Expect No Mercy

Expect No Mercy

A crazy egomaniac has created a "Virtual Reality Martial Arts Academy" to train and pick candidates which he can turn into assassins for his private company. His "Virtual Martial Arts School" is going to be the cutting edge of technology and 'the next big thing,' he's the "Steve Jobs" of Martial Arts... Some criminal has hired them to kill a federally protected witness. Billy Blanks of Tae Bo fame is sent to the academy undercover to investigate and stop them. The plot is basically stolen from Enter the Dragon, but don't let that stop you from being amused by this relatively decent low grade B-Action movie. It has the usual bad acting, bad special effects, etc, but here we are, and I'm saying that each of these films have their merits, when they're not worth anything, I'll say they're not worth ANYTHING.

There is no way to criticize every movie with the same measuring stick. No critic can guarantee you'll like the same movie they did, ever. What does this movie have? It does have a lot of fight scenes, which give Billy Blanks an excuse to kick everybody in the head at least once, and if you enjoy the old B-Movie drinking game, then this one is in. This movie had me laughing all the way, for a variety of reasons, and by no means should this film ever be forgotten.

You might be shocked at how many movies I review on this site and suggest that there could be something worthwhile in them. This by no means is a 'great movie' of course, and it certainly isn't for everyone. The special effects are really hilariously bad. The "Virtual Reality" bandwagon has to be the only excuse for this movie's existence, but that's enough for me.

The 'Virtual Reality" fight scenes are definitely a source for serious fun on the right day. Billy Blanks and the students put on the goggles and play out physically against 'virtual' opponents, and the grid they stand on scans their movements. They receive electric shocks when they get hit. So they're playing virtual nintendo martial arts games, and Billy Blanks gets to prove that "this virtual reality shit sucks." He shows the bad guys that virtual reality can't train you for the real world. There are some funny scenes, and though everything is predictable, the boys end up in a shootout at the end, but Billy Blanks forgets to bring a gun...

This is one amusing retro-VR film you need to see if you're into the whole retro-VR

amusement trip. If you're looking for a Michael Bay action packed Hollywood production, this ain't it. In the end Billy Blanks defeats the bad guy, there's a big explosion and VR-Martial Arts turns out to

be a bad idea, but perhaps the biggest reason to waste your time watching this is that it is a "VR martial arts film," and this is long before "The Matrix" so comparing it the the VR Kung Fu training scene in that movie is wonderfully amusing. VR found its way to every home-video demographic, from Pornography to Children's cartoons, from Noir crime thrillers, to war movies... even Michael Douglas did a VR film for god's sakes...and perhaps even funnier, we still never use "Virtual Reality," at least the way it was portrayed in any of these movies.

What has become a cliche can be very fun to sift through and examine its origins, and sometimes enlightening. In many of these old VR-films you find a lot of weird and funny stuff, and sometimes get an idea of what it was people were thinking back then. What were the cliches, and sometimes, who were the cliches? Writers can be funny sometimes, and whatever it is they're looking at can come to a dead end, but then re-emerge years later with greater importance. You then look back at some of these old movies and you see where the dead end was, and you can be amazed at how they didn't see it, and what it took for us to finally see it.

In relating this to a "New Outer Limits" episode, its actually pretty good, which is a certain criteria which I go by. The purpose of the Outer Limits series wasn't to promote the finest acting and drama on television, it was to get certain science fiction ideas across with as much variety as possible. If you can watch that series and find a way to enjoy it for what it is, as it turns out, this movie, which you might call "Enter the VR Dragon" now that it has aged a bit, and earned itself a vintage or 'retro' label is worth more than some out there that are outright unwatchable.

I could very well tear this film to shreds, but what for at this point in history? What would that serve, the real fascination is in "just what were these people thinking?" Not about their filmmaking skills, but this sci-fi 'virtual reality' and cybertronic stuff they were getting into with this movie. Obviously, as any gimmick which comes into a movie, it will undoubtedly eventually become

'out of date' but these ideas come from somewhere, and to a point they become a kind of cliche, and my question is, just where does this cliche really come from, how did they interpret it, and how did it really come out to be in the end? In this case, doing 'real' martial arts, while wearing VR goggles, fighting 'virtual' opponents, is something somebody out there is likely promoting, but still just another idea. Another bad idea. Synthetic training doesn't help the bad guys defeat Billy Blanks in this film, he simply kicks their ass. Humanity defeats the evils of technology once again, and what is 'real' is valued again. The idea of a Martial Arts "Steve Jobs" is also very funny. The issue isn't how well the producers pull it off, its not much a step above Outer Limits, but the point is that it is there. This movie certainly isn't on the same level as GAMER. There's some crazy ideas in some of these old sci-fi movies, even if they're only there for a few seconds that are worth grasping...sometimes the dumbest movies eventually come true...

Certainly the ideas in this film just may be revisited again, and irony has a way of rearing its ugly head too...consider Billy Blanks and his home-video-training Tae Bo empire ... will he be doing infomercials in 2014 for VR-Tae-Bo? You never know... life imitates art...

This film is a bizarre artifact of the 90s, and while not the greatest rare gem, is fairly rare to find on DVD.