RR Shelf Help / The Perfect Weapon (Kino Lorber Blu-Ray)

We're ending "Martial Arts Movie Month," with a bang! It's our “Shelf Help,” entry for what is rumored to be JD Vance's most hated movie "The Perfect Weapon," (1991 Dir. DiSalle) Paul takes you through this appropriately bare bones in extras, but plentiful in features, Kino Lorber Blu-Ray release. 8/7!

Transcript

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I have the power. You think this is heading out of the

Intro

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house? I have the power, and though that this isn't E-Man, nor is it Jeff. Nor is it the penis wizard or the cock warlock or what have you. Uh despite, you know, if you listen to our full-length episode, no no no, this is Paul. Greetings, listener, to this edition of the Review Review Shelf Help. A corner of the Review Review Universe dedicated to assisting you in making your next feed dedicated to assisting you in making your next physical media acquisition the right one for you and for the people that you really care about. Again, this is Paul. I'm not Jeff. It's it's not Jeff. You'd like it to be. It's just Paul playing Paul. Possibly my most difficult role.

Whatcha Got?

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What do I do? What am I doing here? I'm a regular co-host here, but I'm also here to celebrate Moses Olsen's birthday, our co-host for the full-length episode. And if you again, if you haven't listened to that, what are you doing here? Maybe you're just that excited about the disc. But I would suggest you go back and listen to the full episode. It is a doozy. But what are we even talking about? What's a doozy? The movie The Perfect Weapon. I actually have it right here. It's the perfect weapon on Blu-ray from our Palzek Kino Lorber, a distributor that is on the shelf help quite a bit. On the shelf quite a bit. And this movie actually ended up on Moses' shelf and Burris's shelf, as it already has existed on mine for a little while, to be honest. Why is that? Why do you have this super obscure action movie from 1991, Paul? I can tell you a lot of reasons. If you listen to the full-length episode, it is there. But I feel like this movie is a piece of my how old was I? Octagenary. This movie is a very important piece of my life, weirdly. I don't know how else to put that. Ooh, speaking of the perfect weapon, Sandcat is saying it's it's uh it's clobberin' time to the chair and that had to stop. Sandcat was saying it's clobberin time to the couch, similar to a gentleman in this movie, and that that had to stop. I own this movie not only because we're gonna try to link this in the episode. If you can find uh a physical copy of this movie, which is really easy, it's gonna be ten dollars or less. Online, swap meets, flea markets, thrift stores, garage sales, you're gonna find it. It existed in one of my homes when I was uh how old was I? If Jeff's Jeff Speakman is when this movie was at 31, but he's playing 50. Yeah, it existed in VHS in one of my homes with a bunch of other like really obscure movies, and this is one that I really enjoyed for a handful of years, and then it went unwatched for a handful of years, and then for Moses' birthday, I mean, we had to do it, there was no other option. I'm gonna give you some quick details about this movie now before we get into some more of the nitty-gritty. We're talking about the perfect weapon from Kino Lorber. So it's got that nice, like uniform white lettering on black spine, all the same font, like doot doot do lines up very nicely on your shelf. Oh, how fancy. This movie was originally from Paramount, it's from 1991. It is rated R somehow. I mean, the violence is pretty rough. It's an hour and 22 minutes. The genre of this movie is Kenpo. This is a Kenpo movie. This is on my Mount Rushmore of Kenpo movies. It if Letterbox came to me and said, give me your four favorite Kenpo movies, perfect weapon, perfect weapon, perfect weapon, and perfect weapon, no other Kenpo movie comes close. I just need to make sure that that's very clear. The letterboxed rating on this film is an even 3.0. You can follow me on Letterboxd if you wish, at Paul ActsBadly. You can follow our birthday boy, Moses Olsen, at Holy Moses, W H O L L Y in a delicious pond. The log line of this movie is an expert in Kenpo. Who would have thought? Karate avenges his Koreatown friend slain by a mobster in Los Angeles. That's pretty cut and dry, isn't it? The movie itself moves right along. If you listen to the full-length episode, I'll get into great detail about this, as will Moses, as will our good friend Ben Burris, who has a signed poster of this, as well as some other Jeff Speakman memorabilia, which is so, so insanely specific and we love it. But I'm gonna save that on this episode of Shelf Help, as we're we're wanting you to hear this to celebrate Moses and to celebrate this film as the main thing I think we all came to in the full-length episode. It's so dynamic, it's so special for the screen. Not only Russell Carpenter's work, who I haven't mentioned in this, he's the cinematographer of this movie and mostly works with James Cameron. And you can really see Russell Carpenter's talent in this movie. It's got some great song selections. We all have some feelings about the score itself. We all have some feelings about some of the performances. This is a house that respects Rufio. Just want to say that. Toru Tanaka's great, James Hong is great, Mako is great. There are a bunch of awesome little performances in this movie around the top build guy. And I'm gonna say this before I move on. Jeff Speakman, if you watch the interview that's on this or watched interviews with him outside of this or what have you, this is a guy that actually lived the Seagull story. He wasn't some guy that an agent was like, I can make anybody a star on a bet.

