Il ragazzo dal kimono d'oro

With Italian genre film-makers always mustard keen to capitalize on financially successful film trends, the talented, opportunistic producer/director Fabrizio De Angelis formulated his very own blisteringly fight-packed, heroically headstrong hybrid of 'Kickboxer' and 'Karate Kid, setting his excitingly exotic, fleet-fisted, punch-fighting epic in picturesque manilla. Not long after sulky, estranged son Anthony Scott (Kim Rossi Stuart) arrives in the Philippines, the uneasy family reunion is further disturbed by fresh-faced Anthony's fateful barney with evil karate gangster Quino (Enrico Toralba), this grievous beating being the bloody catalyst which inexorably draws brave, unskilled fighter Anthony into the oracular orbit of sensei Kimura (Ken Watanabe), and before you can say 'Kumite', the white bread, piecemeal pugilist is thrillingly transformed into a steel-thewed, iron-fisted, majestically melon-mashing 'Karate Warrior' able to courageously meet the deadly Quino blow-for-blow in the climactic eye-of-the-tiger duel, wherein the once fey 'The Boy in The Golden Kimono' stoically fights not only for righteousness, but for his VERY life! Gifted exploitation impresario Fabrizio De Angelis's far-flung fight-flick is a bellicose, bloody-knuckled, blissfully 80s B-Movie classic!