Brandon Lee

Powers Boothe

Nick Mancuso

Raymond J. Barry

Kate Hodge

Tzi Ma

Tony Longo

Michael Paul Chan

Dustin Nguyễn

Brigitta Stenberg

Basil Wallace

Al Leong

François Chau

Quentin O'Brien

D.J. Howard

Maurice Chasse

Walter Addison

John Vickery

C'Esca Lawrence

Donald Li

Michael Chong

Jeff McCarthy

Marvin Elkins

Steve Pickering

Ronald William Lawrence

Will Kepper

Al Foster

Richard Schiff

Roy Abramsohn

Diana Castle

Chen Baoer Paul

Cedric Young

Russell Peters

Phil Chong

Carl Ciarfalio

Eddy Donno

Kenny Endoso

Matt Johnston

Nathan Jung

Gene LeBell

Leo Lee

Fred Lerner

John C. Meier

Gerald Okamura

Charlie Picerni

Chuck Picerni Jr.

Steve Picerni

Bill Saito

Damon Stout

Nick Dimitri

James Lew

Dwight H. Little

Cindy Cirile

Alan B. McElroy

Gib Jaffe

Barry M. Berg

Ron Foreman

Leslie McCarthy-Frankenheimer

Carl Boles

Ric Waite

Debi Manwiller

Eric D. Andersen

Chris Schwiebert

Gerald T. Olson

Sharron Reynolds-Enriquez

Richard Pagano

Sharon Bialy

Dione Taylor

John Fasano

Erica Edell Phillips

Robert Lawrence

Christopher Young

Luke Wynne

Henry Kingi Jr.

Norman Howell

Cole S. McKay

John Casino

Jeff Imada

Linda Perlin

Barbara Anne Klein

Rick Avery

Mark De Alessandro

Janice Campion

Brian Ralph

Al Goto

Jeff Etcher

Donald Likovich

Keith Parrish

Bob Allen

Chas. Butcher

George Cheung

Sharon McGeeney

Larry Duran

William Pine

Gary Toy

Jill Terashita

Curtis F. Wong

Stuart Quan

Sandy Mukai

Dick Ziker

Roger Yuan

Chuck Zito

Henry Kingi

Tony Brubaker

Freddie Hice

Merritt Yohnka

Charles Croughwell

Ric Roman Waugh

Manny Perry

Tim A. Davison

John Cenatiempo

Dorothea Long

Ben Nye III

Jill Rockow

Pat Banta

Chino Binamo

Pete Antico

Jeff Cadiente

Steve Boyum

Jeff Bornstein

Clint Cadinha

Darryl Chan

Mark A. Cuttin

Eddie J. Fernandez

James Fierro

Frank Ferrara Sr.

Mark Harper

Billy Hank Hooker

Brian Imada

Tommy J. Huff

Shinko Isobe

Roger Ito

Steven D. Ito

Bobby Itaya

Peter Lai

Action

Thriller

Crime

Drama

Rapid Fire

20th Century Fox

Robert Lawrence Productions

United States of America

This ranks alongside **KING OF NEW YORK** as a spiritual not-quite-sequel to **YEAR OF THE DRAGON**. Let's put a few of the same characters in Chicago, with Raymond J. Barry in essentially the same role (though now even more overtly crooked and with the FBI) and swap out that Thai drug baron John Lone visited with Tzi Ma and  now throw in Bruce Lee's son into the mix. Bring in horror director Dwight H. Little (fresh off his other successful action outing **MARKED FOR DEATH**) and see what we get?

Well, the results are a bit of a mixed bag for sure. While the action sequences are largely okay, the plot doesn't really throw us any surprises. The romance between Brandon and a female police officer falls flat on its face and the surrogate father-son dynamic he has with grizzled cop Powers Boothe feels similarly forced and awkward. Also, why is a big Chinese drug shipment being brought in via the Port of Chicago when anywhere on the West Coast would be 1000x more convenient? Plot contrivances galore, plus a really goofy Tienamen Square flashback make for just a little too much dumb writing to take seriously.

That said, Brandon Lee, though still a bit rough around the edges, is tremendously charismatic as the lead. His character seems very much a humanized fish out of water and his handling of the numerous martial arts sequences makes us lament his untimely passing that much more. Dwight's action highlights come near the start with a very John Woo inspired shootout in an art gallery and reach their crescendo mid-movie with a hapless gang of Italian wannabe mobsters turning their besieged restaurant HQ into a fortress. 

Nick Mancuso, the primary antagonist of the picture, really shines as a somehow likable pathetic wimp of a mob boss. He's a lot of fun to watch, and its unfortunate that his character leaves the film prior to the third act, which turns into a straight-up dig on John Woo with a very low-stakes cliched battle in a Chinese... laundromat / factory (???). Both Tzi Ma and Al Leong get in some quality martial arts time with Brandon, but it's still so much more fun to see him in a fisticuffs match with giant brute Tony Longo in that mid-movie restaurant scene.

As it is, **Rapid Fire** has a lot of fun 80's/early-90's-style action in it and sits comfortably next to the likes of **RAW DEAL** and **HARD TO KILL** in terms of quality. Had it not been saddled with a lame script that plays its cards way too soon, it could have been a lot more. Leave it to Brandon's final film **THE CROW** to finally deliver the action goods to end up defining one of Hollywood's most tragically brief and promising careers.

English

Rapid Fire (1992) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HQ]