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American Chinatown
1996; directed by Park Woo-Sang

American Chinatown's tagline is "America needs a defender... China offers its' master". If the cheesy-looking and slow-moving schlub featured as the star of this dubious cinematic output is indeed China's master, then he needs to get a refund from his teacher. Who would have thought a movie about Chinese people in America created by a C-list cast and crew of Koreans would suck?

Anyhow, the thin shred of a plot revolves around a dude named Yong, who just happens to be wandering by a car where a woman is getting raped by several vatos. Yong saves the lady and then asks her out on a date -- what a smooth operator. It turns out the woman is the sister of Yong's Triad boss, who doesn't like his sister dating the help. So Yong and his lady take off, and seem to have shaken the Triads. But of course, they don't, the woman gets kidnapped, and then it's up to Yong to dispense some street justice.

There is nothing, and I mean, nothing of value in here to offer the viewer. Everything is done so incompentently, one has to wonder if the creators of this dreck were actually trying. I've seen YouTube videos that look and sound better than this. The whole production has the feel that it was done in single takes using a camcorder that one of the guys on the crew borrowed from his mom -- which probably isn't too far from the truth. This is truly low-budget film-making at its' absolute worst.

And if you're thinking the action scenes might save the day, don't hold your breath. A few of the people involved seem to have some decent moves, but the fight scenes are shot and edited so ineptly, you could have put Bruce Lee in here and he still would have ended up looking like Bruce Leroy.

If you haven't gotten the point by now, do yourself and your brain cells a favor and stay far away from this trash. Even die-hard fans of bad movies aren't going to find anything worth their time here.

RATING: 1

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