Showdown in Manila at first glance may remind you of The Expendables, but instead of the 80s and early 90s big action stars like Arnold and Sly, it use the "direct to video category". I am not saying this negatively as i for one enjoyed these type of movies. I had fun with Cynthia Rothrock, Don The Dragon Wilson, Olivier Gruner and Mark Dacascos action movies. Sadly, these peoples are barely anymore than an extended cameo for the first 3 and a litteral cameo for the last as Dacascos is actually the director of the movie and his poster appearence is completely misleading.
The movie instead follow Alexander Nevsky as the main character Nick Peyton. Imagine taking Arnold Schwarzenegger but basically stripping all the charisma and one liners from his characters. Thats pretty much what remain there. Nevsky speak with a huge accent making his dialogues hard to understand, but the biggest offender is that he has absolutely no charisma or acting skills. The Terminator showed more personality than his character.
Casper Van Dien plays his partner in the detective agency and is by far the best actor in the whole movie. He tries his best to add charisma and personality to it but thats sadly feel like trying to light a piece of paper in a water bucket.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Mattias Hues plays the villains and they do fine altough i felt they were wasted overall.
The story ain't nothing special, and i supose with better writing, acting and charisma it would had been alright to hold us til the climax, but in its current state it was litteraly a chore to sit trough. By the time you reach said climax you just wish the movie was over.
Dacascos direction when it comes to action was ...fine i guess, even tough the limited budget clearly showed its ugly head, but i felt like he watched Nevsky deliver his line like a robot and was like "thats a wrap, great take". I just can't understand how they could look at this and think it would pass.
I really wish i would had liked this movie, and don't get me wrong i was not expecting theatre quality in term of budget and action, and i was more than fine with these actors "very average acting skills". I never watched a Don The Dragon movie for his acting. That said the movie would had improved a lot if he had been the main character cause his acting is several steps above M. Nevsky.
This movie was litteraly on Youtube completely free (sadly with no subtitles, wich made a lot of the dialogue of Nevsky hard to understand for a non english native as i am) so i can't be too harsh on it i guess as it didn't cost me anything. But if i always enjoyed owning and putting back once in a while an old Bloodfist or China O'Brien, Showdown in Manila is one movie i never intend to rewatch.
