Ironheart Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Ironheart Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 26, 2020

Note: This film is available as part of Bloodfight / Ironheart.

Bolo Yeung is 74 as this review is being written, and at least according to some online sources, he’s still alive and kicking (emphasis on that kicking part) enough to be making films as relatively recently as 2015 (or 2017 with regard to a United States release) for an outing known as The Whole World at Our Feet. That said, Yeung is probably best remembered for some martial arts infused entries from days of yore, having appeared in a number of still beloved films like Enter the Dragon, Drunken Master, and perhaps most memorably (at least for relatively younger fans), Bloodsport (note that the link points to another double feature Blu-ray that also offered Timecop). In one of those all too obvious “coincidences”, Yeung followed up his turn in Bloodsport with the similarly named Bloodfight, which offers Yeung in what amounts to a glorified cameo. Three years after Bloodfight came out, Yeung had a bit more of a featured role in Ironheart, a film which caught my personal eye since it was shot in my hometown of Portland, Oregon.

Ironheart has a number of interesting elements, some of them a bit on the “meta” side, as in the fact that director Robert Clouse was also the helmsman behind Enter the Dragon, which, for martial fans anyway, might have been a salient selling point when the film was originally released. There’s a different “Lee” starring in this film, however, though from what little data I’ve been able to unearth about the production and its lead actor, it seems that Britton K. Lee, who also produced as well as starred, never made another feature film after this one, despite the fact that his film seemed to have been fashioned expressly for him. He’s absolutely wooden in a lot of the “acting” scenes, but he pulls off the action sequences with acceptable flair, helped, perhaps, by some judicious editing.

Lee portrays Los Angeles policeman John Keem, a martial arts expert, who is called to Portland when his former partner who had moved to Oregon’s biggest city is killed in the line of duty. Keem soons gets mixed up with a nefarious villain named Milverstead (Richard Norton), who is involved in all sorts of criminal activity. Milverstead's main henchman is a guy named Ice (Bolo Yeung), who is prominently featured in several smackdowns. All of this activity ultimately spills rather strangely into events at a local dance studio run by a woman named Kristy (Karman Krusche).

Ironheart is almost defiantly illogical a lot of the time, and there are certain elements that may strike some as unintentionally hilarious (supposedly concerned mom Kristy keeps leaving her little daughter with her dance assistant to run off to fight crime and/or sleep with Keem). But for denizens of Portland in particular, Ironheart is like taking a time machine back to the early nineties, with lots of wonderful shots of a city that is both somewhat the same but also as it used to be, including the once iconic White Stag sign that was still a White Stag sign (it now says "Portland", just to help those who aren't quite sure where they are). The film’s score also includes a number of great dance tunes by U-Krew, who were at that point one of Portland’s biggest bands.

Ironheart Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ironheart is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the MVD Rewind Collection, an imprint of MVD Visual, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is the better looking transfer of this double feature disc, with far less damage and better suffused, more natural looking, palette. Detail levels are generally strong, though there are some brief moments in scenes involving a disco like club where the combination of strobe lighting and a rather heavy grain field combine to make things look a bit gritty and ill defined. A lot of the film takes place outside, and the crew was blessed with some unusually sunny weather (for Portland, anyway), giving things a generally warm and inviting look. Fine detail is generally good in close-ups, though some of the establishing shots of Portland that are scattered throughout the film look a bit less inviting, as if perhaps they were shot on a different stock.

Ironheart Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ironheart features an LPCM 2.0 track that bursts into life whenever music is utilized, including some of the really fun U-Krew material (the band scored a couple of pretty big hits in 1990, but then more or less disappeared thereafter). The martial arts element actually tends to reside more in the background of this film, and as such typical "chop socky" sound effects are kind of intermittent, but other ambient environmental sound effects are naturalistic. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout the presentation, and as with Bloodfight, there are optional English subtitles for those who need them.

Ironheart Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers includes Ironheart (480i; 1:38), along with Bloodfight and a number of other releases from the MVD Rewind Collection.

Ironheart Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I may personally have been prone to enjoy Ironheart more than the "average" viewer given the fact that I've lived in Portland for years and actually know some of the Portland based actors who are in the film, but one way or the other, this is probably the better film of the two included in this release, though that may be damning with faint praise, given the lo-fi aspects of Bloodfight. This film certainly provides the more consistent dose of Bolo Yeung of the two films. This release also sports better overall technical merits than Bloodfight , for those who are considering a purchase.