Director James Yukich
Starring Robert Patrick, Mark Dacascos & Scott Wolf
Rated PG
Score 1.5/6

Two brothers have half of a powerful ancient Chinese talisman. An evil gang leader has the other half, and is determined to get the brothers’ half and have a complete medallion so he can gain absolute power.

For those of you who might be wondering, Double Dragon was released in 1994 one year after the release of Super Mario Bros directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo, the first feature-length live-action film based on a video game. So I suppose Super Mario Bros and Double Dragon are the grandparents of  live-action films based on a video game. It’s been more than a few years since I last watched Double Dragon and for the record, I don’t really remember playing Double Dragon when I was younger, Or at all come to think of it. Looking at Double Dragon from the cushy seat of 2022 it comes across as a brightly coloured, slightly immature with bad special effects. Scott Wolf was an interesting choice as Billy Lee (the player one character in the game) especially alongside Mark Dacascos as Jimmy Lee (the player two character in the game). Taking the opportunity to throw a stone at the MCU I would hold Alyssa Milano’s role as Marian Delario, the leader of the Power Corps, as having more substance than most of the female roles in Phase 3 of the MCU. I found that I enjoyed Robert Patrick’s over the top performance as Koga Shuko, though his hairstyle in the movie certainly was ridiculous.
It would have been great to see the movie take a darker tone especially with the finale (which had a couple of stupid moments) but at least the filmmakers had the commonsense to give their characters a noticeable character arch.