Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero (1995) New Horizons/Action RT: 86 minutes Rated R (violence, language, nudity, some sexuality) Director: Rick Jacobson Screenplay: Brendan Brodick and Rob Kerchner Music: John R. Graham and J. Eric Schmidt Cinematography: Michael Gallagher Release date: January 31, 1995 (US) Cast: Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Cat Sassoon, Robin Curtis, Jonathan Fuller, Steve Garvey, Leonard O. Turner, Wynn Irwin, Bert Remsen, Marcus Aurelius, Alex Desir, Dennis Keifer, Howard Jackson, Carl McGee, Michael Blanks, Randy Idieshi, Raymond Storti, Kevin Knotts, Art Camacho, Jon Freedman, Vincent DePalma, Matthew Shoehan, Ed Crick, Rick Cox, Anthony Boyer, Milton Kahn, Patrick J. Statham, Dale E. Turner.
Rating: ***
The hits (and kicks) just keep coming with Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero, yet another entry in a series of unrelated action flicks that have nothing but Don “The Dragon” Wilson in common. This time, the star plays Nick Corrigan, an Army courier who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a routine assignment. He was simply supposed to deliver some classified documents to the officer in charge at a nuclear launch site and get his signature. It should have been easy. LOL! Like, when is it ever easy? How about NEVER!
It may have been easy to enter the facility, but it won’t be so easy trying to leave. Shortly before Nick’s arrival, Islamic terrorists took over the site, killing most of the personnel save for Major Tillman (Dodgers first baseman Steve Garvey) who has something the bad guys want. I’ll come back to this in a moment. One of the bad guys tries to stop Nick from departing, but he’s no match for his superior martial arts skills. Once Nick realizes what he’s gotten himself into, he sticks around to take down the terrorists and stop them from launching a nuclear attack.
It bears mentioning that Nick isn’t just any courier. At one time, he was a Special Forces hotshot, a real American hero. Unfortunately, his act of heroism got him demoted because it made a powerful higher-up look bad. Now he’s a glorified delivery boy.
Let’s talk about the terrorists now. Their leader is played by Bert Remsen (Code of Silence)…. at first. Let me explain. An old man in an RV- that would be Remsen- drives up to the front gate of the facility and tells the guard his wife requires medical attention. She’s just lying in the back. The guard enters the RV to take a look and quickly gets gunned down by the old man. The rest of the terrorist gang is hiding back there. They drive onto the site and shoot everybody in sight. When they’ve secured the place, the old man goes all Mission: Impossible, pulling off his Bert Remsen mask and revealing himself to be a known terrorist leader named Fawkes (Fuller, Skyscraper).
Fawkes and his cohorts have taken over the launch site with the intention of extorting money from the US government. In order to launch, they need two things: (1) a ten-digit numerical code and (2) two keys. The first item is being covered by Sabian (Aurelius, Full Contact), this movie’s version of the Clarence Gilyard Jr. character from Die Hard. He created a program that will get the code, but it’ll take time. The second is a little harder. Fawkes manages to get a hold of one key. Tillman knows where the other one is and he’s not talking, not even when they threaten to kill his lover Tori (Sassoon, Bloodfist IV) who actually turns out to be in cahoots with the terrorists. The second key, in case you haven’t already guessed, is in the hands of Nick. Tillman managed to slip it to him while signing for the documents. No spoiler here, Fawkes will eventually have everything he needs to launch an attack if his demands aren’t met. That’s what he says anyway. The truth is he plans to do it regardless, all in the name of Allah.
Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero is a blatant Die Hard rip-off (with elements of Twilight’s Last Gleaming) all the way from the one-man response team to the authority figure outside mucking things up. Here, it’s General Carmichael (Irwin, Lotsa Luck!), a sexist bonehead who insists on playing it by the book even though it’s clearly the wrong move. We even get an Al Powell character in the form of Major Marin (Curtis, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock). She communicates with Nick throughout offering up words of encouragement while he tries to prevent a catastrophe.
Directed by Rick Jacobson (Full Contact), Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero is a decent actioner that has all the earmarks of a Roger Corman production. It’s cheap and unoriginal. The fight choreography is unimaginative. The acting is just bad. Wilson gives the same performance in every movie. He has some good moves, but the acting range of driftwood. The late Sassoon, in her second Bloodfist film, is good at looking like a mean bitch. Fuller hams it up shamelessly as the main villain as do several of his co-stars, especially the Asian guy and the bald guy.
The one original thing about Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero is that the cast doesn’t include any professional martial artists other than Wilson. It’s weird seeing the credits for one of these movies without any names being accompanied by titles held by the “actor”. However, it does have a baseball player so I guess that counts for something.
Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero is pretty decent for a DTV movie. Yes, it’s flawed big time, but only if you’re looking at it like a major studio production. For what it actually is, it’s pretty good. It has a simple plot, plenty of action and lots of dopey dialogue. It never aspires to be more than that. It’s a good choice for a Saturday night action movie.
