
No, Art of Eight Limbs is not about an octopus who happens to be a portrait painter. Five decades ago, Enter the Dragon was released and it has yet to be eclipsed by any of the seemingly endless number of motion pictures that provide a fusion of global politics, crime, and martial arts tournaments.
Two Russian agents arrive at the camp of General Thiha (Sahajak Boonthanakit, Fistful of Vengeance, and Thirteen Lives) in some corner of Myanmar and are looking to buy VX Nerve Gas. They show cash and there is a demonstration that the gas is real as the General’s men shoot the town’s drunkard before them. The CIA is aware of The General and will not be surprised when they are told of him. They report this to one of their Yanbu operatives, Nick Buckley (Nicholas Hammond from Lord of the Flies and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles), and one of their analysts who has turned into competitive fighters over the years, Scott Schiff (Ludi Lin from Mortal Kombat and Power Rangers).
Why Scott? General Thiha also has a martial arts school called the Golden Tiger Academy where he has a big tournament every year. This year the tournament will be used as a sale for the remaining nerve gas. Scott will now have to take the gas-detecting device to Cho (Vithaya Pansringarm, The Lake, Kitty the Killer), their other undercover agent who is posing as one of the coaches at the academy.
Interestingly, the trio of writers, H. Daniel Gross (The Lockdown, Lady Scorpions), Ryan C. Jaeger (Kung Fu Games), and Louis Spiegler (Blue Gold: American Jeans) contributed to the fool’s tale that is Art of Eight Limbs. The single biggest shift, aside from the replacement of Jeet Kune Do with Muay Thai, is that Scott will not be required to do any fighting during the entire runtime, only escort the target and then disappear before the SEAL Team Six arrives. But we know that isn’t going to be the case.
It is rather strange to see Robert Grasmere as the director as he has only one movie to his credit which is the 2012 SyFy creation Get Flying Monkeys. But I then realized that directing never was really an option for him as he was sought out as an actor in several other features such as John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness and The Core, so he knows what it feels to be on a set of an effects movie. However, a martial arts movie such as Art of Eight Limbs is an entirely different thing altogether.
On the contrary, Art of Eight Limbs is a movie under Republic Pictures, which is a low budget subsidiary of Paramount so there isn’t much action to give him a headache. Though it would do well to retain Enter the Dragon’s core ideas like Scott sneaking around the mansion getting clues, it does not even want to attempt the same scale or standard of action. The one-on-one Nunchaku sequence in Enter the Dragon cannot be described in any way possible to our squinty hero who fights with a rake while getting chased by a guard wielding a machete, whereas Lin is convincing enough but he wasn’t Bruce Lee nor Bruce Li.
Whatever the fights are, they are simple but well choreographed. Seng Kawee, who has worked on Ong Bak, Sniper 3, Rambo, and Extraction, knows how to create a good fight. The bad thing though is that the camera moves away too often for the length of the film which in turn makes us have short bursts of combat instead of seeing longer shots of action which would be more appealing to the audience. As the case most of the time is the case with all films Chunsa Thai Keboon Yuu (Scott Adkins) has a final fight with Thiha Yathedwin’s head enforcer and here Zeya who is played by Suradet Dongthaisong of the movies The Asian Connection and Buffalo Boys. But for whatever reason this time the rematch does not last long enough to satisfy and has an over the top ending.
To be fair, the technical aspects of Art of Eight Limbs are quite professional and I have seen far worse DTV action movies. But with hardly one or two fights in total in a film that is one hour and one minute long, it is easy to think of better DTV films. Otherwise, if you do not mind watching a film without paying attention to its crucial moments, this could be the answer. Or better yet, go see Enter the Dragon again.
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