Toby Wong
For the last few months my friend John had been telling me to go out and get a movie called Drive, starring Mark Dacascos as an über-badassed cybernetically-enhanced killing machine named Toby Wong. He insisted that it would be right up my alley. Even when I protested that I hardly ever buy DVDs of movies I've never seen or heard of, he simply responded by questioning my manhood and threatening me with bodily harm. After watching this film last night, let me tell you that the only regret is that I hadn't purchased it sooner.
Toby Wong is a badass genetically-modified ex-assassin on the run from his former employers, who are led by a dude who is like a mix between Kid Rock, Stevie Ray Vaughan and a really angry Hank Williams Jr. Along the way Toby runs into an out-of-work musician and the two of them basically spend the next two hours driving around in their cherry-red 1973 Dodge Challenger getting shot at by rednecks, run over by dirtbike stunt-riders and kicked in the head by angry little Chinese people. That shit's all in a day's work for Toby though.
Toby is like a weird cross between Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Derek Zoolander. He's an unstoppable killing machine who Kung Fu's the ever-loving shit out of anyone that looks at him funny. He spends a lot of time shooting people in the head with their own guns, cracking people in the face with broken broomhandles and chucking large handfuls of kitchenware at special forces soldiers with uncanny accuracy. He switches up fighting styles on the fly, gets the job done without being too flashy, and is able to karaoke his ass off, a talent that is often overlooked by many people training in the martial arts.
His partner, Kadeem Hardison, spends a lot of time getting into car accidents and yelling "oh shit, motherfucker" at the top of his lungs. It's basically like Chris Tucker's role in Rush Hour, except that this movie came out first and a lot of his one-liners are better. Plus he hacks some dude's arm off at the elbow with a MOTHERFUCKING CHAINSAW, and then the disembodied arm flies through the air (squeezing the trigger of the machinegun it's holding) and shoots it's owner. Dude.
"No, fuck that.
Let's kick his ass and take his coat."
Basically, Toby does all kinds of badass shit like hanging upside down from a ceiling fan firing bullets as the fan revolves and running away from explosions. He's not only a master of unarmed combat, but he's also perfectly comfortable stealing your shoes off your feet and beating the hell out of you with them or stabbing you fifty times with a sword. Any attempts to fight back against him really only serve to make Toby even more pissed, and he really doesn't have a problem killing your ass for no reason other than the fact that you got in his way. It's refreshing to see a kung fu hero who can not only kick the peoples' faces into next week, but also doesn't have any problems putting a few bullets into the bad guys' chests when he has to.
"I was the ultimate badass bitch."
You know how much I dug this movie? I dug it so much that I'm not even going to make any Dwayne Wayne comments. I swear that up until last night I had the pictures picked out and the jokes lined-up, but now I really just can't bring myself to do it. If nothing else, this should be the most telling evidence of how awesome this movie is, since you KNOW how difficult it's gotta be for me to pass up the perfect opportunity for a cheap Dwayne Wayne joke.
Drive has everything you would look for in a bad action movie; swearing, kung fu, machineguns, chainsaws, Brittany Murphy acting super-slutty, bullwhips, Chinese people, beer, sunglasses, rocket launchers, truck stops, cars, spaceships and a character named Walter the Einstein Frog (don't question it). It's really difficult to go wrong when you have this kind of formula, but the super-badassery of Toby Wong and his insano Kung Fu spinning-and-kicking powers make everything even that much more awesome.
