Being a big Dolph Lundgren fan, I was surprised to see a completely different side of him in this one, portraying him as being a pathetic, injured burnout who flips burgers for a living, while walking down dark alleys with no company beside his portable TV and his beer. When he is menaced by a group of hoodlums, they laugh at him when his trick knee gives out and he can't chase them. This struck me as being very odd, because it was Dolph acting like a regular guy, rather than the sarcastic killing machines he's typecast as. Sadly, as enjoyable as all of the footage of him being a loser (and his inspiring comeback into grade-A Pentathalon runner material), it sort of abruptly switches gears, turning into one of his usual action movies with a nonsense subplot involving neo-Nazis. It's a shame that the whole thing couldn't have been like the first two acts, or this would be by far his best performance, in a close tie with GR13 from Universal Soldier.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Pray for Death
(1985)
Totally sweet
21 June 2002
I just watched Pray for Death on Showtime at 2:30 in the morning. This is a totally sweet movie about ninjas, in which Sho Kosugi is this bad ass super ninja who kills a whole bunch of people before moving to America, where he is framed for drug trafficking, and his wife is raped and murdered, and that is the point where he totally flips out and kills dozens and dozens of people. I did find it odd that while his family is from Japan, Sho's wife doesn't look terribly oriental. But otherwise this is a totally sweet eighties action movie with lots of killing and flipping out.
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