Seen Any Good Filipino Martial Arts Movie Lately?
By Jay de Leon

Originally Published in FMA Digest 2005

     The movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a movie sensation, topping $100 million at the U.S. box office, the first foreign-language film to cross that mark. It elevated the martial arts epic to serious cinema, catapulting the genre into the mainstream Western audiences. It also brought me back to a different place and time. It brought me back to the Philippines, during my boyhood. I remember going to Chinatown with a bunch of friends to watch Chinese swordfighting movies. Unlike Crouching Tiger, it had no subtitles, but had the same furious clanging of swords, combatants chasing each other through treetops and rooftops, and of course more blood and gore than Crouching Tiger. Who cared about the plot or character development? For us kids, it was the ultimate martial arts fantasy.

Movie poster for “Hero”

     Just a few months ago, another Mandarin-language saga of ancient China, Hero starring Jet Li, topped the box office again. And now, close on its heels is House of Flying Daggers, starring Zhang Ziyi, which premiered in the Cannes Film Festival. Not unexpectedly, this movie has again captured the same mainstream American audience that flocked to Hero and Crouching Tiger.

A scene from “House of Flying Daggers”

     Which brings us to the eternal question, when will we get to watch our arnis blockbuster? Now, that would be my ultimate cinematic fantasy. I can imagine it now—Visayan pinuti (sword) vs. Muslim kris, double stick sinawali vs..tapado strikes, Yaw-Yan kickboxer vs. Harimaw buno grappler—the possibilities are endless. All we need is Ang Lee (director of “Crouching Tiger”), a young version of Roland Dantes (sorry, Master Roland) as the hero, a young version of Bob Wall as the villain, a few million dollars, a cast of thousand arnisadors and, of course, Zhang Ziyi.

Zhang Ziyi

     My feeling is that blockbuster will be a while. But did you know that arnis movies have been produced? Thought you’d never ask. Here are some arnis movies, running the gamut from major U.S. theatrical releases with a smidgen of FMA, to straight to video movies, to Filipino movies in Tagalog.

Sticks of Death (English)

Released 1979 , Starring Roland Dantes, Rosemarie Gil
PLOT: Johnny Guerrero (Roland Dantes), a cop, teams up with an American Interpol agent named Frank Santini to bust an international drug ring. In between ambushes and fights with the bad guys, Johnny and Frank enter a full-contact arnis tournament.
FMA HIGHLIGHTS: Lots of Filipino weaponry including slingshot, poison darts, modern weaponry such as collapsible baton, and improvised weapon such as a trash can , arnis training scenes and demos, FMA masters Jose Mena vs. Cacoy Canete in a tournament fight.
REVIEW: Thumbs up, way up. Roland Dantes happens to be a ranking grandmaster in my system, Modern Arnis.

The Pacific Connection (English)

     Starring Roland Dantes, Dean Stockwell, Nancy Kwan, Guy Madison, Alejandro Rey, Gilbert Roland
PLOT: Ben (Roland Dantes) avenges the death of his parents at the hands of the evil Portuguese governor and his two sons, after training in arnis with a blind monk.
FMA HIGHLIGHTS: The most intimidating FMA action was the poster that showed Roland Dantes’ Mr. Universe physique and proclaimed “Arnis: Deadlier Than Karate! More Brutal Than Kung-fu! Swifter Than Any Sword.” The movie featured double sticks vs. assorted weapons including sabre, katana, and nunchaku.
REVIEW: See “Sticks of Death,” above.

Fire in the Night (English)

Graciella Casillas

Released 1985 (straight to video), Starring Graciella Casillas, Patrick St. Esprit, Simeon “Muni” Zano, John Martin
PLOT:Terry Collins (Casillas) enlists the aid of FMA master Manolo Calba (Zano) to prepare for a challenge fight with the town bully Mike Swanson (St. Esprit).
FMA HIGHLIGHTS: Highlights include Graciella Casillas dancing authentic Filipino dances (including the tinikling, the dance that requires dancing between bamboo poles) that Calba required of her as part of her training, and FMA highlights include Graciella performing several sinawali training scenes.
REVIEW: Not enough FMA. Since Casillas is a true arnisador, her training scenes were entertaining enough to watch. The climactic fight did not even involve weapons.

Kamagong (Tagalog)
PLOT: Three men fight in full contact double stickfighting matches for different reasons.  “Kamagong” refers to the Philippine ebony wood that their sticks are made of.
FMA HIGHLIGHTS: Double stick vs. double balisong fight; climactic duel at high noon witnessed by the whole town..
REVIEW: For Tagalog audiences only.

