Perhaps in reaction against Hollywood’s increasingly slick, shallow vehicles for Jet Li and Jackie Chan, the last few years have seen a resurgence in gritty, “done for real” martial arts in foreign films. Following Tony Jaa’s bone-crunching breakthrough in Ong-Bak (2005), we now have Marko “The Latin Dragon” Zaror in this Chilean action-comedy-thriller. Zamir (Marko Zaror) is a preening street tough with a dodgy mullet, who kick-boxes a guy for groping “his girl”, Kim (Caterina Jadresic) on the dance floor. Sick of him repeatedly beating up her boyfriends, Kim sets Zamir up to battle students at her Korean father, Teran’s (Man Soo Yoon) martial arts school, but he wipes the floor with them all. “I won’t stop until Kim is mine!” he snarls, between fantasies about rescuing her from rapists.
While Zamir’s boorish bluster is annoying, his goofy, rom-com courtship proves surprisingly endearing. In a nod to Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang (1986) the heartbroken lug tears down the streets to the sound of David Bowie’s Modern Love. The beautiful Jadresic proves plenty feisty (A nice gag has Zamir attempt a kiss before his epic quest and get socked in the jaw!), but is sadly reduced to simpering on the sidelines once cape-swishing villain Max Kalba (Miguel De Luca) kidnaps Teran, and sets about murdering old enemies. Kiltro is set in a martial arts movie world where contemporary council estates, flashy nightclubs and Duran Duran thugs rub shoulders with a mystical kung fu dwarf with a hideout by the sea, Zen masters with painted faces, and surreal, orange-bathed outdoor sets. It imparts a funky, old school ambience worthy of Bruce Li movies (No, not Lee, Li. Ask your parents), but once the “they killed my friends, stole my woman” plot kicks in, things prove no more involving than your average Van Damme/Seagal vehicle.
It hinges on a kung fu sect whose members, Zamir and Kim’s fathers, did Max Kalba wrong. Flashbacks impart a degree of sympathy for Kalba, whose wife betrayed him with the unrepentant Teran, and he weeps upon meeting Kim. Victims inexplicably fuel his anger, telling him to “forget it” and that he was “just dealt a bad hand”. By rights, Zamir ought to go after Teran too. Zaror busts some impressive moves, but the action is clearly wire-assisted in parts and his opponents are unconvincing. He isn’t quite the breath of fresh air dynamic enough to evoke Jackie Chan or Jet Li in their prime, while his straight faced machismo is something maybe only a Latin audience could take seriously. The “wax on, wax off” training scenes prove tedious, but film buff in-jokes include the dwarf named Nik Nak after The Man with the Golden Gun (1975) and a cod-Ennio Morricone score with nods to Once Upon A Time in the West (1968).
