Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

It doesn’t take too long to figure out what in you are in for in this movie ‘Street Warrior’ as the opening credits feature a collage of steroid infused angry dudes and plump titties on the pole doing what titties on the pole do. This is almost a public service in a sense because if you don’t like angry dudes and plump titties you can shut the movie down and watch something more along your liking. However, if you bothered to even pick up a movie calling itself ‘Street Warrior’ there’s a good chance that the opening credits will only make you smile as you marvel at your amazing ability at picking quality mindless, exploitative entertainment and wonder why you’re not a big time executive at one of these Straight to Video entertainment outlets… like I often wonder.

Welcome to the underground fighting ring of the completely evil Mr. Pope (Nick Chinlund). Today’s headline battle features young Joey (Brandon Quinn) versus the champion of this particular fighting tournament, the cool as ice 300 pound steroided out crazy strong freak Isaiah Griffin (Sidney S. Liufau). Just so you know Joey will be spending the majority of the film in a blunt trauma induced coma if you were curious about how this fight is going to turn out. Around the same time that Joey’s head was becoming one with the concrete, his big brother Jack (Max Martini) is getting out of Leavenworth after serving four of seven. Jack went down after beating his commanding officer near to death while on tour in Afghanistan, and while we don’t know why Jack did this, we can well assume that this clown had it comin’ and that women and children were probably involved.

Now back home Jack firsts has to bludgeon some wayward thugs who were rousting his good friend and eventual love interest Maggie Kuerner (Valerie Cruz), and then it’s off to see Joey and his pregnant wife Sarah (Erin Cottrell). Sarah gives Jack the bad news about Joey, who then has to go to the club of small time thug little Georgie (Max Perlich) where Jack bludgeons everybody there as well to get his answers. News of Jack’s ability to bludgeon gets back to Mr. Pope who has now marked Jack as a

featured headliner for his fighting tourney, but to make sure Jack fights he kidnaps the pregnant sister in law. Now we have a slight problem with this. Admittedly this isn’t the smartest flick around but Jack Campbell is what they call ‘like to fight guy’. You don’t have to kidnap anybody to make Jack fight. All you have to do is make the sun rises in the morning and Jack is pretty much ready to go. But I guess avenging his brother’s coma situation wasn’t enough motivation so they gave us a kidnapped / preggo damsel to save as well. Wasn’t necessary.

So now the battle royale is on to see who gets the right to be eventually brutalized by Isaiah Griffin, with Mr. Pope having all kinds of oppressive things on his fighters to make them do battle. Eventually Jack will prevail, that is after he gets to tap that pretty love interest they introduced to us, and get ready for the showdown against Mr. Griffin, and as tough as Jack may be, I’m not liking his chances. Apparently neither is Jack for that matter which leads to a bit of a change of pace for this otherwise run of the mill fight flick.

I have this list of about seven fight movies that I’m doing for that little television show I have called ‘Totally Twisted Flix’, which of course ‘Street Warrior’ will clearly make an appearance on since it’s almost tailor made for this show. It’s about as intellectually challenging as an episode of Romper Room, it wastes very little time on things such as character development or prose or any kind of silly nonsense like that, simply getting by on just enough for us to know who and what we are dealing with. The fight scenes are plentiful and when there isn’t a fight scene we’re usually at Georgie’s strip club looking at titties. So in short there’s really nothing wrong this movie. Of that list of seven movies, this one would come behind only Steve Austin’s ‘Damage’ in terms of entertainment value and this also isn’t as good all around as the independently produced film ‘Fight Night’ though the fight scenes in ‘Street Warrior’ are much better. But this is far better than those Hector Echavarria joints that Mr. Hector is putting out, putting out at an alarming rate I might add.

Like I said, this is very simple. Nick Chinlund is a bad guy without any redeemable social qualities, Max Martini is a hero who says next to nothing and kicks plenty ass, the fight scenes are decently filmed if not outstanding and the nudity is completely and totally gratuitous. We are a little disappointed that the brewing bitch battle between Jacks girl Maggie and Mr. Pope’s woman, the stunning Ms. Lee (Jane Park Smith), never materialized and the movie also shorted us on the most interesting character in this piece who was Sidney Liafua’s Isaiah Griffin. The character had a back story that we would’ve liked to have been privy to and for a dude who easily tops 300, the cat wears a suit so well that The Kingpin wants to know who his tailor is.

Of course ‘Street Warrior’ isn’t high art, not that we would know what that is anyway, but this is a flick that never loses sight of what it is, that being a silly barefist underground battle royale… with titties. What more could you ask for?