The Hunted (English)

Released 2003. Starring Tommie Lee Jones and Benecio del Toro; knife choreography by Rafael Kayanan and Tom Kier
PLOT: Aaron Hallam, a trained assassin AWOL from the Special Forces (del Toro), goes over the edge and on a killing spree, killing four deer hunters in the area. The FBI, unable to track him down, turns to the only man who can, L. T. Bonham (Jones), the man who trained him.
FMA HIGHLIGHTS: The knife fights choreographed by FMA blademasters Rafael Kayanan and Tom Kier. Kayanan was supposed to be an extra in the movie, killed by del Toro.
REVIEW: Panned by the critics, but enjoyed by the macho crowd. Go ahead and enjoy the movie, and go back later and slow-mo the fight scenes.

The climactic knife fight between
Tommie Lee Jones and Benecio del Toro.

Mano Y Mano 3 (Tagalog)

Released 2004, Starring Ronnie Ricketts, Gwen Garcia, Leila Kuzma, Bruce Ricketts (14 yr. old nephew of Ronnie and son of “Topher”); fight choreography by Christopher “Topher” Ricketts.
PLOT: Nato Aragon (Ronnie Ricketts), an arnis champion, avenges the death of his policeman brother murdered by a powerful crime boss.
FMA HIGHLIGHTS: Non-stop fights, arnis vs. samurai fight, all choreographed by “Topher.”.
REVIEW: This movie was the lone action entry in the 2004 Manila Film Festival. At the Tipunan sa Disneyland seminar at the Hilton Hotel in Anaheim, California in 2005, I saw Bruce Ricketts showcase his superb arnis skills. According to “Topher” Ricketts, the movie was a blockbuster, and who am I to contradict him?

Game of Death (English)

Released 1979. Starring Bruce Lee, Gig Young, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dan Inosanto
PLOT: Billy Lo, a martial arts movie star, (Bruce Lee), takes on a crime syndicate of drug dealers who kidnap his girl friend and try to kill him. In the climax, he has to fight his way to the top of the tower or pagoda, but each floor is guarded by successively greater and greater masters of different martial arts.
FMA HIGHLIGHTS: Okay, this is no FMA movie. But of course Dan Inosanto gets to play the Filipino master guarding one of the floors and gets to showcase his eskrima stick skills, culminating in a nunchaku duel with Bruce Lee.
REVIEW: This movie was incomplete when Bruce Lee met his untimely death. Since some of the fight scenes had already been shot though (even before Enter The Dragon,), the producers decided to complete the movie, using a Bruce Lee double, stand-ins, cut-outs and cinematic sleight-of-hand to fill in the missing scenes. The movie is of course a cinematic chop suey, but the martial arts fights are vintage Bruce Lee, with the climax being a brutal mano y mano fight to the death between Lee and his student in real life, basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Basically you pay the price of sitting through an hour of celluloid trash to watch the last half hour, when the real Bruce Lee uses his jeet kune do to battle several real life masters of their arts. You will have to decide if that hour is worth it, unless of course you have a fast-forward feature.

Sharkey’s Machine (English)

     Released 1981. Starring Burt Reynolds, Rachel Ward, Vittorio Gassman, Henry Silva, Brian Keith, Charles Durning, Earl Holliman, Bernie Casey, Dan Inosanto
PLOT: Tom Sharky, an Atlanta narc demoted to a vice cop (Reynolds), goes against a crime boss (Gassman). Along the way, he falls in love with a stunning prostitute (Ward), gets a finger sliced off by a balisong-wielding Oriental (Inosanto), and, in the climax, has an suspenseful shoot-out with the boss’s cocaine-addicted brother and designated hit-man (Silva) that you will not forget.
FMA HIGHLIGHTS: Dan Inosanto is one of Henry Silva’s hired killers. He gets to flash some fancy balisong moves, and in one of the movie’s bloodier scenes, slices off Burt Reynold’s finger. All right, I agree the scenes cannot even count as depicting FMA. The first time I saw this movie, I was just excited to see Guro Dan, and would always point out to everybody around that his weapon was a balisong.
REVIEW: First of all, this movie had a bona fide all-star cast, including one of my all-time villains, Henry Silva, and one of my all-time screen beauties, Rachel Ward. This was a good action movie, and one of the better early Burt Reynolds action movies. That is probably no ringing endorsement considering all the trash he has starred in. But he seems to be making up for those with his mature portrayal beginning with Boogie Nights. I know, who appointed me movie critic?

    Rachel Ward

     Finally, my Modern Arnis instructor, Master Godofredo Fajardo, currently teaching in Saudi Arabia, told me to mention that he was featured showing sword skills in the 1992 Tagalog movie Dugo ng Panday with Bong Revilla (a top action star in the Philippines). Oy vey, everybody wants to be a movie star. If any of you die-hard movie fans that rent Tagalog movies ever run into this one, please shoot me a copy. I need something to watch until that defining FMA movie comes along.