No Surrender Cinema: Lady Scorpions

First she was Lady Dragon, now she’s Lady Scorpion! The legendary Cynthia Rothrock is back in the spotlight in an all-new film from Tiger Style Media! Are you ready to find out what happens when the son of a criminal decides to take the granddaughter of an ass-kicking federal agent hostage? Hint: It’s all about the ass-kicking agent and her equally capable daughter bonding while beating up the bad guys. Sound good? Because I just watched Lady Scorpionsand I’m ready to share my thoughts on this in a new No Surrender Cinema!

(SPOILER ALERT: Loyal readers know the rules, but for you newbies, here they are. I try to keep spoilers about newer films like this one to a minimum, but something you’d rather be surprised about may end up in this column. If you’re the type who doesn’t like spoilers, feel free to come back to BulletproofAction.com and this column in particular after you’ve seen the film yourself!)

Alena Moore (Rothrock) is a cop with a grudge against a crime boss named Lucien (Jeff Fahey, who looks like a sinister version of Colonel Sanders). It’s a feud that has apparently taken a toll on her relationship with her daughter Lacy (Caitlin Dechelle, who has a pretty impressive resume when it comes to stunt work, having worked as Gal Gadot’s doppelganger in Wonder Womanon numerous Marvel projects, and coincidentally enough Ninja Apocalypsewhich I recently reviewed). We’re first introduced to Lacy as she’s fighting off some would-be carjackers, which is basically a training scenario. This establishes that Lacy is a tough cookie, but she’s also a mom and has a daughter named Ariel at home who’s celebrating her birthday the next day. Then we learn that calls to Grandma Alena usually go straight to voicemail, and Lacy tries to lower the bar for Ariel’s hopes that Alena will be there for her birthday.

As if having an estranged grandmother wasn’t bad enough, things are about to get a whole lot worse for that young lady. As if the Moore family drama wasn’t enough, we also have some bad guy stuff to deal with. From the looks of it, Lucien’s son Sonny isn’t too happy with the way his dear old dad is handling things (or in the case of the first meeting we see between Lucien and Alena, the way he’s not handling things). Knowing that Lucien has a lot at stake with a big deal about to happen, Sonny takes it upon himself to take Alena out of the equation by threatening Lacy and Ariel. Lacy fights back, resulting in Sonny getting beat up while wearing a nice blue and yellow Adidas tracksuit that I would totally buy, but with the help of a couple of gangsters, Lacy is knocked out and Ariel is whisked away to one of the (apparently) many industrial buildings that Lucien and his gang are using as hideouts. Ariel’s kidnapping has the exact opposite effect of what Sonny had hoped for, as Alena wants to wipe him out completely, and her daughter is there to take revenge and get Ariel home safely.

If you think to yourself that Lady Scorpions sounds like 100 other movies, you’re right, and that’s the path it takes from the opening minutes until the credits roll. The problem I had with it isn’t that it’s formulaic; that is, it has been and always will be one of the main reasons action movies are so easy to make. My complaints stem from the fact that it has so many tropes and so many nods to other things that it suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. Alena and Lacy’s quest to save Ariel feels like a buddy cop comedy at times, with Lacy in particular making deer-in-the-headlights, fish-out-of-water faces even though we know she’s more than capable of handling herself in a fight. Jeff Fahey’s long, drawn-out monologues had me writing “Monologue Mafia” in my notes, and it felt like the kind of conversation Quentin Tarantino would have one of the criminals in his film have. Speaking of Tarantino, there’s a pretty blatant copy of the slow-mo walk from Reservoir dogs also. I chalked it all up to inspiration, or maybe as a way to get Quentin’s attention, since he’s a known proponent of old school action films and B-movies… and it turns out director Bruce Del Castillo has actually worked on tons of Tarantino projects! This is his debut as a feature film director, so I guess he wanted to pay homage to Tarantino, since I feel like he wasn’t able to do so in the South Coast Toyota: Car Shopping Experience video he was credited for in 2017.

On top of that, we get the requisite “bad guy with a heart of gold” who has his reasons for not wanting to hurt Ariel, we get the criminal son who doesn’t listen to his father’s advice and causes more shit on the family business, and we get some backstory between the two leads that we actually get to see halfway through the film. This is the point where I wondered if I was on my remote and accidentally jumped to another app, because what you see in that scene would have been more fitting for a Saw film than what most people expect from a typical martial arts beat ’em up. It’s one of two grotesque scenes in the film, the latter coming as a surprise during a climactic fight between Alena and Lacy and two of Lucien’s mercenaries.

The other thing about Lady Scorpions what threw me off was the ending. Without giving too much away, I will say that after everything that had been building up in the previous hour and a half, the ending was rather abrupt. Scratch that, it was extremely abrupt! I know that in action movies we are supposed to believe that everything is wrapped up in a neat bow once all the fighting is over. At least in China O’Brien we knew what the villain’s fate was before richard norton said they could discuss it all over a beer. here in Lady Scorpions I felt like I was shortchanged in learning the fate of one person in particular, only to have another curveball thrown at me before the film cut to black! Lady Scorpions intended as the first of a Lady Scorpions franchise? Because after watching it I felt like I had seen a mid-season cliffhanger rather than a definitive ending.

While there is certainly room for improvement if we get another Lady Scorpios, There’s still plenty to like about this movie. First of all, I’m glad we got more than 5 minutes of Jeff Fahey. I was afraid it would be one of those late-night Bruce Willis situations where Fahey shows up for a few minutes, says a few lines, and then is never heard from again. While he doesn’t get to fight Rothrock, despite being her blood rival, he remains a focal point throughout the film. Rothrock herself is always a welcome presence in my book, and it was nice to see her back in ass-kicking mode, even if it was a bit of a shock to the system to see her as a grandma (especially since I pride myself on being perpetually 16 in my head). Dechelle had some great fight scenes, which shouldn’t surprise anyone considering she’s won nearly 100 different martial arts titles in her lifetime. My only issue with her portrayal of Lacy is that we introduce her as a badass, but then there are those few times I mentioned earlier where she feels like she’s being dragged into something beyond her comprehension. I’m not saying she’s John Ritter in Real menbut if this was my movie, I would have just let her go completely nuts trying to wipe out the bad guys. There’s a little too much family drama for a movie that’s supposed to be a throwback to the glory days of DTV. Now I know how my buddy Chris The Brain must have felt when he first saw our man Charles Bronson in Donato and daughter!

Do Lady Scorpions recapture the Rothrock DTV magic of yesteryear? If you go in with anticipation State of siege or Tiger claws It’s not even close, but it’s still a fun little film in its own right. Her fights may not be as athletic or intense as they once were, but Cynthia Rothrock kicking ass will never get old for me. I’d also like to see more of Caitlin Dechelle, especially if the way things turned out in this film is any indication. She clearly has the ability to be a mainstay in martial arts films, but I’d like to see how she’d fare with some better character development. Maybe Tiger Style Media will show us what she’s made of in another film in the near future. Until then, action movie fans should get what they want, and Rothrock loyalists like myself will appreciate her being back in action. It may not be a full-fledged return to the glory days, but there’s clearly an effort from those involved. The end result is a film that never gets boring with some fun action sequences that should keep viewers entertained throughout.

Lady Scorpions is now available to rent or purchase on digital