The Force Within (1993)

 

Director: Richard E. Brooks

Screenplay: Bob Manus and Stuart Steel

Cast: Stuart Steel as Nick Larson; Joseph Campanella as the Police Chief; Ross Haines as Cadillac Joey; Bob Manus as Lt. Bevins; Kathleen Kelly as Chrissy Bancroft; Gigi Greco as Ronnie; Sunny Hom Thoon as the Master; Todd Papia as Richie Lombardi; Joe Callo as Jonnie Lombardi

An Abstract List Candidate

 

"I never cum on the outside, I cum on the inside, that's how I keep my power!"

 

With that quote from the film to begin, The Force Within is definitely peculiar. Martial arts culture influenced a lot of people, and when it was possible to, anyone attempted to make a martial arts film in hope it would sale. The Force Within is a strange creature, and initially be aware readers that the martial arts is not great in the film. It is a lot of a slow motion to compensate for the cast, trained in the arts but clearly slower rather than the kineticism of Hong Kong martial arts cinema or even the American straight-to-video films of the era in this genre, and what the real meat of the film is turns into a paradox between the lead actor clearly wanting to sell himself but in a very convoluted way.

The lead Stuart Steel plays Nick Larson, who is meant at once to be a cool figure but is also a completely undefendable figure. In one way, regardless of budget, a martial arts anti-hero who is completely undefendable, as his former master (known as just the Master) is brought in with his new pupil, is interesting. As a drug dealer, Nick is self-destructing as his own gang lose money from their illegal gambling den, or when they get money back waste it on the horse track, whilst Nick is killing corrupt cops when they want too much money and collapsing in the web of his own fate. Nick is definitely not a likable figure, despite Steel clearly acting as he is meant to be cool with all the women he beds in his strip club, having also been the man behind the story behind the film and being an executive producer. Because he is a drug dealer, he is unscrupulous, and contrasting a man who teaches a martial arts school for kids at the side, he is also proudly dating a sixteen year old named Chrissy (Kathleen Kelly) and is effectively controlling her. Never becoming physical as a relationship, as he cheats on her with all his new dancers at the club, he does effectively keep her locked up with coke and puzzles as a bribe, which makes it not a surprise when she turns to coke behind her back. It is not a character to try to act as a cool figure, rather than an interesting evil anti-hero whose downward spiral in this case just ends up with a martial arts fight in the end. It proves fortuitous that Stuart Steel never acted again.

And Nick's obsession with not coming, returning to the starting quote, is a bizarre touch in that part of his martial arts ability is to channel sexual energy without losing his semen, retaining it for sustained power. This, actually, is from the Taoist concept of "retention of the semen" to prevent loss of vital life force, as I can attest to reading a text of Chinese erotic art in university where it explicitly touched on the belief of how drawing energy from women through carnal acts, but also not ejaculating and even learning an alternative way of orgasm, all a real belief in Taoist concepts of the past. Knowing this film does have some real verisimilitude to the films they want to emulate adds to the strangeness, as is the back-story of Nick's skill being explained by the Master to his new pupils through public domain martial arts films. It is a shame none of this, for all I will say is entertaining about the film, never of any use as that reference to a very idiosyncratic Taoist custom is unique to say the least.

This is also a film that sustains a lot of its own energy through many tangents. The crime plot is there, but you have a lot of scenes of dialogue, and especially scenes in the strip club which take up most of the length of the film. Set the very nineties dance music, a lot of which co-composed by "Brat", there is quite a few dance sequences that take up the film's short length (stripping, erotically dancing with a snake, and an abrupt trio of female dancers from a British variety show). There is a comedian, in the film meant to not be funny, who claims he was on The Ed Sullivan Show and with the joke dragging on until his fake hair is pulled off. And then there is Otto and George. Otto is the MVP and the crux of this film's misguided nature, as alongside the bizarre decision to hire a ventriloquist at a strip club in the world of this narrative, Otto is a now very un-PC puppet whose jokes even piss off the mullet wearing Italian gangsters in the front row, drawing their guns out onto their lap. You can guess, dear readers, this character and his humour has not aged well, under his mop of black hair and distorted cherub face, when he does jokes about HIV or deciding the virtues of self-fellatio against women, alongside a surprisingly still scathing one about Woody Allen opening up a kindergarten, (look up Allen's scandalous life for this dear reader), or that he has the back of his head custom built to expose his brains in a long JFK skit that varies between Kennedy's real infidelities and his Dallas assassination. Otto gets a lot of time onscreen, clearly the marquee for the filmmakers, even though this is meant to be a crime-martial arts film.

