Back in the 1990s, a British trade magazine sent me to Los Angeles every November to report on the American Film Market — then mostly an emporium of cheapo genre films, held at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. It was the heyday of the straight-to-video actioner and the doors of many sales suites were decorated with posters for kung fu and kickboxing movies that, if their sellers got lucky, would soon fill the shelves of video rental shops from Dubai to Durban.
That action boom has long since faded away, as have many of the Asian production and sales companies I once covered. The genre itself survives, but the socks and chops are now standardly supplemented by gaudy CGI effects the old exploitation outfits could have never afforded.
So Kurando Mitsutake's "Karate Kill," a low-budget action movie shot in Japan and the United States with hardly any digital assistance, is an old-school throw-back, right down to the retro poster that prominently features the worked-out body and deadly left fist of mononymous star Hayate.