Director: Mar Lo
Writers: Mar Lo, Lan Shu, and Yu-Kun Teng
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org
A man falsely accused of robbery joins with his brother to get revenge on those who betrayed him.
Our lead is released from several years in prison for robbing a jewelry store and is met by his brother who has uncovered the details of the people who were actually involved in the heist and pinned it on the lead. They set out to confront each robber and make them confess to the crime.
Which is basically what happens. I was expecting some kind of twist to emerge in the movie, especially considering how certain characters react to each other, but that never happened. The brother tells the lead that their mother is dead, murdered by the mastermind of the plot and the lead’s girlfriend. When the girlfriend tries to meet with the lead to explain herself or present him with their son, the brother chases her off. I read those scenes as the brother being part of the plot and trying to chase off anyone who’d prevent the lead from bumping off the brother’s enemies.
My sense of the brother being duplicitous was heightened by the first fight scene. The brothers find their first target, beat him up, drive him into the country, and he reveals the details: the boss wanted to pin everything on the lead because he wanted to steal the lead’s girlfriend. The lead lets him go, but as he’s walking across a field, the brother shoots him in the back. Of course I thought the brother was hiding something at that point!
As the first target dies, his death scene is intercut with shots of the woman he was supposed to marry the next day. This adds to the soap opera aesthetic. When each target dies, there’s a montage of the victim with their lover. The movie’s making a strange choice, trying to make you consider the price of violence in a revenge flick, and it doesn’t really work.
So the second target gets into a fight with the brothers on top of a (slow) moving truck. He falls off and gets hit by another car. The third target kidnaps the lead, offers him money to restart his life, then decides to frame the lead for murder when the lead turns him down. They end up fighting, the lead lets him go say goodbye to his wife and children, but he dies from his injuries in the doorway.
Finally the big bad returns. The girlfriend tells the lead the truth about what happened, that she was pregnant with his child when he was sent to prison and the villain attacked her at the lead’s mother’s house. The villain killed the mother and told the girlfriend the only way he’d let her and the child live would be if she married him.
Meanwhile, the brother has gone to fight the villain by himself. He dies just as the lead shows up and the lead and villain fight. The lead finally wins just as the police arrive and both he and the villain are arrested. Then there’s a voice-over from the villain of all people, and that’s THE END
I… hmm… yeah. I don’t have anything to say about this movie. While it makes interesting narrative choices—seeing snapshots of the lives the villains are losing, avoiding having the lead kill anyone in the name of revenge—the choices don’t work. The movie feels a bit like a Spanish soap opera mixed with a martial arts film, but without the heightened energy or absurdity of either. The movie is oddly subdued in many way and that’s not what I want from an exploitation flick.
While the movie’s not terrible, it’s not great either and not something I’d recommend outside of riffing, editing, or re-dubbing. Fortunately, if those are your goals, it appears the movie is in the public domain and I’ve uploaded a copy to archive.org here.
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