Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23972 in VHS
• Released on: 1994-08-03
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Customer Reviews

One Cop. One Vigilante. Alone, they're unstoppable. Together, they're invincible!
At first, I actually had no idea that Billy Blanks was an actor, but after seeing the poster for this film, my interest had been captured. I was treated to a really amazing beat 'em up fest. Billy Blanks and Roddy Piper sure know how to kick some butt.

The movie centers around veteran police office Frank Rossi, played by Piper, who after his partner Wallace is brutally gutted by a ruthless drug gang, becomes bent on avenging his partner's death. Meanwhile, Billy (Played by Billy Blanks), an ex-Special Forces agent, is trying to protect his sister from the same gang, lead by Kasajian, played brilliantly by Nigel Bennett. Rossi and Billy eventually team up after a number of confrontations when Billy's sister and Rossi's reporter girlfriend Helen (Played by Bobbie Phillips) are kidnapped by Kasajian's gang.

This movie really knows how to deliver. It's sad that there is really not that large of a following, but we can always hope that it will gain more cult recognition in the future. I hope Universal considers releasing a DVD of this movie someday, in widescreen.

Highly recommended.

EXTRAS: The tape contains a trailer for Mr. Write before the movie starts.

Action Indeed! Good stuff!
When Lethal Weapon was released in 1987, it spawned a slew of buddy-themed action inspirees and/or plain knock-offs; I'm happy to say that "Back in Action" - the first of two team-ups between champion martial artist Billy Blanks ("King of the Kickboxers") and former WWF champ Roddy Piper (They Live)- is more of an inspired work than it is a copycat. Alas, it's still but a B-grade movie that can only dream of living up to the likes of the Gibson/Glover treasure...but for what your money's worth, it's one of the better karate B-movies of its era floating around Amazon nowadays, so if you're a fan of either Blanks or the genre as a while, it might very well be worth a purchase.

The story: Billy (Blanks) is a former Green Beret whose sister Tara (Kai Soremekun, Love, Sex & Eating the Bones) has fallen in with a minion of the vicious mobster Kasajian (Nigel Bennett, Cypher); Frank Rossi (Piper) is a vice cop whose partner was slaughtered by one of Kasajian's men during a bust gone bad. With different methods but similar agendas, they eventually form a shaky partnership to put a stop to the gangster's reign of terror and redeem their losses.

In comparison to their following vehicle, Tough and Deadly, this film is inferior for that there is less action and the two leads do not get as much interaction. With that being said, however, don't think that you're walking into a snoozefest: there are eight separate hand-to-hand encounters (six for Blanks, one for Piper, and one shared by both), a car chase, and two shootouts. While the car chase is icky and the gunfights are unremarkable, the hand-to-hand fights range anywhere between pretty good and decent; and from one-on-one to four-on-one matches. Needless to say, Blanks steals the show with his amazing kicks - highlighted by when he strikes two attackers simultaneously in mid-air - but Piper's pro wrestling background is given a nod via a vicious bulldog and dropkick. The choreography is good for the most part, save for the very boring couple of times where Billy clashes with a giant bad guy (Gary Robbins, Wrong Turn), so if you can live with approximately two minutes of crap, you'll be up for about fifteen minutes of good stuff.

The acting is give-and-take as action movies go: Blanks, Bennett, and top henchmen/stuntman Matt Birman are noticeably weak, while Piper, Soremekun, Damon D'Oliveira as Tara's boyfriend, and Bobbie Philips ("Murder One") as Frank's old flame/sassy news reporter perform respectively. Then again, Blanks takes his shirt off quite often, so I suppose we can let his chiseled physique speak for itself; there's definitely a spark of chemistry between him and Piper, but it would have to wait until their next movie together to be fully kindled...though this is solely on account of them having perhaps only five scenes together.

A film like this gives rise to the questions of why Billy Blanks didn't become at least as big of a star as Van Damme or Steven Seagal and how in the world Roddy Piper went from award-nominated John Carpenter films to DTV slugfests. Luckily, the film doesn't bother itself with asking questions: it's a flat-out guilty pleasure with serious intelligence issues, and deserves an audience looking for just that.

Time to pay the Piper!
Back in Action (1994) Roddy Piper (They Live) and Billy Blanks (Showdown) star in this "Kops and Kickboxers" movie. Piper's the policeman whose partner is killed, and Blanks has the dangerous feet and the kidnapped sister, so pretty soon the blitz is on and the bad guys don't stand a chance. I'm really not a fan of the glut of kickboxing movies from this period, but I saw this because I like Piper. He's funny playing the stock loner cop character. On the flip side, though, we have the aptly named Blanks. Although he seem competent when he's applying his feet liberally to some guy's head, but he's not much of an actor. He's also extremely goofy looking. (And I hope he never reads this!) He should probably stick to his Tae Bo tapes. If you like the kind of movie where people throw down their guns so they can kick each other, you'd probably enjoy this. Otherwise, steer clear! Also with Nigel Bennett (Darkman III).