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*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Warrior of Justice? Invitation To Die? Here in the UK, this is called 'The Steel Ring'. No matter what you call it though, this film is garbage.The storyline follows that age old martial arts film formula - the 'grown men fight to the death for the amusement of wealthy observers' formula - but doesn't even try to do it well.Basically, its about a Karate teacher named 'George'(apparently "the worlds best". On the evidence here, i would say, er.... no.) who sets out to find out where his top student Tony Wilson (Ian Jacklin, star of many a zero-budget kickboxing flick )has disappeared to. Hmm, can you guess??? yup, no need for a spoiler warning here because its blatantly obvious that Tony has become a victim of the 'fights to the death' led by the evil Verdugo (played by the still impressively muscled Jorge Rivero, star of many, many cheap Italian sword-and-sandal epics of the 80's).You can guess the rest - George and Verdugo meet at the end, each grabs a sword, they have THE worst-looking sword-fight ever caught on film, and one of them dies. Which one? Im sure you can guess...Next - reasons why this is one of the worst films i have ever seen...1) The hero is played by the impossibly charisma-less Jorgo Ognenovski, who also wrote and directed this trash. He has talent in none of these areas...a) His writing ability - The films storyline is utter rubbish. Mr Ognenovski just stole it from a gazillion other cheap martial arts films ( Shootfighter, To The Death, Bloodmatch, Death Match etc etc) and on top of that the guys such a narcissist he wrote into the film several fight scenes for himself which are way above his laughable ability, many scenes where he takes his top off to reveal his not-very-impressive muscles and a few sex scenes which are sleazy even by the standards of martial arts z-movies.b)His directing ability - The direction is laughable ( near the end it shows a close-up of his snarling face three times in succession as he beats up an opponent. Each close-up is identical.)c)His acting ability - The guys acting is beyond terrible. I know, its a martial arts film so acting ability isn't required, but this guy takes it to the extreme. Instead of caring about the character, we actually want him to get his face ripped off because hes such a charmless son-of-a-gun. On top of this, the guys nowhere near action-hero material. He must have one massive ego to think he can cut it as the next Van Damme. He's thin, weak-jawed, has THE most unheroic bouffant haircut you've ever seen, has zero martial arts ability and has the build of someone who was a total weed but decided to go to the gym a few weeks before filming to get in shape for the vast amount of screen time he spends unclothed. And thats another thing - we see his pale butt far too much for my liking! Anyway, thats enough about the star. i could go on but I've got to stop somewhere.2) Unless you are profficient at lip-reading you'll actually miss out on about 70% of the dialogue in this film. Thats because some bright spark decided to have the actors speak in near-whispers whilst a heavy rock soundtrack plays in the background. The result of this is that for most of the film you can see the actors lips moving, but have no idea what they're saying. For all we know they could be saying " i pity that poor sucker who actually paid good money for this video, and has just wasted 90 minutes of his life that he'll never get back, watching it." And if so, i agree with them. The lack of voices makes this really bad film into a film whose awfulness is beyond description.3) The fights are absolutely rubbish. Thats all that can be said. They could have been this films saving grace, but nooooooo. As a result, several martial arts b-movie stars such as Ian Jacklin and Nick Hill have their talents wasted. Although what they were doing in this tripe in the first place is beyond me...4) The hero has sex with his girlfriend IN HIS DOJO!!! Actually on the mat! Whatever happened to respecing your dojo? Surely the 'worlds best' martial artist should know better than this!5) The 'steel ring's scariest fighter is some big fat dude who lumbers around the ring at about 1 mph, with the worlds lamest grimace on his face, trying to look scary while punching and kicking at a speed a snail could deftly avoid. Those last 2 examples represented the dozens of small annoyances that make this film one of the worst ever.All in all then, a film that has no saving features. Even what could have been a saving grace - the presence of b-movie legends Jorge Rivero and Richard Lynch - is spoiled because both their roles are complete garbage. Lynch plays the hero's ninja master 'Doug', and you've got to wonder how desperate he must have been to take this role.A scary fact to finish off here - Jorgo Ognenovski is still making films. His second classic - which he again wrote, directed and starred in - was called Black Hole and came out in 2002. I haven't seen it and hopefully i never will. *shudder*
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