What's It About?

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And that's largely to be believed about Steven Seagal. So he was the biggest asshole anybody had ever met. Someone had made a bet that he could make him famous, and the rest is a stain on history. This movie, somebody saw Jeff Speakman doing it, he would do, could do, and this person went to this person, went to this person, came and saw him work and said, You're great. Come make a movie with us. And he seems extremely grateful that he like got this like lottery ticket, apparently really enjoyed making the movie and didn't make more movies based on you know regime change at Paramount. And it's really unfortunate that this guy didn't have a chance to like grow as an actor and uh or a movie star or whatever, is these types of movies, these martial arts movies, continued in popularity pretty strongly, depending on how much you want to, you know, micro the genre or talk about where the films are coming from in terms of origin of part of the world. But this is a a guy that you know he could have been something. Uh, but in the meantime, this is something. We're talking about it on the review review. Where else are you gonna hear people talk about the perfect weapon? Perfect weapon fans, rise up, Billy Brigade, rise up, Xaniacs. We're ready. We need you. In terms of the disc itself, very gettable. The thing that we stuck on in this episode, as you know, is just the front graphic, the poster, Speakman like rocking the pan flutes. Like, is it a thousand pan flutes? Is it two pan flutes? Is it what are we doing here? It's got this awesome font, like everything is like very aggressive, like which Kenpo is, and it it all really ties the room together. It's got some pretty good commentaries on it. I watched the movie bouncing back with the commentary on the first of two times I watched it for the episode with the director Mark DeSalle and film historian Mike Leader. It's fun, it's kind of funny at times, like the parts that I listened to, and again, it just seems like people that were like, hey man, we were just stoked to make this movie. It includes this really great interview

Sell It To Me

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with Jeff Speakman called Street Speed and designing the fight scenes, core choreographing the fight scenes for this movie, just a to a thing unto itself. There's some stuff that you see in this movie that you're like, I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. Maybe there's something, you know, you see John Wick or you see Ongbach or what have you, and you're like, oh no, I've seen things like that. And it's okay, fine, sure, but how nuanced do we get in that conversation? It has a bunch of trailers on it, including one for Blind Fury. I suggest you watch it. Cool thing about the trailer for Perfect Weapon in that is it has a couple different angles of things that end up in the movie. And again, it's just like it's so dynamic, it's so wildly different. There's not an actual poster, it's a Blu-ray. There's not a 4K, there's not a DVD, there's not a digital transfer, there's not trading cards, there's not, you know, a couple pan flutes in there or a couch for you to beat the shit out of, or you know, do what you will. Yeah, do do what you will with that poor couch. There are no little booklets, there are no little comics, and it's just the movie, a couple commentaries, interviews, trailers, stuff like that. I just love the Kino Lorber packaging. The quality of the transfer of the movies I was talking about with the photography of the movie is awesome. It's crazy in terms of the additional scenes that are here. Mariska Hargate, who does not have a line. A woman does not speak in this movie, as far as we could tell. If you've listened to the episode, if you have if you're not intrigued already, you should be. Mariska Hargate doesn't say a word in this movie, it's just like longing looks. Like, I'm gonna save the next little joke I wanted to make, but like just longing looks, these two people at each other. Um, but she's in a bunch of the additional, you know, cut scenes that added context to it. And again, in the full-length episode, we talk about why some of these decisions to cut this were made outside of the clear fact that it's like fast, aggressive, like the movie has to move, move, move, move like Kenpo. Uh was that super intentional? I don't know. That's up for debate. Listen to the episode. But I'm gonna give I'm gonna give the package a 3.5 because it looks great, the transfer is good, all that good stuff. I can't change my score on the movie. I'm not gonna tell you my score on the movie. You should listen to the episode. It's a really it's a really very, very specific thing. I'm glad I own it. I really I'm glad I own it. I will re-watch it happily, but it's also just kind of like a teeth grating thing at times. And I think all three of us hit on the and I think all three of us hit on that. Moses really hits the nail on the head. I

Ratings

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think we all do some pretty good hammering of that. Hammering? Can't touch no wait, different moot, different here. We have the power on this episode of the review review. Here we have the power on this episode of the review review shelf help, which is brought to you by the review review podcast. And Moses Olsen's birthday. Happy birthday, buddy. Our bookend themes are by Jamie Henwood. You can follow the review review on InstaFlashes Blue Sky at Review X2 Podcast, at Paulax Badly on Letterboxed, at Holy Moses on Letterboxd. The review review is available almost everywhere, including Buzz Sprouts and good pods and whatever. We can just be cut and dry here. Vroom vroom. We can just be cut and dry here. Vroom vroom.