Paragon
Video | Review by Dan Taylor
Frankly, I wasn't expecting
much when I rented this flick.
I was simply in a renting
mood on a rainy day, and I was amused by
the title and premise: young INTERPOL agent
forced to witness the murder of his wife
has his arm chopped off as an added warning.
So, I figured I was getting
your average cut-rate revenge flick with
a handicapped bent. Boy, was I wrong. As
soon as it started with a midget getting
trapped in a phone booth and dropped into
a lake I knew I was in for a special kind
of cinematic experience.
Star Franco Guerrero (who
resembles a chubby Eric Estrada) is fairly
personable as the young agent investigating
"the drug trade." So you feel
pretty bad when the bad guys decide to play
Ginsus-R-Us with his left arm.
With enough of these gotta-get-revenge
flicks under my belt I fully expected the
guy to recover, go on a major-league vengeance
spree and reduce the utter scumbags to just
so much flesh and bone.
But wait!!! All of a sudden
the flick becomes THE ONE-ARMED BARFLY
as our hero stumbles from bar to bar doing
his best to turn his brain into a pickle
barrel. Ohhhh, an actual plot twist... how
intriguing!
Pretty soon though, a kung-fu
master shows up and we get treated to the
prerequisite "training sequence."
Our hero learns how to fight, shoot, and
reload, all with one arm. Okay, so the other
arm is OBVIOUSLY stuffed in his shirt, but
that's a minor point 'cause he needs to
go out and off everyone involved in his
wife's murder.
Go figure -- THE ONE-ARMED
EXECUTIONER is an entertaining little flick.
