Fireback (1983)

"He's heading for the jungle" says a cop as the hero of Fireback (1983) makes his getaway.  Which is more than slightly perplexing as the action is meant to be taking place in the United States.  Which, as far as I know, doesn't actually have any jungles on its continental territory.  Perhaps, "He's heading for the forest" might have been more accurate, although the area in question looks more like the woods at the end of someone's garden than a forest, let alone a jungle.  Such confusion typifies the problems with Fireback a Philippines based production pretending to be American.  Obviously shot entirely in the Philippines, it never feels authentic, the settings never convincing the viewer that the action really is taking place in the US.  It is all too generically 'US' -it never makes clear exactly where in the US it is supposed to be taking place. (Perhaps if it had been specified as Louisiana, they might just have got away with passing off the semi-tropical architecture, swamplands and 'jungle' as being in the Bayou).  The sense of dislocation isn't helped by the fact that the map on the Police Chief's wall (we never know exactly where he is police chief of)  is clearly of the Philippines, rather than any part of the US.  

The vagueness of the film's setting extends to its scenario - we open in the jungles of Vietnam, (the Philippines double as 'Nam more effectively than it does the US), where our hero, a weapons expert, is demonstrating a new multi-purpose weapon to a squad of American soldiers.  The camp is overrun by the Viet-Cong and the expert captured.  Next thing, we're at a military HQ where a rescue mission is ordered.  At this point, it seems a safe assumption that the rest of the film will be about the hero's rescue and how he uses his skills, (he can apparently construct a weapon from anything), to facilitate his and the rescue team's return to US lines.  But the rescue is only cursorily depicted and next thing the hero is back in a hospital in the US.  The whole Vietnam business has lasted barely ten minutes!  On his discharge, he finds that his wife has vanished, abducted (and, we subsequently learn, murdered) by a local gangster who had become enamoured of her when she thought her husband was dead in Vietnam.  This is where the real plot finally starts, as he tracks down the gangster, beating up and/or killing anyone who gets in his way, with the gangster, in turn, sending various hit men to try and kill our hero.  Framed for one of the few killings he didn't commit, the expert finds himself running from the police as well as the bad guys.

Hiding out in a scrap yard, A-Team style, he constructs not only a home made equivalent of the multi-purpose gun he was demonstrating in Vietnam, but also customises his car with a number of Bond-type gadgets.  Escaping into that 'jungle' after his whereabouts are discovered, he mows down lots of trigger happy cops with his gun.  Eventually evading them, he faces off against a Ninja sent by the gangster t kill him before finally facing off against the villain at the latter's hideout.  Preceding the closing credits, onscreen text tells us that the expert then went on the run, was eventually caught, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment, dying in prison from heart failure!  Throughout, Fireback gives the impression that, with a little more effort, it could have been a half-decent low budget vigilante movie.  But, while it introduces a number of promising ideas and characters, it never develops them, instead effectively throwing them away all too quickly.  The gun he constructs, for instance, is never fully exploited, its capabilities never properly explored.  Likewise the customised car, which vanishes as quickly as it is introduced.  Some of the villain's henchmen look as if they are going to become interesting supporting characters, particularly the 'Man With the Golden Hand',  But that metallic hand is never explained and the character never rises above being a simple thug before he is summarily dispatched by the hero.  

Fireback was one of a number of action films that star Richard Harrison, (who, in the sixties and seventies had enjoyed success as the star of Italian exploitation films in a number of genres), made for Silver Star in the eighties.  Silver Star were a US/Philippines production company that specialised in shooting cheap action films in the Philippines and passing them off as American for the home video market.  Slackly directed in his debut by Teddy Page, (who was to become a regular director for Silver Star), on locations that look as if they might be producer and crew's apartments and gardens, Fireback, with its general air of cheapness, bad dubbing and perfunctory plot is actually quite entertaining and frequently unintentionally hilarious.  Clearly, it was a formula that worked, as many of Silver Star's subsequent films seem modelled on it, even down to using the same casts, crews and locations.