Film Review

Undefeatable


Year: 1993

Directed by: Godfrey Hall

Cynthia Rothrock: stars as Kristi Jones, a waitress/former gang member who participates in back-alley fights to earn money to send her sister through medical school (?).

Other Players: Don Niam, John Miller, Donna Jason, Emilie Davazac, Hang Yip Kim, Gerald Klein

Plot Synopsis: A serial killer with a confusing mishmash of mental illnesses including codependence, Oedipal fixations, and an eyeball fetish is killing young women wearing flower-print dresses, one of whom turns out to be CR's sister. CR teams up with a police detective to track this guy down.

General Impressions: Awful. Miserable. Revolting. This film is just plain gross in spots, otherwise it's basically your run-of-the-mill misogynist piece of crap. The acting is a study in bad; the characters are so wooden you get splinters just watching them. The fighting is pretty dull. The stunt-doubling is poor. The psychobabble quotient is through the roof, complete with flashbacks to the killer's childhood. Why do these movies persist in drawing a straight line from point A (childhood trauma) to point B (adult serial killing)? Didn't these people see "Silence of the Lambs"? A little subtlety goes a long way! Mental illness, particularly for serial killers, is complex and often INEXPLICABLE. And where's the continuity editor? This film has disappearing/reappearing wedding rings, disappearing/reappearing cast members (!), and (my personal favourite) CR getting arrested and then appearing with a new hairdo! Are prisons doubling as beauty parlours these days? About the only good thing about this film is that we get to see CR actually practising (with swords). It's not enough.

Watch It?: No, no, a thousand times no.