{"id":10996,"date":"2025-02-01T20:05:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T01:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=10996"},"modified":"2025-02-01T20:05:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-02T01:05:26","slug":"rapid-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/02\/01\/rapid-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Rapid Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Rapid Fire<\/strong> (1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century Fox\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, sexuality, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dwight H. Little\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Alan McElroy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Christopher Young\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ric Waite\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 21, 1992 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Brandon Lee, Powers Boothe, Nick Mancuso, Raymond J. Barry, Kate Hodge, Tzi Ma, Tony Longo, Michael Paul Chan, Dustin Nguyen, Brigitta Stenberg, Basil Wallace, Al Leong, Francis Chau.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $14.3M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let\u2019s save all talk of Brandon Lee\u2019s tragic accidental death for my review of The Crow. Let\u2019s instead focus on Rapid Fire<\/strong> which was his first starring role. In it, he plays Jake Lo, a college student dragged into the middle of a drug war between Italian and Chinese mobsters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As far as action movies go, Rapid Fire<\/strong> is pretty good, especially for a movie released in late August. I went to see it with a group of friends on a Saturday night, the best time to view an action movie in a crowded theater. We all enjoyed it. I remember thinking that Lee was at the start of a promising career in the genre. He was a charismatic actor with decent fighting skills. I expected as much given that he\u2019s the son of Bruce Lee, a true martial artist if ever there was one. Looks like talent and skill run in the family.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Jake is an art student in L.A. who actively avoids political activism as it relates to establishing a democracy in China. He witnessed his father being killed at Tiananmen Square in \u201989 and doesn\u2019t want to relive it. A beautiful girl tricks him into attending a Chinese pro-democracy party where he\u2019s expected to tell his story. While there, he witnesses Antonio Serrano (Mancuso, Under Siege) murder an associate of rival drug lord Tau (Ma, Rush Hour). He barely escapes with his life. The feds bring him to Chicago to testify against Serrano. He\u2019s met at the safe house by corrupt FBI agents who immediately try to kill him. He once again manages to escape. He almost walks into a third attempt, but is saved in the nick of time by Lt. Mace Ryan (Boothe, Extreme Prejudice), a hardened but idealistic detective who\u2019s been trying to bring down Tau for 10 years. Jake reluctantly agrees to help Ryan and his team put Tau and Serrano out of business.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s a fairly standard storyline as you can see. There\u2019s even a romance between Jake and Karla Withers (Hodge, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III), one of the cops in Ryan\u2019s unit. The action scenes are well-mounted. There\u2019s a scene early-on where Jake, trying not to be killed, drives his motorcycle through an art gallery, running down goons with guns and smashing priceless glass objects into millions of pieces. The fight scenes, many of them choreographed by Lee himself, are also well done. There\u2019s no shortage of action and violence in Rapid Fire<\/strong>. That\u2019s always a plus.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Dwight H. Little (Marked for Death) adds some nice touches like Ryan\u2019s team working out of an abandoned bowling alley that still has all its equipment (i.e. balls and pins). He scores in the casting department as well. Lee does quite well in the lead but he has a lot of help from a solid supporting cast. It has one of my favorite character actors Al Leong (Lethal Weapon, Die Hard) who typically plays heavies. The Chicago setting gives the movie an extra dose of cool. Rapid Fire<\/strong> is a perfectly good action flick. Is it predictable? Yes, right down to Ryan becoming a surrogate dad for Jake. Is it fun? You bet it is! It may not be an action classic but it knows its job and does it well. It\u2019s a solid three-star flick.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rapid Fire (1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century Fox\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, sexuality, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dwight H. Little\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Alan McElroy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Christopher Young\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ric Waite\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 21, 1992 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Brandon Lee, Powers Boothe, Nick Mancuso, Raymond J. Barry, Kate Hodge, Tzi Ma, Tony Longo, Michael Paul Chan, Dustin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11051,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Rapid-Fire-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10996"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11053,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10996\/revisions\/11053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}