Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #152664 in DVD
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Running time: 92 minutes

Customer Reviews

Always Enjoyable, Rowdy Roddy Piper
What is this movie about? Here's a quick synopsis. Billy Blanks plays an undercover CIA agent, who after being badly beaten, is left unconscious. When he awakens, he finds that he is suffering from amnesia. Being hunted by hitmen who wish to finish the job, he seeks refuge with a good samaritan private investigator who likes to hit people, played by Rowdy Roddy Piper. The movie itself is very enjoyable. Piper's charisma really saves the picture which in itself is really just a rehash of recycled plot points from other action movies. He goes through the movie with a tounge-in-cheek attitude that keeps the movie fun. I also find it funny that somehow the creators of this film managed to turn every single scene into a fight scene. Even when Piper and Blanks are just sitting around the office, they find a reason to argue and then attack each other. The first ten minutes of the movie are horrible, so watch out. But after that you'll have a lot of fun with this movie. Check it out.

Good "Lethal Weapon" clone.
A good buddy cop action film with a decent plot. Billy Blanks and Roddy Piper both may not be great actors, but their talent in the action movie genre should put them more often on the big screen.

Not Smart nor Dramatic, but certainly "Tough and Deadly"
As far as B-movie martial arts/action/buddy flicks go, the second team-up between former WWF champion Roddy Piper ("They Live") and seven-time world martial arts champion Billy Blanks ("The King of the Kickboxers") is a thoroughly enjoyable time-killer. Swift-paced, ripe with hand-to-hand fights, and never taking itself too seriously, the film is a great example of how to achieve a fun time with only minimum resources and two talented, underrated stars; fans of "The Perfect Weapon", "Showdown in Little Tokyo", "Tiger Claws", and the like will certainly find some level of enjoyment in this oft-forgotten little gem.

The story: John Portland (Blanks) is a CIA agent whose last mission ended up in catastrophe due to internal corruption. Wounded and stricken with amnesia, he enlists the help of private investigator Elmo Freech (Piper) in order to reclaim his past and eventually expose a dubious case of drug-trafficking involving officials deep within our nation's security organizations and government.

Yes, the story is one for the dogs, but it generally plays in the background while Blanks and Piper bounce off of eachother in front of the camera. While I wouldn't list them among the great acting duos of cinema, the unlikely pair has definite chemistry that was evident in their previous venture ("Back in Action") and even more so here; their charisma doesn't depend on situation and seems more sincere than any of the acting. I'd be very surprised to find out that they aren't friends behind the scenes.
Beyond this, however, there is not an abundance of great acting to be seen: the two stars carry most of the scenes on their own and their charm carries them, whereas seeing Charles Kahlenberg and James Karen ("The Return of the Living Dead") as good/bad FBI agents, Lisa Stahl as Piper's quasi-girlfriend, and Phil Morris ("Mission: Impossible" series) as an all-around bad guy isn't always very pleasant. Passable, perhaps, but not great.

Luckily, we have a boatload of good action scenes to fall back on: there's only one short gunfight, but about ten assorted brawls split between the martial artist and the pro wrestler (not including a rather embarrassing one between the two). Piper manages to keep his fisticuffs entertaining, but as expected, Blanks' encounters are the more impressive ones: he doesn't have any particularly outstanding opponents, so as with Piper, most of his fights are beat-`em-up affairs, albeit spiced up with some very impressive jump-kicking and nifty leg takedowns. There's also a nifty instance where he springs up from a crouched position to deliver a one-two kick to a fellow in a chair, before which he kicks a man out of the front window of a moving car. The choreography is good, providing ebb and flow to the fights, and most of the encounters are shot without visual compromises or extensive post-production editing - it's all about what was gotten on the set, and it is good.

The limitations imposed by a DTV budget are covered up pretty well by director Steve Cohen ("Martial Law"), so aside from some of the questionable dramatic performances, the only thing that works against the movie is its own god-given stupidity, but since you already knew you weren't readying yourself for anything intellectual when you bought this film, it oughtn't bother action fans. I can't speak for Roddy Piper's film career, but "Tough and Deadly" is among Billy Blanks' best film outings, alongside "The King of the Kickboxers" and "Showdown"; fans of his definitely ought to own it, while action devotees in general shouldn't be disappointed buying it blind.