I cannot lie my friends, as there was some
anticipation as the credits for Honor and Glory started to
flicker across the screen. 'Honor and Glory' is the
precursor to director Godfrey Ho's magna opus, his Citizen
Kane, his Schindler's List… 'Undefeatable'. One of the
greatest movies ever made… if you appreciate really bad
movies… which we do here at the FCU. Sadly, 'Honor and
Glory' was no 'Undefeatable' as for the most part it was just
a regular bad movie and not a special bad movie, but it did
have some magic which laid the groundwork for what would come.
Donna Jason is hard hitting reporter Joyce Pride… Now we
do have a question about Donna Jason as she is very pretty…
prettier than Cynthia Rothrock even, though Cynthia was the
better actress… and Donna knows kung fu which has us wondering
why she didn't work more. Anyway, Joyce is doing some
story while some irate sista in the background is yelling at
her for ruining her life. A knife fight then ensues
completely out of the blue, with this irate sista getting
completely dismantled while Joyce's camera crew looks on,
staying safely out of the way. Right now, it's looking
like some 'Undefeatable' magic is on the verge of taking place
in this film.
After that bit of nonsense, Joyce has to pick up her sister,
CIA agent Tracey Pride (Rothrock) where they engage in some
kung fu funnery, before getting down to brass tacks.
Tracey is in town to track down some missing nuclear triggers,
while Joyce is trying to blow the lid off of corrupt banker
Jason Slade (John Miller). A little family melodrama is
thrown in the mix as Tracey would like her sister to see their
dad John (Leo Rocca) and make nice, but alas Joyce is forever
mad at the old man for abandoning her, making her live with
mom after the divorce, forcing her to be raised by her super
smooth kung fu master, with dad not even going to mom's
funeral. Missing the funeral is a dick move, no doubt,
but who wouldn't want to be raised by a kung fu master?
I know I would.
All that rigmarole is good and fine, but the
real star of this movie, and make no doubt about it, is my
main man John Miller as Jason Slade. Jason Slade is the
prototype for the evil corporate dude. Think Gordon
Gekko, if Gekko was cut from stone, knew awesome kung fu and
was a terrible actor. All of the good lines and joy in
'Honor and Glory' came from this cat. This man said, in
one of his many diatribes, and I quote… "I am a like a God, I
piss on you from a great height!" Now I'm not completely
sure exactly what that means, but I imagine a god pissing on
people is a sign of great disrespect, and that's Jason Slade
in nutshell.
For some reason, because it's completely not necessary, Slade
has bodyguards led by Jake Armstrong as played by the
legendary Chuck Jeffreys. Joyce the reporter caught
Jake's eye during her kung fu decimation of two of his
underlings, and now he's kind of smitten by her, despite the
fact they are on opposite sides of this coin. Until Jake
learns the truth. Which was always there, plain as
day. Jake is kind of dumb. I was thinking that
Joyce and Jake were gonna hook up, but maybe 1993 was a tad
bit too early for a full-blown interracial relationship or
something, so instead they played love chopsticks, trying to
take each other's food from one another. It was
lame. I think regular old sex is probably better.
Somehow Jason Slade and the nuclear triggers become one,
bringing the sisters together towards a common cause.
Plus Jake has come around to the side of right, and Tracey's
partner Dragon Lee (Robin Shou) is also on board for the
assault. How badass is John Slade? First he was
downing a Heineken before this warehouse showdown, then it
took all four of these kung fu experts to slow him down, and
they wouldn't have even done that if they didn't have that
volleyball net nearby to tie him up... AND the entire
Baltimore police department. Yes, this is a movie where
the murderous, psychopathic bad guy doesn't get killed by our
heroes, only slightly subdued. With Slade talking smack
every step of the way. We love Jason Slade.
Somewhere he is on a great height pissing on people.
If one hasn't seen neither 'Honor and Glory', nor
'Undefeatable', I would recommend watching 'Undefeatable'
first because watching 'Honor and Glory' first will give you
great expectations for John Miller's character in the
follow-up, where he just plays a wishy-washy cop. That
would be greatly disappointing. As far as a review goes,
'Honor and Glory' is filled with bad acting, erratic pacing, a
completely nonsensical narrative, and even more bad acting all
done in Godfrey Ho's unique style of directorial
incompetence. While that might sound like a recipe for a
gawdawful film, it isn't that bad really. All things
considered.
It is, at its heart, a kung fu movie and the staging of the
martial arts sequences aren't so bad for an American based
film. Cynthia Rothrock might get top billing and get box
cover cred, but this movie focuses more on Donna Jason, but
completely belongs to John Miller. John Miller, all by
himself, makes this insanity 'Must see TV'. Mere words
can't adequately describe what Jason Slade brings to the table
in this movie, and if Godfrey Ho didn't hate us, he's would've
busted Jason Slade out jail in '93 and subsequently given us a
string of Jason Slade films. I don't know where
John Miller is now, or Godfrey Ho for that matter, but if they
wanted to dust of Jason Slade for a 2014 update, I'd be
completely down for that.
Terrible movie? Maybe. 'Undefeatable'? Hell
no. Worth watching? Most definitely.
