SUMMER OF ACTION! -- If I Press Any Harder It's Gonna Break

Earlier in this SUMMER OF ACTION! I reviewed Walter Hill's underrated 2002 prison boxing thriller UNDISPUTED (Buy at Amazon) starring Wesley Snipes as an inmate pugilist and Ving Rhames as a thinly-veiled version of Mike Tyson.

Found guilty of rape, "Iceman" Chambers (Rhames) lands behind bars and must fight against the highly-touted longtime prison champ Monroe Hutchen (Snipes). As much as I liked the flick – which sports a great supporting cast including the late Peter Falk and Michael Rooker – my biggest complaint was that while Snipes is in marvelous shape and looks like he could punch through a prison wall, Rhames comes off a bit too big and lumbering, not like a world class athlete who dominated his sport on the outside. Say what you want about Tyson, but in his prime letting him loose in the ring was like unleashing a caged tiger.

The Iceman's casting is corrected in the highly entertaining – and quite unexpected – UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING thanks to a slightly ironic twist. Michael Jai White who played "Iceman" inspiration Mike Tyson in the made-for-tv movie TYSON steps into Rhames' shoes as the down-on-his-luck former champ struggling without a title after serving his time. A trip to Russia to film a vodka commercial lands Chambers in the middle of a frame job and faster than you can say "da svidaniya" the champ is in a craptacularly grey Russian hellhole complete with – you guessed it – a savage champ named Boyka (Scott Adkins).

But while Hutchen was a pure boxer willing to strap on the gloves and duke it out in the squared circle, Boyka is a lethal mixed martial artist, a blur of feet, knees, elbows and hands who dishes out spectacular punishment against the cons that the warden (and mobster who really runs the prison) keeps feeding him.

If you've seen any prison flicks the story progresses about how you'd expect – Chambers runs afoul of Boyka, a fight between the two becomes inevitable, prison shenanigans put the result of the fight in doubt, the aging con who emerges from hiding to train the champ, etc.

But heralded action director Isaac Florentine earns his stripes by grafting the typical "new prisoner meets prison kingpin" storyline onto a gritty, fun low-budget actioner complete with double-crosses, septic tank fights and an underground gambling storyline that reminded me a little of the excellent Thai fight-fest BANGKOK KNOCKOUT.

But the flick really belongs to the charismatic White and the spectacular Adkins. White brings a sneering "how'd I get involved in this shit?!" presence to Chambers not to mention the size AND speed to believably step in the ring with Adkins, whose turn as Boyka in this flick and the third installment has made him an action fanboy fave.

And for good reason.

UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING (Buy at Amazon) is that rare instance – sorta like the TURBULENCE flicks I love so much – where the direct-to-video sequel is more entertaining than the bigger-budgeted, theatrically-released original. And, if the buzz is to be believed, UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION (Buy at Amazon) is even more entertaining than the second installment! We'll see in the days of summer ahead...

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- Flea Market Score!

Just back from the local 4H Hoedown and Flea Market where my gut told me I'd find some good men's adventure fare to chow down on this summer.

By the end of our loop my bag of goodies was as bizarre as my Netflix queue, with a half-dozen Disney and Barbie VHS tapes rubbing up against a crew of one-eyed mercs, half-man half-robot cops and various other men of action.

Here's what I scored along the way...

• Destroyer#84: Ground Zero -- Can Remo and Chiun stop the Crash of the 90s from ending with a big bang?
• They Call Me The Mercenary #15: The Afghanistan Penetration -- A simple rescue is turning into much more than one-eyed merc captain Hank Frost bargained for – and maybe more than he can handle! (Written by Axel Kilgore... I'm thinking that's a pen name.)
• Steele #5: Renegade Steele -- He's the perfect combination of man and machine. Armed with the firepower of a high-tech army.
• The Guardians #13: Devil's Deal -- World War III is over... and the ultimate battle for control has begun
• The Guardians #14: Death from Above -- America's last line of defense against world domination by the Federated States of Europe.
• Stony Man #16: Deep Alert -- Nuclear terror strikes from the sea.
• Able Team #19: Ironman -- Carl Lyons explodes into action in a Central American showdown. (Includes a chance for me to Gear-Up for Adventure and win a 1986 Jeep CJ)
• Nick Carter #185: The Algarve Affair -- Agent N3 takes on a dope ring... a Soviet dope ring!
  

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- A Savage Beauty Holds the Key to World Survival

Sometimes the Trap Catches the Trapper

SERIES: Nick Carter, Killmaster
VOLUME/TITLE: #31/Macao
AUTHOR: Manning Lee Stokes
PUBLISHER: Award Books
YEAR: 1968
OPENING LINES: London sweltered. It was the last week of July and for days now the thermometer had been bushing near to eighty. In Britain that is hot and it was only natural that the consumption of beer, mild and bitter, and nut brown ale should increase in direct ration to the degree Fahrenheit.
CLOSING LINES: He went back to the booth where Miss Benita Dawson, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, was waiting for him.

Nick Carter, Killmaster, was not the first American attempt to emulate the trademark spy adventures of Ian Fleming's creation James Bond 007, but if NICK CARTER, KILLMASTER #31: Macao is any indication, it may be one of the best. At least in terms of hitting all the right notes.

Carter – Agent N3 of AXE, a super secret and lethal spy agency of the United States – is a suave ladies man who is vacationing in London when he comes to the "rescue" of the out-of-control Princess de Gama, a Portugese beauty with a dark secret in her past that she medicates with drugs, booze and the attention of the opposite sex. Or, as AXE chief David Hawk puts it, "she is an international tramp with an appetite for booze and drugs and not much else". Meow!

