Tiger Claws (1991).
“This is not a sport for every bozo with fifty bucks.”
Directed by Kelly Makin
Written by J. Stephen Maunder
Starring Jalal Merhi, Cynthia Rothrock, and Bolo Yeung
The Stage.
Martial arts masters are showing up dead, their insides crushed but bodies unscathed aside from a scratch on the face. Linda and Tarek, two cops who know martial arts take to the streets to find the person responsible.
The Review.
Welcome to early 90’s NYC, where people are dressed like they actually live in Los Angeles and good police work is virtually non-existent. The film starts with Linda (played by Cynthia Rothrock) and her partner, credited on IMDB as, “Linda’s Partner” trying to bust a rapist. This consists of tossing a wig on Rothrock and walking around until some chop-licking psychopath follows her and tries something. In real life, this would seem about as easy as finding a fart in a jacuzzi, but everything goes according to plan here - Linda walking slowly, the rapist tailing behind just waiting for his moment to pounce, and her partner, maybe 15 feet back, rigidly running around like a wet cat just got out of the bathtub with his badge dangling from his neck. Hidden in plain sight indeed. He’s keeping an eye on his partner until he takes his eyes off of her for a split second to catcall a passerby, letting us know that, not only is he a piece of shit partner, he’s just a piece of shit in general. In the moment he checks out someone’s ass, both Linda and rapist are gone. Now in real life, they couldn’t have gone far, but as far as this partner is concerned, they walked into an alternate fucking dimension because they’re gone. Now, had this been real life, the smart thing to do if you’re Rothrock is to pause in the middle of the crowded sidewalk or walk into one of the many stores she passes by. This was the 90’s, after all, a time when people might help a woman being assaulted, a time before everyone would just pull out their phone to record it. Of course she does the dumbest thing she could do, which is walk down a vacant alleyway, only to smack the guy up once he makes a move, dropping him just in time for Linda’s Partner to come in and cuff the limp noodle.
She coerces her way into investigating the murder of martial arts masters along with Tarek, a displaced police officer involved in another police work fuck up that left a bunch of bad guys dead and some other cops whining. Turns out Tarek is involved in the martial arts world, and when one of his friends ends up dead, he gets so mad he destroys a sign at a park with his bare hands. I’d say that’s pretty mad. He gets in undercover at a Tiger Style Kung-Fu school and from there, it’s only a matter of time before the bad guy is revealed. In fact, he’s revealed pretty early on, and Bolo Yeung was buff as hell, an absolute Chinese unit who can crush apples with his bare hands and vanish when it’s convenient for the plot. The only other real recurring characters are two bumbling idiot cops who literally just get in the way and fuck things up whenever they’re around.
Released now, I feel like this would get a PG-13 rating. There’s no nudity, no over-the-top violence, and there wasn’t that much swearing. The fight scenes were really quite tame and bloodless, which I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed in. Each encounter is filled to the gills with cutaways and alternate takes, so it was hard to appreciate the skill of a martial arts master like Cynthia Rothrock. Her skills have been better showcased in so many other films, and she’s honestly not even the main focal point here. Even the final fight between Tarek and the big slab of broccoli beefcake Bolo is disappointing, as both men face off in a room full of the scariest movie prop known to man - empty cardboard boxes. The sound effects sure play things up though, with Shaw Brothers-like sounds whooshing and zipping all over the place as our heroes move around with the urgency of Jim Halpert trying to save Michael Scott from falling into the koi pond.
The End.
Tiger Claws is alright. It falls into the unfortunate category of definitely not being a good movie, but not being bad enough or goofy enough to love in that regard. As I mentioned, there are better showcases for Rothrock and it’s hard to feel like you’re on the case with anyone in this film because everyone is so bad at the basics of police work, which is a shame because that’s what most of the film is. Find a dude with his face scratched, go somewhere to investigate, fight someone, rinse, repeat.
I look at films like this and wonder if I could rewrite them for a modern audience, but even the set up is clunky and isn’t all that interesting. For Tiger Claws to be more interesting, you’d need Bolo to seem more formidable. Less crushing apples, more crushing skulls. Show us how dangerous the character was, because he was built like a brick shithouse and he could have felt like so much more of a threat. Hardly the man who could be topped by a few empty Tide boxes.
