Bullet Points: Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon

Last August, we celebrated the action filmography of Director Albert Pyun when we presented The Ultimate Albert Pyun Countdown. With more than 50 movies to his credit, there was no way that all of Pyun’s work was going to make our list. But there was one movie that received an Honorable Mention from filmmaker and friend of the site, Dominik Stark, that piqued my interest. That movie was 2004’s Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon…

• The Hero: Mickey Hardt plays sports photographer, Max Havoc. As the movie begins we see Max covering a motocross event. Afterwards, Max goes to a bar where a woman starts flirting with him… the woman’s boyfriend walks in and Max is reluctant to fight, not because he is scared, but because he stopped fight after he retired from competitive kickboxing. Can you guess why, Max Havoc retired from the sport of kickboxing? If you said, Max retired after he accidentally killed his opponent in the ring, you’d be right on the money!
• The Thief: The movie shifts to Tokyo, Japan where an unnamed female thief foolishly steals a jade dragon from a group known as the Black Dragons. The female thief manages to escape but her accomplices were not so lucky. The leader of the Black Dragons, simply know as Grand Master (David Carradine, P.O.W. the Escape). Grand Master dispatches a team of Black Dragons to track down the jade dragon and the woman who stole it.

• The Trip: After his bar fight, a frustrated Max, who is trying to avoid violence but violence always seems to find him, goes to his boss and tells him he needs to take some time off. His boss convinces Max to take an assignment in Guam to take publicity photos for one of the swanky hotels on the island. After a beat, Max takes the assignment and mentions he’ll be able to visit his old kickboxing trainer Tahsi (Richard Roundtree, Shaft), who runs an antique shop in Guam.
• The Dragon: The movie then cuts to Tahsi’s antique shop and who walks in?!? The female thief with the stolen jade dragon. The thief needs some quick cash and pawns the jade dragon. Moments later, Max pops in for a happy reunion and the two old friends make plans to get together later… but for now Max has to get to work on the beach. While he’s working, Max saves Christy Goody, a medical student spending her spring break in Guam from swimming doom. After getting Christy to shore, Max then meets Christy’s sister, Jane Goody, who at first reads Max the riot act, but quickly changes her tune and by the end of the conversation Jane is giving Max her room number.

• The Curse: Jane owns her own art gallery and she’s a frequent customer of Tahsi, something we learn when she pops in his shop. As soon as Jane sees the jade dragon she wants it. Tahsi has some trepidation, especially given the way the woman who sold it to him was acting, but he can’t say no to Jane. It isn’t long after Jane leaves that a bald member of the Black Dragons (conveniently named Baldy) shows up at Tahsi’s shop looking to get the jade dragon back… when Tahsi can’t produce the jade dragon or offer up information on who he sold the piece to, he pays with his life.
• The Downhill Slide: After a good build up, Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon starts to fizzle following the murder of Tahsi. Jane takes forever to confess to Max that she has the jade dragon. The Black Dragons fail at getting the jade dragon from Jane multiple times. There’s not enough Max in action until the very end when he goes one on one with Baldy. The script feels like it was better suited for 44 minutes of television than it was a 90 minute movie… that would have trimmed a lot of the fat and made for a more enjoyable viewing experience. And when I really think about it, a series about a former kickboxer turned sports photographer that travels the globe and finds himself helping people along the way, sounds like a premise that could have easily worked. Instead we got a movie that has a few highlights, but overall doesn’t work.

After watching the movie, I read several of the behind the scenes stories concerning Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon and they all seem to be more interesting than the story that unfolded on the screen.

Rumor has it that the film was originally set to be shot in Hawaii with Mark Dacascos playing Max Havoc. When Hawaii plans fell through Dacascos was out. Miami and Bali were then considered, but the production eventually landed in Guam. This brought its own set of trouble, including Albert Pyun’s Vancouver based film crew being denied work visas and the Guam government eventually filing a lawsuit against the movie’s executive producer, John F.S. Laing.

Laing and Pyun had a falling out and Isaac Florentine was called in to film some additional scenes in Los Angeles. It was Florentine who cast Richard Roundtree and David Carradine, to give the movie more star power.

• Familiar Faces: Pyun favorite, Vincent Klyn (Cyborg and Kickboxer 2: The Road Back) plays Moko, a Guam local that has a few run ins with Max early on in the film, but the two eventually get on the same page… Carmen Electra has a small role as another one of the Guam locals that Max interacts with.
• Trivia: As I mentioned earlier, Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon was filmed in Guam. The first feature film ever filmed in Guam was 1970’s Noon Sunday.
• Sequel: Despite all the issues that Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon faced, a sequel was made in 2006. The sequel, Max Havoc: Ring of Fire, featured Mickey Hardt reprising his role as Max Havoc and Dean Cain playing the movie’s antagonist.