Sgt. Clarin: Bullet For Your Head (1990)

Sgt. Clarin: Bullet For Your Head (1990)- * * *

Directed by: Willie Dado

Starring: Max Laurel 

"The rebel marine at large"

Danny Clarin (Laurel) is just your average toughguy who gets into your average barfight. After mopping the floor with his opponent, he's spotted by some Marine recruiters who happen to be in the bar that night and they ask him if he wants to become a Marine and he instantly says yes. Much like Lana Turner being spotted in Schwab's Drugstore. With notably more punching. After completing his grueling training, Clarin is awarded the opportunity to be a non-commissioned Marine. His first task is to take down the bandits - who call themselves rebels - who are terrorizing a local village.

His engagement with his beloved Mary is put on hold because of this new mission. But, because the bandits are backed by some powerful interests behind the scenes, this job is not going to be easy. Already tough as nails, Clarin gets really mad after the baddies kill his mother and brother. Now burning with revenge, he leads his band of men through a gauntlet of shooting, blowing-up, punching, and maybe some more shooting. While many, many people are trying, will Sgt. Clarin eventually end up with a bullet for his head?

Max Laurel finally gets a nice starring role after usually being the support guy here with Clarin. Laurel had a hell of a year in 1988, having appeared in The Last American Soldier, Last Platoon, Cop Game, and one of our favorites, Robowar, along with Clarin. He's great in the film, whether marrying his true love Mary, being subjected to the time-honored Prerequisite Torture, saving naked children from the firebombs of the baddies, or in his default position of shooting people, blowing up their huts, or punching them in the face. He comes off as likable and a solid hero. While lots of people can walk through a jungle and mow down baddies with a machine gun and/or a flamethrower, only Laurel can do it in cutoff jean shorts and still look like a badass.

By the time of Clarin's release in 1990, the exploding hut subgenre was changing somewhat after its 80's heyday. In this case, it's a mixed bag; on the one hand, the technical side of the blood effects had improved, leading to cool-looking machete slashes and even a decapitation or two.

On the other, director Willie Dado presumably had the ability to look at the films made by his predecessors and learn from their mistakes. He should have known not to make the film too long. At almost 100 minutes, the film is too long. That might seem like a reasonable running time for a "normal" movie, but in the case of something like this, with no real plot to speak of and many, many, many scenes of jungle-shooting, it seems overlong. Especially before the climax, it spins its wheels.

We get that Dado was trying to make his own version of Platoon (1986) - and, perhaps not coincidentally, got Laurel to star because he was in the aforementioned Last Platoon - but, try as he might, it's not Platoon. But we give him points for trying.

The whole thing has that "third world" vibe, and while it's sad to see how impoverished The Philippines is, it makes for fascinating and compelling viewing. It just overstays its welcome, that's all. The movie's not bad in any way, shape, or form. But it seems like the sort of thing that would especially appeal to rural Asian audiences. 

For better or worse, it seems like Americans and Europeans expect something a little bit different in their film viewing. Perhaps that's why Clarin has had almost no release history. Outside of its initial Philippines run and a belated 1994 Japanese VHS release, it seems very few people - and almost no Westerners - have been able to track down this quasi-lost film until the advent of YouTube. For that reason alone, it's certainly worth a watch.

We're lucky now to be able to see this piece of action film history. While overlong and plotless, exploding-hut aficionados will likely love it and Laurel's performance is a gem. The positives outweigh the negatives this time around, so we'll go aHEAD and recommend it.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Broken Bars (1995)

Broken Bars (1995)- * *

Directed by: Tom Neuwirth

Starring: Benjamin Kobby, Joe Estevez, Donald Gibb, and Wings Hauser








At Trabuco Federal Prison in Los Angeles, bad stuff is goin' down. A corrupt warden named Pitt (Wings) forces the inmates to Punchfight for his own amusement. If they agree to do this, he rewards them with in-cell delivery of prostitutes, strippers, drugs, and, presumably, cigarettes. He's helped along in all of this by his C.O./henchman, Mr. Jake (Gibb). If anyone disobeys Pitt in any way - including refusing to Punchfight - he spikes their heroin with poison and tosses them away.

Wanting to get to the bottom of the goings-on in Trabuco, Jack Dillon (Estevez) of the F.A.C.T. special ops division (don't ask what it stands for, as it was never said...or if it was, we missed it) sends in his best man: Nick Slater (Kobby). The taciturn Slater then proceeds to either fight or make friends with a series of stereotypes...er...I mean, inmates, until the eventual final showdown with Pitt. Won't anyone reform our criminal justice system?

Broken Bars is nothing if not a parade of men with questionable hair punching the snot out of each other. If that's what you're after (and why wouldn't you be?) then this is the movie for you. An alarming amount of the prison population in 'Bars is ponytailed and shirtless. Or some combination thereof. There are more ponytails per capita in this movie than in an episode of My Little Pony.

All that being said, Broken Bars follows the prison-Punchfighter template pretty much to the letter with no surprises in store. Bloodfist III (1992), Death Warrant (1990) and In Hell (2003) are classic examples. Van Damme is usually involved in some way.

Wings, as he usually does, brings a lot of charisma and command to his performance, and he tries mightily to save an otherwise bog-standard outing, as our friends from the UK might say. With his military uniform and close-cropped blonde hair, he really made us see how much he looks like Guile from Street Fighter. Surely not coincidentally, that's yet another Van Damme connection. 

Fan favorite Donald Gibb also stands out as a cast member who is trying. But, as Death Warrant had a clear-cut evil baddie like The Sandman, and Broken Bars has no such character, it starts to flounder a bit without that focus.

The production company Gun For Hire was behind both this and Enter The Blood Ring (1995), and we noticed some similarities between the two films. Both starred Benjamin Kobby and both featured a ringleader character of some sort who sits in a chair and watches people punchfight. 

In this case it's Wings Hauser, in the other film it's Robert Z'Dar. Evidently, the people at GFH thought this was an incredibly winning formula, but as it turned out, Broken Bars and Enter The Blood Ring are two of the rarest Punchfighters of the 90's. 'Bars barely eked out a VHS release here in America on the York Entertainment label. 1995 was a banner year for Gun For Hire, though.

It's all very much like an episode of Renegade - a ponytailed hero rides into our lives on his motorcycle while blues guitar wails on the soundtrack. There's also the Prerequisite Torture of the hero, among other clichés we all know and love. We do credit the filmmakers for adding some gratuitous female nudity, because without that, we'd be looking at an all-male cast for 95 minutes, and they must have figured that wouldn't go over well with what is probably an all-male viewership.

Broken Bars certainly won't win any points for originality (except maybe for the title, which we're still trying to figure out), but as a semi-lost video store artifact, it has some value. The only problem is that it struggles to hold our full interest for the entire running time. Those two factors pendulumed back and forth for us, as it surely will for you too.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty