User reviews

OK, the acting's poor, and so are the lines. But the on-screen fighting is sheer class. This film is by no means a classic, but it's worth a view just because of the high number of fight scenes. If you want realism go look out your front-room window.

Jerry Trimble stars as John Merill, an ex-Navy SEAL who is wrongfully imprisoned for the death of a woman.(He stepped in to stop a rape and after killing the bad guy, he got framed by the bad guy's friends) He's forced to spend the rest of his life in a hellhole prison, however the corrupt guards and warden(Vic Diaz) are mistreating prisoners and the human rights people are interested in these allegations. This is because of Uncle(George Takei) who has proof of all the wrong doings, however Uncle and John Merill must survive not only the gangs but also the corrupt guards and warden. Live By The Fist is easily among one of the worst movies I ever saw. I saw this on Cinemax about 12 years ago and it was really something to watch. The dubbing is uniformly awful with Trimble, Markland and Takei as the only cast members who actually put in their own voices. The acting is terrible and even George Takei is awful. Trimble does some okay footwork but basically this is far too awful to be even worth it for action fans. Camp fans will find much to laugh at but I was too bored to even find this much fun. Maybe I should see it again...

1/2* out of 4-(Awful)

I just love Jerry Trimble Jr...he should have made more martial arts movies back in the day. Jerry's martial arts skills are very good. I have never been bored watching any of his movies.

The downfalls: Each action scene has a very annoying guitar theme and towards the end of the movie becomes almost unbearable, but I just like the movie only for the fight scenes. The acting is terrible (what would you expect), only one female actress (as a main) is in the movie and she doesn't show any charisma or talent whatsoever....it makes you wonder what she was doing there in the first place. The movie is very much the same storyline as Bloodfist 3 starring Don 'the dragon' Wilson, but is in different format.

The Up's of the feature: Jerry displays awesome fight scenes and there are plenty of them which makes the movie gun and enjoyable if you don't take it too seriously. My wife is a filipina, she recognized the area where the movie was filmed because we have been to that location in the Philippines before and she remembers many of the filipino actors who were popular actors in the Phils. This wasn't the type of movie for her so she decided to do the housework while I continued to watch Jerry kick ass. Don't watch the movie with your girl or wife unless they enjoy this type of movie genre.