Just the Ticket #175: Martial Outlaw

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Non-Martial,

Non-Outlaw,

Ticketmaster.

Welcome to the final week of March-al Law Month, Ticketholders!

Despite the few Italian cover images I found online billing it as Codice Marziale 4, 1993's Martial Outlaw is not a true Martial Law sequel in the majority of the world, and is instead a case of Italian cinema using star recognition and the barest threads of plot similarity (Jeff Wincott playing a martial artist with a badge who seeks justice when another character dies) to get a high return on low investment; something I touched on in my Last Man Standing and Mission Of Justice reviews as a common practice of the time (and earlier), particularly in European markets like Italy, home of the "Spaghetti Western" and countless ripoffs of such 70s and 80s classics as Conan, Mad Max, and Escape From New York (including a few that ripped off all three at once; thanks to Josh Spiegel of Movie Timelines for his videos on the subject), because of incredibly lax foreign copyright policies at the time.

It also doesn't hurt the exploitative marketing push that Martial Outlaw was co-written by John Bryant, Pierre David, and George Saunders (the same team behind the Mission Of Justice script) and directed by Kurt Anderson (who directed Martial Law II: Undercover, and produced the original film).

Thankfully, though, Martial Outlaw is an entirely different beast than the movies of years prior. Here, Wincott plays DEA Agent Kevin White, who follows Russian crime lord Nikolai Radchenko (because in a post-Cold War world, it was almost always the Russians, everything was "rad" in the 90s, and he's played by Vladimir Skomarovsky, of 2010: The Year We Made Contact) to Los Angeles, following the intel of a confidential informant who is way too bad at his job to have ever lived past his first birthday ("that guy" Ari Barak, Wishmaster). Once there, he reunites and clashes with his older brother, Jack (Scanner Cop's Gary Hudson), a dirty LAPD cop with comparable fighting skill to Kevin (which, I guess, makes him the titular Martial Outlaw?).

Even in this fairly standard, "cops vs. Russian gangsters" movie, all three major players bring personality to their respective roles. Skomarovsky may not have the skill or be in the prime of his years to have a physical showdown with the hero (that's what Gary Hudson's character is for, as is Bloodsport 4's Stefanos Miltsakakis as requisite big henchman Sergei), but he does the businesslike villain persona well enough, landing somewhere between Brigitte Nielsen and David Carradine's characters from previous films. Hudson chews the scenery non-stop, turning Jack White (not to be confused with the same named prolific musician from Detroit) into a dark mirror antagonist who blends jealous chauvinism and morally grey brotherly rivalry with the ambitious energy of Faster Brown and the double-crossing greed of Carradine's Dalton Rhoades. He wants what's his and whatever else he wants that isn't his, even if it means putting Kevin's life in danger (or attempting to end it himself), but would still take a bullet or two for his family.

It's nice to see Wincott in a more clearly heroic role here (no lynching of a random goon in this movie, thank you!), getting to express a full range of emotions regarding his character's family (including his sister-in-law Lori, played by Jekyll and Hyde...Together Again star Krista Errickson, and father, played by the late, prolific Richard Jaeckel in his final role, credited as Mr. White).

There's some hinky, "conveniently swooping in on my brother's widow" stuff at the end that gets foreshadowed throughout the movie, and his "damnit! I promised this random scumbag a better life, and now he's dead!" reaction to the informant's murder feels overplayed (especially in comparison to how the trope was handled in Mission Of Justice), but Kevin White is otherwise a good culmination of Wincott's previous performances, showing that, when not required to kick, punch, and bludgeon street thugs and fellow martial artists in every movie, he can handle dramatic acting just as easily.

That said, the fights here are generally more polished, with crisper, better timed foley sounds, and more competent, kind of slapsticky choreography (though there are a few "Jeff Wincott must do this in every movie" techniques, like rapidly double-sticking someone in the abdomen or punching and elbowing someone with the same hook punch, and the use of fake blood is laughably inconsistent relative to the damage dealt or received with each hit).

There's a fight in a restaurant that features some cool weapons combat but gets sillier with repeat viewings,

and a solid attempt at addressing the "goons always attack the hero one at a time" trope with the Russian Circle fight, which was the highlight for me despite it looking like the director shot Carrie's prom with a Chinese flag draped over the lens most of the time.

As you can tell from the above video, Miltsakakis' attempt at a Russian accent is more like a remix of Greek, Belgian, French, Scottish, and Tom Hanks doing Colonel Gepetto Parker with a mouthful of popcorn and chewing gum. For his character's status in the movie, he goes down like a chump in a relatively uninteresting fight (the theatre fight is much more creative) to make room for a more thematically impactful (but still anticlimactic as final fights go), brotherly brawl that gets interrupted when the irredeemable Jack (who has robbed a jewelry store, killed several criminals and one confidential informant, beaten and choked his wife, publicly abused an actress he hired to scam his co-workers, driven his infirm father to alcoholism, aided a foreign criminal organization by spreading disinformation, and betrayed his Russian allies out of greed and some grandiose, twisted Robin Hood complex in the course of a ninety minute movie...which apparently counts as an acceptable resumé for the American Presidency in 2025) suddenly takes a bullet to save his brother from a sneak attack by Radchenko.

For a direct-to-video nonquel with some of the most silly-impressive, low-budget middle fingers to the laws of physics I've seen in live action lately, Martial Outlaw's creative team knows how to write a shitty character with depth and complexity, and use the cast around them to effectively illustrate why that character works and matters, even with the stupid, "let's forget all of his domestic and federal crimes because he's dead now and he did one good thing ever" resolution (which, having a group of people who are willing to forget that you're a greedy, abusive federal criminal is also acceptable as a list of references for the American Presidency in 2025). I think I still like Mission Of Justice better as a movie overall, but the fights and Jack as a campy yet deep villain are worth sitting through Russian Mob Movie 300: Black Belt Edition.

B-

Next month will be a time of relative rest for me as I back away from movie reviews to focus on AniMonday and Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective/Zenescope - Omnibusted content. I will return to Friday movie reviews (Just the Ticket) in May.

Until then, and as always, Stay Tuned and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't yet, leave comments at the bottom of my Blogger posts, 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, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my ass-kicking content.

Ticketmaster,

Out.

Law.