Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, we continue the "Triple B" series by taking a look at the next entry that came out in 1991. That movie is "Do or Die".
Now, aside from this being the 6th entry in Andy Sidaris's "Triple B" series, I don't really know much about it. The only things I know are a couple of cast members. One of them is, once again, Erik Estrada. I have no idea if he's either reprising the same role he had in the previous movie, or if he's playing a new character here. Though considering what happened to him in "Guns", my guess is that he's gonna play someone new here. At least, that's what I'm thinking of anyways.
The other cast member that I know of is Mr. Miyagi himself Pat Morita. Now, similar to Erik Estrada, I don't know what he's gonna do here in this movie, but I'm curious to see this for myself. So, I may as well just cut this short and get straight into it. I don't know if it's gonna be any good, but the only way I'm gonna find out is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Do or Die".
6 minutes later
So the reason why our villain, Kane, is setting up this bounty hunter challenge to take down Donna and Nicole is mostly because of his sense of humor. Well...I will say that, as dumb as that sounds, at *least* it's something. So, I guess I can't fault him for his lack of explanation.
6 minutes later
Well, guys, I am willing to say that this movie certainly lives up to being an over-the-top action movie. Nicole just used her cane to insert a mini rocket of sorts and use it as missile launcher at the helicopter that was shooting at them and blew it the fuck up! I would question whether or not Nicole had that planned in advance, considering she has a sprained ankle and all, but I'm not going to this time because that was kinda awesome.
13 minutes later
You know, guys, I totally understand that this air show is suppose to be interesting and all, but honestly, I'm finding it to be really boring. I'm hoping maybe we can move past this soon so we can get this plot moving. Until then, this air show is starting to put me to sleep.
9 minutes later
You guys can't hear this for obvious reasons, but this song that's playing here kinda sucks. I don't know if it's because of the accordion player or the singer's voice...OK, they just kinda switched it up a bit. Now it's more of a square dance-esque number. And the accordion player has also changed it up a bit to where it sounds more upbeat. Honestly...it sounds halfway decent now. Mind you, it still isn't great, but I can at least say that it doesn't suck as much as it could've. So at least that's something.
10 minutes later
You know, guys, even though I saw it coming from a mile away, I still can't quite get over the fact that a cat just died from eating poisoned catfish. And that's partially because I really like cats, so that's kinda messed up.
12 minutes later
All right, guys, I've never had a chance to comment on any of the sex scenes before in any of Sidaris's films, but this is the first one I'm gonna have to do that on. So I'm not really someone who specializes in sexual kinks, but how often is it when a woman sprinkles salt onto a dude's chest and just licks it off in a sexual manner? Don't ask me why I would ask something like that, part of me just wants to know if it's common practice to do that sort of thing when you're about to bang each other.
8 minutes later
Well, guys, once again, I'm kinda impressed at the level of creativity with these kills. This one featured Erik Estrada throwing baseballs at one of our assassins, with the last he threw disguised as an explosive bomb. And the assassin was stupid enough to use his shotgun to hit it like a bat instead of, you know, shooting it before it explodes. But since I'm not one of these retarded assassins, I can't really question their methods, now can I?
8 minutes later
So Shane has a giant-ass magnum and he's shooting it at both of our assassins on skis. All of them are missing, mind you, and what's worse, our assassins, even the ones who have tried and failed to shoot Donna and Nicole, all missed their shots, too. Does nobody in this movie know how to shoot for shit!? Probably not, all things considered.
1 minute later
Oh finally, he actually shot something! Granted, it was just a duck, considering the sound it just made, but hey, at least he finally shot something. That's an improvement, I guess.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Do or Die". Let me go ahead and shut the film off here...OK. Good god, where do I even start with this thing...? Well, I'm gonna let you guys know ahead of time that what I'm about say in this review will sound incredibly negative to a lot of you. And it's especially apparent, if you have never seen an Andy Sidaris film before. I'll get into all that in a second, but I'm gonna say, guys, for every criticism I'm about to level against this movie, I actually wound up really enjoying it. Seriously, guys, I know it sounds like I'm being a hypocrite by talking about all the things that go against this movie, but in a weird way, it still winds up being a really enjoyable flick. At least to me it does.
Now before I get into the writing itself, I'm gonna start with the biggest problem this movie has, which is the pacing. This movie's pacing is so uneven that it would normally hurt a movie. See, this movie has so many scenes of people having sex that I sometimes wondered if Sidaris didn't have anything for writing material, so he just gave the actors a lot of improvisation on what he wanted the actors to do for certain scenes. I don't know if that was the case for this movie or not, but then again, I also have to remember that Sidaris has been making these sorts of movies for a long time now, so I probably shouldn't be too surprised that they're in here. But still, there are lot of them in this movie, and because of that, it could also be seen as a complete pace-breaker for people who just want to get the plot going.
