Fatal Deviation

 After watching both the Aussies and the Germans do their country proud with their martial arts skills, I started looking out for other martial arts films from unexpected countries. This is how I came to hear of Fatal Deviation, Ireland's first full-length martial arts picture. It was also dubbed one of the worst movies ever made by a bunch of humourless twits who obviously don't watch enough movies.

 It starts martial artist James Bennett as... Jimmy Bennett, a martial artist who returns home to his hometown, refurbishes his father's house, meets Nicola (Nicola O'Sullivan), a nice girl who works at the local supermarket, gets in a feud with the mob boss Mike (Michael Regan - are you noticing a pattern here?) that killed his father (whose son is dating Nicola, of course), and enters a secret, violent kumite-like tournament run by Christian monks which the mobsters are desperate to win as it will somehow determine the fate of the whole town. You know, just a day in the life in rural Ireland.

#Gandalfismysifu

 It's barely coherent, no one involved had any idea how to make an action movie, and it was made for next to no money. It's objectively bad. Also... kind of a lot of fun.

 Like many of these films, the whole thing is essentially the star's audition tape to get better parts in action movies; Bennett gathered a group of his mates and just shot scenes wherever people would let him (as you can imagine, this doesn't do wonders for the film's continuity). The main financier for the film (Regan) put money down with the condition he was given a juicy part. It should be a disaster. It... is a disaster, to be honest. The acting is terrible*, the filmmaking is all ugly 90's home video, with frequent A/V glitches and badly exposed scenes. The music... oh god, the music is particularly atrocious mix of horrid 'inspirational' pop and Casiotone incidental music.

 But there's so much enthusiasm put into the production that it's really hard to harbour it any ill will.
 It's full of padding, but most of it is so bizarre it's entertaining; Where other movies would have endless scenes of people walking around and pointless conversations (and to be clear, there is a bit of that here), the filler in Fatal Deviation tends toward the inspired. Why settle for a boring-ass mundane shit when you can have a man carefully setting up and then taking a bath in an outdoor bathtub with an open fire under it? Or Irish catholic Gandalf (Johnny Murray) training Jimmy by waving sticks at the camera? Or a musical montage where our hero remembers having tender sex with his girl, intercut with random, mundane interactions with the mobsters, intercut with our protagonist nodding thoughtfully? Or a picnic where our lovebirds lie among a scattering of random oranges all over the picnic blanket?

 The action is not great - Bennett and a few of the other combatants have some moves, but the choreographies are simple and making the fights look good is beyond the abilities of anyone involved; One of the weakest parts of the movie, the tournament, is actually the most action-packed. There are a couple of shootouts as well (including one where Bennett stands on his motorbike that reminded me of Top Secret!) that might as well have been filmed as a fingergun battles. Having said all that: there's a fairly cool car crash, and the modest stunts on display are still pretty impressive for a bunch of friends and acquaintances working out how to put a movie together as they go along. They do the Jackie-Chan-style bloopers reel at the end, and it gives you a pretty good idea how much harder doing this is than it looks - especially when there's no one around who knows how to handle stunts; A very simple four-foot fall seems to have been pretty painful for the actor involved.

 It'd be beyond wrong-headed not to grade this in a curve- and even if you don't, worst film ever my arse. At the very least Bennett and co. clearly understand and love the type of film they want to make, and they bring their own spin to it. You know that trope of the action guy stopping a violent robbery at a drugstore? Here the hero kicks the asses of two unconvincing random stoned chuckleheads making a nuisance of themselves at a Londis.

 OK, it's not a good spin, exactly, but it's unique and hugely entertaining.

 This is the rarely achieved so-bad-it's-good, as opposed to plain mediocre or cynical, and it's full of memorable, hilarious moments. If the batshit insane epilogue doesn't fill you with joy, I just don't know what to tell you.

 *: On a completely unrelated note, I should also mention that this is the film debut Mikey Graham (as Mike Graham, of course) of "Rock Band" Boyzone. I have no idea why I was reminded of this fact just now.