Legacy of Rage

Brandon Lee stars as Brandon Ma, a waiter who is set up for man slaughter by his "best friend" Michael (Michael Wong) while on the inside, Michael tries to rape Brandon's girlfriend and it comes to surface that Michael set Brandon up. After getting out of prison Brandon tries to live a normal life but Michael kidnaps Brandon's girlfriend and son (Conceived before Brandon's prison stay.) Brandon is given no choice but to settle the score. Legacy Of Rage has its share of plausibility issues (Why the hell does Brandon Lee call up Michael Wong to let him know he's coming for him?) but it is a decent film. I liked The Crow the best but this is his second best movie to date. (Though considering the fact that Showdown In Little Tokyo is third place, this says very little.) The main flaw is that the movie takes too long to set up its premise. There is just too many sequences of Brandon Lee going fishing, too many scenes of Brandon Lee running after a bus, too many escape attempts from prison and that is what hurts the movie. That being said the shootouts (In particular the finale) are well staged and very exciting. Interestingly though Brandon Lee's martial arts ability aren't very well used, indeed the fight between Brandon Lee and Bolo Yeung is over like 5 seconds! The movie gets most of its mileage out of the heroic bloodshed angle, mainly in the relationship between Brandon Lee and Wai-Man Chan (Four Eyes) which provides the movie with its heroic bloodshed moments. Also the final shootout alone makes this rise above mediocrity. So while Legacy Of Rage isn't in the league of Hard Boiled, it is at least a perfectly decent movie.

* *1/2 out of 4-(Pretty Good)