No Surrender Cinema: Bloodfist VIII: Hard Way Out

It’s the final curtain for Don “The Dragon” Wilson’s famous fighting franchise, and it’s the last of the series to be reviewed here on this very site! This time the past has caught up to our hero, and sends him on the run with his teenage son. Can “The Dragon” vanquish his enemies with the ease we’ve come to expected, or will he have to take the hard way out…as in Bloodfist VIII: Hard Way Out? Let’s find out in this edition of No Surrender Cinema!

As many of you already know from my reviews of previous Bloodfist entries, every film since Bloodfist III: Forced To Fight has been its own story, featuring Wilson as a new character with a new set of problems. This time around, he’s Rick Cowan, a high school math teacher rocking some excellent mid-90’s skater hair that would make him look right at home on the set of Airborne. Aside from a teaching career, Rick also has a son named Chris (in reality a 24 year old actor named John Patrick White) who is going through a defiant stage, doing things like coming home late and electrocuting classmates. No, seriously. The first few minutes of the film show that Rick and Chris aren’t getting along as well as a father and son should, and that Chris is having problems with a few of the bullies in school. Just when it looks like he’s given in to their demands and is handing over his sweet 90’s CD boombox, we see that he’s rigged it to electrocute his tormentor, complete with a cheesy electricity effect that looks like it should be coming out of Thor’s hammer in The Incredible Hulk Returns instead of a radio. Much like that radio, things aren’t exactly as they seem in the life of the Cowan’s, as we’re about to find out.

Bloodfist VIII started off with a random man being killed, and now The Cowan’s have been targeted for some reason. Mild-mannered Rick manages to dispatch the thugs with the ease you’d expect from a character played by the kickboxer-turned-actor, and this is where Rick drops the bomb (not literally) on Chris that he’s not Rick Cowan: High School Math Teacher. He’s really George MacReady, a former CIA operative that’s been living under an assumed identity in an effort to stay off people’s radar and live a normal life. Chris has never known any of this, but finds out that his mom knew, and the reason she’s dead is because she fell victim to a bomb that was meant for MacReady. Now, there’s a team of Italian hitmen who are out for blood and killing those that have wronged them, and Mac’s name is on that list. Father and son go on the run, and after another encounter where Rick manages to fight off his attackers, he and Chris are whisked away to Ireland by Mac’s old friend Danielle (Jillian McWhirter, who was also in the previous Bloodfist film as a different character).

It turns out the reason that MacReady is on the run is because during his CIA heyday, he killed an Italian politician named Michaelangelo Leone. Mac thought he had covered his tracks, but now it looks like somebody has seen through the CIA’s charade, and he and Chris have been marked for death by a hit squad. If you thought Ireland was going to be a safe haven for father and son until things blow over, then you shouldn’t call yourself an action fan, because all Ireland is is a different setting for Mac to proactively find out who wants him six feet under and for the goon squad to come calling and attempt to finish the job. It’s the usual blend of action and espionage that became a part of Wilson’s later films like The Capitol Conspiracy (aka Prophet) and Inferno, which feature a lot more gunplay and close quarters combat than “The Dragon’s” earlier efforts. There’s even a bit of racism thrown in here, but it’s nowhere near as effective as it was in Bloodfist III. In fact, I have no idea why it was put in this film, other than to create tension between the Mac character and the Irish detective who “hates Yanks” and seems to be more miffed that Mac is an American rather than the fact that he’s just killed several men in broad daylight.

Adding to the “authority reluctant to believe our hero” trope is the ol’ standby “The CIA is actually corrupt and our hero’s trouble is being caused by those close to him”. While Mac is pleading with the Irish authorities to believe his story, his boss Powell reveals himself to be the mastermind behind everything, and Danielle is his lover! The traitors and their goons kidnap Chris while Mac is preoccupied with the cops, leading to the final showdown on the bad guys’ boat. Mac gets on board and dispatches his enemies with some help from Chris, who puts his Junior MacGyver skills to use once again and blows some shit up. That leaves Mac to deal with Powell’s underling Pressburger (the aptly named Donnie Hair, a friend of Wilson’s who worked with him on several of his projects and sports a finely coiffed mane). If you ever wanted to see Don Wilson kickboxing on the stern of a boat in the middle of the Irish Sea, then this is the film for you!

Bloodfist VIII: Hard Way Out is also known as Bloodfist VIII: Trained To Kill, and coincidentally enough, wasn’t originally even conceived as a Bloodfist movie! Hard Way Out was the initial title of the film upon release (and there are VHS copies of the original currently listed over on eBay) before it was repackaged as an entry into the long-running Bloodfist franchise. That said, I enjoyed Bloodfist VII: Manhunt much more than this one, and I think that if the series had ended with Part VII, it would have been a better sendoff. Bloodfist VIII is pretty standard for a low-budget late 90’s action flick, but it’s also a film where Wilson appears to do a lot less of what he was famous for; kicking people’s ass with his martial arts skills. The Irish setting is also a bit forced (Roger Corman moved production over there to capitalize on tax breaks; realistically, Mac’s safe house could have been anywhere in the world). At least we didn’t have anyone with a cartoony accent like the police chief in Blackbelt II: Fatal Force (oddly enough, another movie that was released and then repackaged under a new name to cash in on the prior film’s popularity). My only other gripe (well, besides that shitty blue lightning effect that had no place in this movie and got used AGAIN in a car explosion scene!) is that John Patrick White felt more like he should have been Mac’s rookie partner in the CIA than his son. I’ve watched enough teen shows in my life to know that 20 something actors playing kids is commonplace, but I think the role and the father/son dynamic would have been best served by having a younger actor in the role, especially for scenes like when Chris is kidnapped and held hostage. White looked every bit like a college jock who could handle himself, but had to play Chris as an angsty, wimpy teen. At least Chris’ ability to craft homemade weaponry saved the character from being a total waste.

I’ve often said that 1996 may be my favorite year in pop culture history, but this film (released on October 29th of that year) is my least favorite of the series. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it terrible, and I do enjoy nearly everything “The Dragon” has done as an action movie leading man, but Hard Way Out is a very by the numbers action film that’s lacking compelling antagonists and opted to limit Wilson’s use of his feet and fists in favor of Uzi’s and crude bombs. It should be seen if you’re a completionist, or if you’ve got nothing better to do on a rainy weekend afternoon, and it’s currently available on Tubi, Amazon Prime, Plex, and even YouTube. However, if you haven’t seen all of the other Bloodfist films yet, do yourself a favor and enjoy those before you see this one. I remember being sad that we didn’t get any more Bloodfist films from “The Dragon” back in the day, but if they were going to go down this road, then it was probably for the best.