Just the Ticket #172: Martial Law
a.k.a. the Black Belt Ticketmaster
and Zero-Degree White Belt Martial Artist.
Yeah; the only thing I've retained from my Elementary school karate classes is using stances to lift and push heavy things. It's embarrassing how much I'm incapable of physically defending myself. Or maybe not? There has been a lot of "karate is fake" discourse going on in the past few years.
Nowadays, the only discourse I care about (besides acknowledging that the existentially and actually terrifying circus triumvirate in charge of the United States will destroy the country, and a foreign-led cabinet named after a meme cryptocurrency 
is dismantling our infrastructure while the President we somehow asked for sits in his own diaper-chocolate and tries to convince a room full of scared, stupid people that ruining the world's greatest and most sociopolitically unique country with overtly prejudicial policies is better for the U.S. than giving refugees asylum in a time of war and social unease) is the kind that should happen when you remember to please Become A Ticketholder if you haven't yet, leave a comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford to leave the country if Trump declares martial law, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my ass-kicking content.
Back in the 80s and 90s (and even further back in other countries), it seemed like there was a karate dojo in every Starbucks, ninjas and teenagers with attitude were all the rage, and every action hero who wasn't a cop or a pile of muscles and machine guns had to be a martial artist, even if they were white. That's how we got Chuck Norris, Patrick Swayze, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and yes, even Steven Segal before he became a joke. It's how Walker, Texas Ranger lasted eight years, got a spin-off, and landed a reboot a few years back with a spin-off of its own. It's fueled popular franchises like Taken and John Wick. It's why the Chinese Triad was a big part of Nash Bridges' overarching plot, and why Sammo Hung got his own, "karate cop in America" series in 1998 called Martial Law.
Seven years before that, though, there was a completely unconnected movie with the same title that released amid the turn of the century karate boom.
Martial Law the movie (which joined the force in 1991) is something I chose to look into after seeing it so frequently connected to other movies I reviewed in 2024. And there are three of them, plus a similarly titled action movie with the star of the sequel, so welcome to March-al Law Month!
The literal hand behind the high-profile murders is the ruthlessly greedy Dalton Rhoades (Carradine), a smuggler of illegal weapons and stolen cars with a killer touch straight out of a Batman: The Animated Series episode, a gang of heavily armed but disposable karate youths straight out of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and three imposing goons (played by Longo, Bloodsport II and Surf Ninjas actor Phillip Tan, and professional wrestler and 3 Ninjas villain "Professor" Toru Tanaka) in his employ.
For me, the character who stole the film was charismatic snitch Faster Brown (Vincent Craig Dupree, probably best known as the boxer who gets Mortal Kombat'd in Jason Takes Manhattan). While Carradine is doing his chilling villain thing, and nearly everyone else is phoning in made-for-TV line deliveries in their sleep, Dupree gives Faster a gleeful, eager, slimy energy that makes him a believable threat to the ignorant status quo of the cops and criminals not realizing that Michael is the real tragic figure of interest in this movie.
But as good as it could have been as just a "young guy goes undercover in a criminal empire with tragic results" movie, Martial Law is an action movie at its fringes, so I guess I have to talk about the action now.
The few car chases here are of that low-budget, late 80s/early 90s quality without high-flying stunts, where the music and editing do all the work and it turns into a foot chase because those are cheaper to film and more suspenseful to watch anyway.
The movie does a barely decent job of getting Sean "Martial Law" Thompson over as this action hero who moved to Hong Kong after his dad died and grew up into a badass with all kinds of multicultural knowledge from a harsh life in the streets. But there are also times when it feels like the choreography slows down or gets sloppy (the Foley artists also go nuts here to give all of the whiffed and pulled strikes a sense of chopsocky speed and impact, when I think the high-energy ragtime accompaniment of a silent era comedy would have felt more appropriate), like the more competent cast members (specifically Tan and Rothrock, who steal the finale) are under-fighting to make McQueen look good. Even the two scenes where Michael and Faster come to blows look...faster and more skillful than the majority of fights where the title character is involved.
While Tan and Rothrock are trading lightning-fast kicks and punches with actual skill, the fight between (again, I stress this) main, titular character Sean "Martial Law" Thompson and the deadly crime boss who killed his brother with the one move he knows that only seems to work on white guys and the few Asians who are too old or huge to avoid it, devolves into an overhyped hero cop and an old man with a crowbar throwing hooks at each other in a destructible woodshop set because although Carradine was the star of Kung-Fu, the actors behind the supposed thematically most important characters in this movie can barely fight.
Rothrock would return in the sequel, but McQueen (probably because of his lackluster martial arts skill and his entire emotional range consisting of nonchalance, constipated anger, and nepo-brooding) would be recast.
Between the uncredible lead, the flat romantic chemistry, the mostly underwhelming fights and performances, and the plot that gets disjointed by out-of-character ignorance and the limited technology of the era (seriously, a modern reboot of this would open with Dalton killing Michael for being a cop's brother because the internet and smartphones exist, Sean knowing everything about Dalton because ditto, and also screaming and ugly-crying because good actor this time, and the plot being a John Wick-alike where Sean fights his way to Dalton and they fight to the death in the rain with the FBI watching or something; yes, that's just the end of Lethal Weapon, and I don't care), I forgot my point, but Martial Law is cobbled-together stupidity that sounds like it was written by AI and feels almost as soulless, but has the bare minimum of bright spots to satisfy those who just learned it exists.
D+
Next week, a new Sean Thompson and another Children Of the Corn alum (one of my favorite character villain actors of all time) join Cynthia Rothrock for an Undercover sequel, so Stay Tuned and remember to please Become A Ticketholder if you haven't yet, leave a comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford to leave the country if Trump declares martial law, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my ass-kicking content.
Ticketmaster,
Out.
Law.
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