tolerant enough to look for some.was just one of a slew of 1990s properties that were based on videogames, a "new" genre at the time that included films likethat preceded, and a bunch of others like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat that either came out at around the same time as, or followed in its somewhat questionable wake. None of the 1990s era "based on a videgame" films is probably ever going to make it to anyone's "all time classic" list, but as Murphy, Davis and Gould almost lovingly recount, there's a certain nostalgia factor for those of a certain age who may have grown up on early cable broadcasts ofor who may have even owned or rented early home media versions (going back to the VHS era).takes place in a (then) "future" 2007 Los Angeles which is in ruins and often under water in a post-Apocalyptic and environmentally damaged world where gangs run rampant and the police have entered into a truce of sorts with them where curfews are enforced but where they're largely left to wreak whatever havoc they can. Brothers Billy (Scott Wolf) and Jimmy Lee (Mark Dacascos) are seen fighting at a martial arts tournament where their ostensible loss to another team results in chaos after Billy loses his temper post-tournament. The brothers high tail it out of there, but are accosted by one of those aforementioned gangs, where it's revealed that the boys' guardian Satori (Julia Nickson) has half of a magical medallion known as the Double Dragon. Unfortunately for Satori and the Lee boys, arch villain Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick) has the other half, and he wants the missing piece to complete the artifact and (of course) gain unlimited power.As Davis and Gould kind of cheekily recount in their interview, there were quite a few versions of the screenplay, which may account for the kind of hodgepodge crazy quilt ambience of much of the film. Davis and Gould were evidentlywriters (original scribes Paul Dini and Neal Shusterman got a "story by" credit), and evenDavis and Gould submitted their work, a comedian was evidently brought in to "punch up" the script with ostensible jokes. Butscreenplay could probably address some of the subliminal issues with the film, including the patently odd casting (as is discussed in the supplements, lest anyone think I'm being bigoted in some way) of two actors with different ethnicities* playing brothers.Now I admittedly never played the videogame version of, and I think my own boys came along enough after the game's heyday that they didn't either (at least I don't recall them doing so), and so I'm frankly guessing about certain stylistic and even content choices in the film, but this often seems like aoverly labored enterprise that is struggling mightily to craft a connection between the videogame "world" and the film's narrative (such as it is). Some of this is more blatant, as in cutaways to "data screens" that feature various options for "players" (i.e., characters looking at them), and which I'm presuming were meant to evoke the actual ambience of the game itself.As several of the interview participants freely admit, there's probably too much going on infor any of it to really resonate very well. The film is overstuffed with arguably needless subplots when the basic setup  getting both pieces of a magical medallion  is simplicity itself. The film kind of careens wildly between set pieces, but it's actually kind of fun in fits and starts, and it features a great hammy performance by Robert Patrick as the film's chief baddie. *Dacascos is overtly referred to as an Asian in some of the supplements, but in reading about him in preparation for writing this review, he's "multi ethnic", as they say, with Hawaiian, Filipino, Spanish and Chinese ancestry.