Throughout the late 80’s and 90’s kickboxing Champion Don “The Dragon” Wilson was a dominate force in the straight to video action market. It seemed like he was churning them out left and right always delivering his signature martial arts action to keep the fans wanting more. Of his films there were a few that spawned numerous sequels including the long running Bloodfist series, but unlike the Bloodfist films, his Ring of Fire series continued the martial arts action of Dr. Johnny Wu. What started out as a simple man defending his family from gang violence escalated into a full on action picture in the final chapter of the series Ring of Fire 3: Lionstrike.
Ring of Fire 3: Lionstrike follows Dr. Wu has he is sucked into a battle with the global mafia after unexpectedly coming into possession of a valuable disk. When they kidnap his son to try and get the disk back, the war becomes personal and he will stop at nothing to get him back. This chapter of the series really stepped up the action quickly taking it from the slow build of the original and kicking the action into high gear right off the bat. There are a few story elements that seem to be a bit all over the place, but all comes together just fine to deliver a classic martial arts film like only Wilson can deliver. His films always maintained a certain standard when it comes to the martial arts aspect taking a real world approach as opposed to the over the top direction. While these films are far from perfect they deliver exactly what you expect, plenty of The Dragon laying a beat down on the bad guys.
These films are clearly geared towards a particular audience and might not catch on with anyone but the martial arts buffs, but who cares it’s not for those people anyway. Love his films or not, you cannot deny Wilson has hacked out a career churning out fun martial arts action in all sorts of genres and your collection would not be complete without this film apart of it.
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