As for the writing itself, well, there's really almost no plot here at all. The most you get out of it is that our main villain, Kane, who is played by Pat Morita, is an evil businessman who sends 6 teams of assassins to take down Donna and Nicole. Our two leading ladies are on the run while also getting help from other people at the same time, all the while outwitting the assassins with almost no problems at all. And I'm not kidding when I say that because, a bit of a spoiler for those of you who seriously care about the plot, none of our heroes get killed. All of the assassins in this movie fail miserably. Even when Donna hands over her watch, which was secretly tampered with a tracking device to one of our heroes, they still end up killing the assassins because they're so terrible at their jobs.
I should also mention that out of all of Andy Sidaris's films I've seen up till this point, this movie literally has no kind of character development whatsoever. Nobody in this movie has any actual depth to their characters. Which is a stark contrast, when compared to the previous film in this series, which was "Guns", where that movie tried to go for more of a story-driven plot. This movie has almost nothing like that. And speaking of characters, I want to mention Kane for a moment. Because near the end of the movie, they throw in a plot twist that comes right out of nowhere where they're gonna keep track of all his movements thanks to a woman named Silk. Now in case you don't know, she's the woman who's been with Kane throughout the entire movie. And up until the twist is revealed, there was no indication at all about her being a double agent for our heroes. Like I said, it comes right of nowhere and doesn't really make any sense.
So yeah, we have a plot that is incredibly thin and characters who have no personality or depth here. And normally, I would write this whole thing off as just being a shitty, plotless action movie. And yet, despite it being a plotless action movie...it still actually works pretty well here. And the reason why I say it works is because, if you compared this to a couple of the previous films in this series like "Guns" "Savage Beach" and "Picasso Trigger", where those movies tried to go for more of a serious story driven plot that it sorta backfired on itself. More so with "Picasso Trigger" because that movie tried to go for a story that failed miserably, mainly because it tried to dump you with all this exposition in one scene that you're not gonna remember *any* of it by the time it ended. "Guns" and "Savage Beach" worked a little bit better because of it's cohesiveness, however, "Savage Beach" was still a little bit dull, and "Guns" tried to work in continuity with it's previous films despite it being unnecessary.
But in the case of "Do or Die", it goes back to an early point in this series where it knew what it wanted to be: a dumb action flick with big-boobed girls, over-the-top action scenes, and explosions that would make Michael Bay get a hard on. All of that is here in it's Andy Sidaris charm, and it oozes with cheesiness. Which, for of you who may or may not know, I enjoy that immensely as long as it doesn't try too hard to aim for so it's bad, it's good. This movie nails that almost perfectly and it's why I wound up really enjoying it so much.
So, with all that said about the writing, the acting in this movie is just about what you would expect from an Andy Sidaris film. Most of the acting in this movie is just terrible as it was in the previous films, mainly from the recurring cast anyway. The only ones I can give a pass to are Erik Estrada and Pat Morita. Morita, in particular, is easily the best actor in the entire movie. Even though his character is completely flat and one dimensional, he actually takes what little he has here and just nails it perfectly. He even has scenes where he sorta ends up making out with the girl that I mentioned earlier, and also massages her and ends up getting one as well from her. And watching those scenes for the first time, I'm probably never gonna be watching the "Karate Kid" movies the same way ever again. But then again, I've only seen the first 3 movies and only 2 of them were actually any good. But I digress, Pat Morita is the best actor in the movie by far, with Erika Estrada coming in at a close second. Everyone else, well, I kinda already summed up their performances in a nutshell for you.
Special effects are, once more, everything you would come to expect from an Andy Sidaris movie. Pyrotechnics, squib work on guns, what little blood effects are in this movie, all of it is present here. And it really hasn't changed in the slightest. *Maybe* there might've been more explosions here than in "Guns", but I don't really know for sure. I would have to rewatch it at some point to make sure for myself. But anyway, special effects are incredibly standard here.
Camerawork here is pretty good. Lighting here is lit perfectly fine. Sound-mix is mixed pretty well. The music, honestly, I don't have a whole lot to say about, other than the country song that I briefly mentioned earlier. It's OK, but it's nothing to write home about. So yeah, the score here is just OK.
So ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, can I recommend "Do or Die"? If you can look past all of the flaws this thing has and you just view it as a mindless action movie, then you are going to adore this thing. This movie has everything that you would come to expect from an Andy Sidaris flick. Big boobed ladys, over-the-top action scenes, all of that is there and it hasn't changed. If you're looking a serious, plot-based action movie, then this is not the film for you. This movie is almost devoid of plot and character depth that it makes the previous films that *did* have something like that almost make it look bad. At least, if you look at it from a certain viewpoint. But overall, this movie is pretty much an Andy Sidaris film that knows what it wanted to be and I really enjoyed this thing despite it's obvious flaws. So yeah, I'm still looking forward to seeing what else this film series has in store. But for now, I'm gonna go and watch another movie that is considered so bad, it's good. And one film that comes to mind is "Super Mario Bros.", specifically the 1993 version. I'm gonna go and watch that next because I absolutely love that movie.
And with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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