It does have an erratic nature of never figuring out its own point. For the British DVD release, the figure on the poster is an older man with salt and pepper white hair, clutching a woman with a pistol in his hand. He is just a minor character, played by the prolific television actor Joseph Campanella, a police chief in-between importing palm trees to Brooklyn trying to take forty percent of Nick's income, but not a figure of real note to the narrative. Some of the unpredictability is worthwhile, such as in response to one of your bodyguards being killed, Nick showing a great inspiration to hijack a opposing gang's birthday party for a member with a gift of a cast middle finger in tow, before knocking teeth out, or that to punish a member of his gang, death is done by way of forcing them to take cocaine repeatedly until it bursts their heart¹. Martial arts cinema has always had a weird streak, an unsung weirdness whether dealing with the Shaw Brothers' most idiosyncratic productions or the Western productions, so it is with a shame The Force Within for entertainment you have to bear in mind how miniscule the quality of the actual combat is compared to the weirdness of everything else.

A lot of the fact it cannot go beyond its restrictions also means how languid the film is. That a lot of the martial arts has to be improvised around, not only in the slow motion use, but also in a lot of training sequences as the Master himself, likely a non-actor, is a figure not an elaborate location but a small dojo likely a real place a viewer could have gone to. It means when the film does try to be a crime film, it does have a bit of grime, such as gang members bursting into a drug addict's white walled flat, killing him and his girlfriend over stolen money, but also the film has the budget to have a lot of locations, neither micro-budget and yet not quite the straight-to-video martial arts films of that era that got DVD releases in the early 2000s era of the British market. It feels a contradictory film in its construct.

Likewise, whilst I have adapted to the world of micro-budget cinema, the sound and music use does become even a mess for me, erratic at times between the music being too quiet in scenes or a mess of sounds, technical faults even in some of the duller films from that early DVD era of cinema in this genre were able to rise above. Stark in its low budget, with aerial scenes of metropolis (the same one) crowbarred in, the bigger disappointment with the film, if any, is that its director Richard E. Brooks, despite only making two films, was a prolific cinematographer in his career beforehand. Yes, he was a cinematographer on Creating Rem Lezar (1989), a notorious American video production which gained internet cult status, but he also helmed Dark August (1976), an evocative regional horror film from Vermont that, alongside its subdued and moody narrative, looked exceptional in context from his work. One of the only films he made, in contrast, is a film that will be difficult for many to sit through, as beyond a lot of nudity, never was there a film that was indulgence defined and also looked of its little budget.

Nick, and actor Stuart Steel, are meant to be likable at times or cool, but is definitely a scumbag, our only uneven focus within a drama which awkwardly moves along. Quoting philosopher Lao Tzu before the end credits, this is a film desiring something profound, which has been the following for so many films which have burned in the pyre of failed movie making. I will say, truly, I found it compelling as a mess, but I will add the caveat that even in this context, I have seen weirder films in this area of cult cinema, so it is an acquired taste only. In among Furious (1984), with its random chickens, or the weirdest of Shaw Brothers like Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983), The Force Within is minor tier for when martial arts cinema gets funky.

Abstract Spectrum: Haphazard/Procrastinating

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

 

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1) That or lines like "We're going to be combing Ninja Turtles out of our hair real soon", even if it possible un-PC and very early nineties nowadays.