You know something is rotten in Korea Town when a stellar actress like Mariska Hargitay (in her pre-"Law and Order" days to be fair) has no dialogue whatsoever yet showed presence, spunk and spoke dialogue in a "Freddy's Nightmares" TV episode three years earlier. That is what went through my mind while watching the completely indistinct "The Perfect Weapon" with the shallow model of a man with a touch of stubble, Jeff Speakman.
Another thought occurred to me - casting Mako and James Hong are good choices for any martial-arts film yet they are saddled with dialogue you have heard ten million times before. They could have cast anyone else to spout such unmemorable dialogue. The film starts off with a decent vibe showing Speakman's Kenpo style, karate that combines Chinese and Japanese traditions, but why do the editors have to cut from so many different angles when all he is doing is practicing in his living room? Why is Speakman, playing a character named Jeff, shown fighting his opponents with the same spinning back kick to someone's head repeated twice so that we get the point? He also has that Steven Seagal attitude where he tells three karate fighters in a gym, "I am going...to kick your ass."
The fight scenes overall are well-choreographed but the writing is maybe 6th grade-level at best. There is also a...car chase! There is a nifty homage to Harold Sakata's Oddjob from "Goldfinger" when Toru Tanaka faces a similar death scene by way of an exploding gas tank rather than electrocution. Other than that, "The Perfect Weapon" is bargain basement karate nonsense at best where learning a little about Kenpo style karate would've been its most original element. You don't even learn half of it.
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