Lion Fist 4K 2026

A shamelessly old-fashioned and cliché-ridden but thoroughly entertaining retro martial arts actioner, Lion Fist treads a very similar line to that of The Last Kumite, sharing a lot of its DNA, one of pure martial-arts melodrama. It's derivative, occasionally clumsy and often corny, but beneath the rough edges is a genuine love for old-school martial-arts cinema, one that wants to give genre fans punches, kicks, colourful villains and old-school tournament theatrics rather than squashing the action beneath elaborate mythology or self-conscious irony. It's completely uninterested in reinventing the formula; instead, it wants to resurrect it with all the familiar ingredients and very few new ones. As a modern digital B-movie, it was always going to have an uphill battle to win me over, but first-time director Taim M. Adams does a decent job of constructing something that feels deliberately transported from the direct-to-video action boom of the '80s and '90s, even if his filmmaking doesn't always match his enthusiasm. The editing is clean and the action vigorous, with plenty of training montages thrown in for good measure. There's even the added benefit of a Paul Hertzog score and Stan Bush theme song. The appearances of martial-arts veterans such as Keith Cooke, Gary Daniels and Kurt McKinney are also particularly welcome. Above all, Lion Fist isn't cynical about its clichés; instead, embracing its roots with love, it may not have the originality of the classics it imitates, but it does at least understand what makes those flicks enjoyable.