REVIEW: ‘Kiltro’ (2006)

Marko Zaror, best known previously for his Taurus Award winning performance as stuntman in THE RUNDOWN (2003), stars in his first martial arts movie as a thuggish street fighter-turned-disciplined martial arts superhero out to stop a revenge-seeking killer. For being a low-budget offering from first-time writer-director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza in a local industry almost hostile to martial arts moviemaking, KILTRO is a surprisingly entertaining B-movie.

For Chile’s first martial arts movie, Espinoza and Zaror primarily work with a bloody variation on Taekwondo fighting while sticking close to martial arts movie convention and mixing in influences from Japanese, Italian and ’80s Hollywood action cinema. This is especially true for the plot which deals with secret martial clans, training sequences, revenge, and esoteric weaponry. There is also a fair bit of intentional humor and general irreverence tossed into some of the action and a romantic angle.

Zamir (Zaror), a young scrapper is smitten with Kim (Caterina Jadresic), the beautiful Mestizo-Asian daughter of Korean Taekwondo master Teran, played by real-life Grandmaster Yoon Man-soo. After rescuing her from thugs and getting a kiss for his troubles, he follows her around like a benevolent stalker, throttling any other guys who get too close. As a joke, she invites him in to her father’s school to pick a fight and begins dating his rival.

Playtime ends with the appearance of Max Kalba (Miguel Angel De Luca), a ruthless killer with a deadly cane sword and a vendetta against Kim’s father and a secret martial arts clan that Zamir’s missing father belonged to. Through flashbacks we learn that Zamir’s father had stolen away Max’s wife and she had died when he forced himself upon her.

The reasons for revenge and conflict become mired in clunky editing of too many unnecessary and overlong flashback sequences. All we really need to know is that Max wants to kill people who matter to our hero. Unfortunately, Espinoza falls into the trap of using flashbacks a lot. It’s a cheap plot device that screenwriters should know better than to rely on because it usually kills momentum and can often be confusing. Action films need to exist in the “now,” keeping the viewer locked on to the principle conflict. All the flashbacks in KILTRO could have been condensed into 30-seconds of exposition and it would have served the same function just as well, thus allowing for more fight time.

As many martial arts heroes of the past learn, Zamir is no match for the villain and gets schooled when he comes to the defense of Kim and her father. The two escape with their lives and are forced into hiding where they are aided by a martial arts master and dwarf who sends Zamir out into the desert to train with his student. This scenario has a certain STAR WARS-like quality to it when you think about it.

The training sequences are disappointing. They amount to Zaror performing a series of Taekwondo flip kicks to knock a stick out of the trainer’s hand. Alternately, the film steals a page from David Carradine’s KUNG FU series by using the “snatch a pebble from my hand” routine. This nonsense is capped by Zaror running around in the sand naked and his trainer spouting random Zen-like philosophy. It doesn’t take a lifetime of martial arts training to know that we’re being fed a whole lot of movie bullshit.

This leads into the fight sequences and Zaror’s place in them. For the record, Zaror is an amazing screen fighter. His movements are extremely fast for carrying around so much muscle and he’s able to perform some jaw-dropping aerial stunts. It’s nothing quite as impressive as Tony Jaa but then it’s not really fair to compare the two as their styles differ greatly.

There are several drawn-out fight sequences in the film but only one really stands out. Zaror emerges from his training to take on an alleyway full of thugs. His fighting gimmick is that he has strapped razor-sharp spurs to the backs of his ankles. Instead of simply kicking his opponents with blunt force, he aims for their throats. CGI flesh wounds and blood spurts ala Takeshi Kitano’s ZATOICHI are used liberally to effectively enhance Zaror’s lethal attacks. Zaror and his stunt team clearly put a lot of effort into this sequence and it pays off although I can find fault with the choreography.

As is often the case with Taekwondo-heavy choreography, there is far too much reliance on flashy kicks. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Wing Chun form lately but on more than one occasion I saw gaping holes in attacks where a defender could have easily moved in to unbalance his opponent or perform just about any close-range counterattack. Zaror has talked about how Bruce Lee inspired him and it can be seen in his use of nunchaku and a brief FIST OF FURY finishing move involving a sword. Yet Zaror seems to have overlooked Lee’s philosophy of fighting which is all about adapting to a situation, rather than waiting for the right moment to unleash another picture-perfect spin-kick.

Another problem I have with the action is the idea of using bladed weapons on the back of your ankles. It’s a neat idea until you think about the mechanics of it. Like Zatoichi’s reversed sword handling with the tip pointed downward, it limits your angle of attack. The only way to touch your opponent with the blades would be to constantly strike them with the back of your ankle. That’s a lot of backwards-spinning reverse kicks. This wouldn’t be a problem except that Zaror makes this his character’s main attack which is repeated many times. It looks cool the first few times but gets redundant.

Wires are used extensively to pull back stunt actors for intentionally exaggerated falls from power strikes. As in Hong Kong, they’re performed manually and are done so with a fair degree of professionalism. The final effect is pretty good. Of course, it looks unreal but then Zaror is clearly going for more of a superhero approach to the action.

The limited budget shows through on sparsely decorated sets. This is worked to the production’s advantage in intentionally artificial environments such as an interior desert backdrop that reminds me of an artsy play or early Shaw Brothers film. Strong, dominant colors are used to good effect in Zamir’s home which becomes sort of an unreal place. It doesn’t work so well in other situations such as the dojo or a parking garage. Costuming is interesting and evokes ’80s New Wave. Max’s lead henchmen look like they could have stepped off the set of an Adam Ant music video while Zamir wears parachute-like pants and punk highlights in his mullet. These design choices are proven to be more than coincidences in a humorous camp sequence where Zamir runs through the city in a fit of youthful angst set to David Bowie’s “Modern Love.”

With smart-alecky attitude, KILTRO exhibits potential to be a kitschy genre classic beyond being simply a low-budget, martial arts brawl fest. Perhaps for lack of time or budget, it never gets fleshed out as well as it could have been while the filmmakers may have tried too hard to mimic KILL BILL without understanding Quentin Tarantino’s influences. Marko Zaror seems a bit old for his character but he makes a strong debut in his physical performance as a screen fighter and shows signs of handling humor well. The film’s campy action sequences are well executed and shot but lacking in diversity. The plot is overly convoluted in its presentation for essentially being a basic revenger. Yet all things considered, this is still a wacky martial arts movie throwback to the good old days of bad hair, bad dialogue and excessive, unreal martial arts violence.