Pretty soon Carter's act of chivalry finds him mixed up in a pornographic blackmail plot turned into a grisly murder scene, complete with a mutilated corpse whose mouth is stuffed with its own genitals. Seizing the opportunity to put the pretty princess to work for Uncle Sam, Hawk sends Carter and her to Macao on a mission to trap Colonel Chun Li, head of Chinese Counter-Intelligence.

Did I mention that Chun Li has set out a trap to capture Carter in order to put his own nefarious scheme into motion?

By the time Macao came out in 1968 the series most definitely out-Bonded James Bond to paraphrase a popular Killmaster series cover blurb of the day. Fleming was dead and any original Bond books from his pen were kaput. The film series had slowly but surely detoured away from the more espionage-oriented books into the somewhat cartoonish villainy of films like THUNDERBALL and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Fans of Fleming's original novels could take solace in the world of the Killmaster complete with its super secret government agency and a gruff but fatherly boss who looked upon his deadliest agent as more than just a government assassin. (Other books in the series would further complete the bizarro Bond comparison thanks to a flirty secretary for Hawk and a Q-ish tech expert named Poindexter of all things.)

If you've read even one of Fleming's 007 novels you'll probably find yourself enjoying Macao much like I did – as a cut-rate Bond effort, right down to the hilarious description of a disguised Carter (whose cover image looks like a young Robert Wagner as pointed out by card-carrying Man of Action John Grace) pretending to be a nose-picking, cross-eyed coolie who shouts "No sabby. Want Hong Kong dolla now!" at a clerk he's just about to karate chop into submission. (I couldn't help but recall a giant, paunchy Sean Connery trying to pass for a Japanese fisherman in the unintentionally hilarious YOLT.)

The storyline globe hops in typical Bond fashion, our hero and heroine find themselves chained naked in a basement dungeon awaiting a fate worse than death, the villain gladly shares his evil scheme with a chained Carter, and there's a shifty ally who were never quite sure we can trust.

Unlike SWAG and THE CHAMELEON, the KILLMASTER series would prove to be one of the most durable and long-running of the men's action series. Dragon Slay, the 261st (!) Nick Carter adventure was published in 1990. We'll be back with more Nick Carter coverage as the Summer of ACTION! continues.

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- I Am A Tourist

Where Survival is the Game, Swag Makes the Rules.

SERIES: Swag
VOLUME/TITLE: #1/Swag Town
AUTHOR: L.S. Riker
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Paperbacks
YEAR: 1992
OPENING LINES: This is the way it happened. Eight hundred banks failed that year. The Japanese traded in their T-bills for francs and headed for Europe's Common Market. A loaf of white bread cost three dollars, and unemployment was over eighteen percent. A Republican was in the White House. Then came the war...
CLOSING LINES: "Huh," came the reply. "I thought you was a tourist. Must have been the shirt."

Of the half-dozen or more men's adventure novels, comics and eBooks I've read so far, SWAG #1: Swag Town definitely has the most intriguing concept. The United States has fallen victim to economic terrorism through a small-scale war conducted with assassins' bullets and a flood of foreign currency. By the time the "war" is over, the haves had fled to Europe and the shelter of their foreign bank accounts. The have nots have been left behind, old scores are being settled and payback – as you may have heard – is a bitch.

While the rest of America struggles under the belief that things will somehow be as they once were, New York City has become a playground for loads of skeevy Eurotrash and foreign jet-setters, a bustling center of commerce where anything – and everyone, it seems – is for sale.

Into the midst of this post-financial-apocalypse comes Swag, a former NYC detective who was shoved off the force in the aftermath of a bungled high-profile case. Swag – whose nickname is a mean-spirited joke and whose real name we never discover – is now forced to play bodyguard for the rich jet-setters who come in to the city and use their foreign cash to go on extended shopping sprees. But when one of Swag's clients gets blown away in a brazen, broad daylight hit the ex-cop wants answers... like who would want the pretty blonde dead so bad and what kind of hired trigger has Kevlar implanted under his skin?

Author LS Riker keeps the story moving as Swag drifts through the NYC underground – and briefly into Jersey – encountering low-lifes, mobsters, gun experts, hustlers, government men, ambitious bodyguards and a bevy of almost-indestructable killers who insist they are simply tourists. Even when they're trying to blow our hero's head off.

Swag Town seems more ambitious that your typical action novel of the era. Riker's NYC is familiar enough that you recognize it but just scary enough that you'd never, ever want to go there. Jam-packed with colorful characters and inter-weaving, overlapping plotlines, it requires a bit more attention on the reader's part than, say, the blast 'em all heroics of Mack Bolan – more than once I found myself doubling back to make sure I was making the right connections. Better than that, it never quite went where my expectations were leading me, which kept the novel full of surprises from the financial war start to the action-packed finale.

Swag also stands out as a character, because unlike Bolan, Remo Williams, Nick Carter or other heroes of these pulp adventures he has no special training aside from his time as a cop and he is most decidedly human and vulnerable. On more than one occasion our hero finds himself in an impossible scrape, only to have his ass pulled from the fire by a character who may be a friend, a foe or even a little bit of both.

Unfortunately, the Swag series only lasted for two more books: a Most Dangerous Game riff called Full Clip (1992) and the "more powerful than crack"-fueled revenge tale Kill Crazy (1993). Frankly, I think Danny McBride should get himself in shape and option the Swag novels for his own action franchise. For some reason I kept picturing a blend of Kenny Powers and a MARKED FOR DEATH-era Steven Seagal as the Hawaiian-shirt sporting, pistol packing bodyguard hero of the novel.