Plot: When ex-Special Forces agent Matt Collins wins a survivalist competition, he becomes “the toughest man alive” – perfect fodder for perverse millionaire Danton Vachs, whose annual manhunt attracts the most vicious killers in the world.
With a title like Death Ring, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a movie about an underground fighting tournament that is known as the “Death Ring” and yet that’s not what this movie is about. Instead, this is similar to The Most Dangerous Game, Hard Target, and those kinds of tales where humans are hunted for sport and the winner gets to take away the villain’s Death Ring (which is an actual ring). The interesting thing is this came out before Hard Target, but it was hardly an original concept at the time. Make no mistake Hard Target is the better movie but Death Ring still manages to deliver the action goods.
The cast in this surprisingly entertaining action picture features the family members of their slightly more famous kin. We’ve got Mike Norris (Son of Chuck), Chad McQueen (son of Steve), Don Swayze (Patrick’s brother) and on villain duties we’ve got the always reliable Billy Drago as the wonderfully creepy Danton Vachs. Drago never even needed to speak in a movie, he could just sneer and look evil and yet I heard he was very nice in real life which is usually the case with actors typecast as villains.
So, the story here is nothing we haven’t seen before, and Death Ring also doesn’t have a huge budget but the recently released Blu-ray remastered it nicely, so it looks and sounds like it came out in the past five years.
There are fight scenes every few minutes, one-liners, some decent kills and the finale features an epic shoot-out and some explosions. At just under 90 minutes, it doesn’t waste any time and delivers everything you could want including unnecessary (yet awesome) nudity.
The supporting cast features several 90’s action movie regulars including Branscombe Richmond (in a small role), George Cheung and Henry Kingi. The most disturbing moment of the film is when Danton Vachs reveals his true nature as he beats someone to death in cold blood; up until that point he was (relatively) charming but this showed us that he isn’t going to be trifled with and made us hate him immediately.
Mike Norris isn’t especially likeable at first as our lead Matt Collins because he can’t decide what to do with his life after leaving the military, so he sometimes takes it out on his girlfriend. He’s never abusive or anything but at times he comes across as a bit of dick. Once he is kidnapped and dumped on Danton’s island, he soon proves that his military training will save his life… and end lots of other peoples too. Chad McQueen deserved to be a bigger star as I enjoyed him in this and Martial Law as well as several other action pictures. He had charisma and looked the part in the action scenes; I loved him dropping grenades on the bad guys during the satisfying final showdown.
Overall, Death Ring may not be a fresh concept but the game cast and near constant action make this a fun ride and easily rewatchable.
