Bullet Points: Full Impact

Full Impact is not a very good movie, some would even say Full Impact is a bad movie.

The audio is atrocious, it has a plot twist that is never fully explained and the action looks like it is unintentionally in slow motion at times. The old saying “you get what you pay for” came to mind as I watched… the budget for Full Impact had to be paltry and it shows in every moment of the movie… it just looks cheap.

With all of that said there was one big positive in the movie, the star of the film… Gary Daniels. Maybe hindsight is clouding my judgment here. But I’d like to think even if I saw Full Impact back when it was first released and it was my first exposure to Gary Daniels and I didn’t go in having the benefit of seeing all the great movies he would be a part of when his career really got cooking that I would have been impressed with Gary’s skills and his screen presence…

• He’s Got the Power: Gary Daniels’ skills and screen presence is on display instantly as we see doing his kata by the train tracks as the opening credits roll along with some shots of Gary doing some jumping kicks and getting a little target practice in too. I should also point out that the DVD cover for Full Impact is misleading, Gary still has his long locks in this movie… what Gary’s character, Jared Taskin, no longer has is his job at the police force. There was a case years back involving a mysterious killer known as Death Touch that hit too close to home for JT. It cost him his job, his marriage and his relationship with his son, it may have also cost him his sanity.
• Psycho Cop: Around town some refer to Jared Taskin as Psycho Cop, which sounds like the name of a TV show that Al Bundy would be interested in or a role for Robert Z’Dar. Our first taste of JT is in action has him rescuing a kid from entering the world of illicit drugs. JT finds the youngster being recruited by a known drug dealer named Victor to start pushing his drugs around town…. the kid isn’t all that pleased that JT showed up because the money he stood to earn was quite appealing to him, however JT was apparently paid to rescue this boy… they say JT is a bounty hunter now but this doesn’t quite seem like bounty hunting work. Anyway after JT shoots up Victor’s place and gets the kid out of there, the movie cuts to a topless woman…

• Not So Happy Ending: The topless woman was in fact a hooker and she has been paid to provide her client with a sensual massage and some sex, which does seem like prostituting work . This poor working girl is not long for the world… the guy who hired her turns out to be the returning Death Touch!
• Going Through the Motions: We then see a day in the life of Jared Taskin… he goes to a therapy session with the police psychologist who has been working with him since that fateful night. After that JT stops by the gym where he gets his balls busted by a former co-worker Jenks and reunites with his old friend Bill, who is one creepy looking and sounding individual. When JT learns that Bill’s wife has left him instead of saying “I was surprised anybody married your creepy ass to begin with” he hits the line, “That’s love in the 90s, man!”

• “Quality” Police Work: When JT finds out that Death Touch is back after reading about it in the paper, he shows up at the police station wanting in on the case… his former boss tells him NO that his involvement ended the day he turned in his badge. But good ol’ Bill is gonna let JT help him investigate on the down low… eventually JT gets some help from Dr. Weise the police psychologist, who should know better to be an enabler. As I mentioned at the start of my review, Gary Daniels was the bright spot in Full Impact, although Jared Taskin is an awful detective. His two theories as to who Death Touch is are conveniently people he doesn’t like… known bad guy in town Louis Diosdado and his asshole former co-worker Arnold Jenks… there really is no motive for either of these men to go around killing women with their bare hands. His dislike for Louis and Jenks makes him completely oblivious to the fact that his friend Bill is a creepy fuck. And SPOILER ALERT, Death Touch and Bill turn out to be one in the same, even though there is no explanation as to why Bill started killing years ago as Death Touch or why he suddenly stopped, only that when his wife left him it must have set him off again, what the hell set him off the first time movie!?!?
• Death to Death Touch: With Dr. Weise’s help JT does put Bill on his list of suspects, but he needs to confirm it so he goes over to Bill’s house. Bill isn’t home, so JT lets himself in and finds some incriminating evidence in a trunk in Bill’s basement. Now the reason Bill wasn’t home is he decided to pop over and visit JT’s estranged wife… Uh-oh!!! Fortunately for her, JT raced over to her house gets there before Bill can go all Death Touch on her and so begins the embarrassingly bad final battle between JT and Bill. The whole thing felt more like a dress rehearsal that was filmed than what you’d want the final product to be, but the non-flip car flip scene, complete with visible ramp, had to be the lowest point of the action.

Full Impact felt like a step backwards compared to other early Gary Daniels movies like The Secret of King Mahi’s Island and Final Reprisal. Still, it gave Gary some leading man experience, which would come in handy in the years following Full Impact.

These Bonus Bullet Points will come in handy right now…

• That’s No Sequel: Full Impact was also released as American Streetfighter 2, well kind of. Apparently American Streetfighter 2 mashed up scenes from Full Impact with footage from 1992’s American Streetfighter to make an even worse movie.
• Talk of the Town: Gary Daniels beautiful head of hair earns him quite a few nicknames along the way… Hippy, Shirley Temple, Goldilocks and a name most befitting of a man with a lion’s mane… Tarzan.
• Familiar Faces: The one and only J.J. Perry played one of Louis’ streetfighters. Perry would go on to become one of the best stunt coordinators in the business and made his directorial debut with 2022’s Day Shift… Classic action movie bad guy, Gerald Okamura played a fighter at Louis’ club. Okamura is probably most known for his work in Big Trouble in Little China, but he has popped up in so many other action favorites over the years including Shootfighter: Fight to the Death, Showdown in Little Tokyo and Ring of Fire II: Blood and Steel to name a few.
• Rated EM: Full Impact is the first movie I have ever seen to receive an EM rating for Extremely Mature by the Film Advisory Board (or FAB for those in the know).