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Rating: Explaining this film somehow means explaining various underground cultures of the eighties. I am referring primarily to a certain imagery that, starting from John Milius's 'Conan the Barbarian' in 1982, brought back the good old 'peplum' in a fantasy version different from Tolkien's more cerebral one, and which found its counterpart in video games like 'Golden Axe' and in the boom of role-playing games like 'Dungeons & Dragons' (not to mention that Stephen King was writing the first novels of the 'The Dark Tower' series during those years). Secondly, to that more minimalist cyberpunk culture characterized by post-apocalyptic and decadent settings that we can start with 'Mad Max' in 1979. Both these subgenres found fertile ground in B-movie productions from the eighties up to the mid-eighties and clearly today constitute material of interest only for genre enthusiasts or the curious.
The symbol actor of this cinematic subculture is certainly Rutger Hauer who, after starting as a dramatic actor in the Netherlands, has acted in various genres and was the protagonist in dozens of minor science fiction films, after also being the protagonist in 'Blade Runner' in the most famous scene in the history of modern science fiction cinema.
In this 1990 film directed by David Webb Peoples (screenwriter of top productions including 'Blade Runner' itself...) titled 'The Blood of Heroes', all those characteristics I introduced mix into a single story set in an unspecified post-atomic era in which common people live in villages on the brink of poverty and are divided by vast desolate lands, while the ruling class lives in a kind of underground and decadent city called 'Nine City'.
The protagonist of the story is Sallow (Rutger Hauer), a player of a sport called 'The Game', which we can consider a violent and brutal derivation of American football. The players are called 'juggers'. Each team has five members: three 'defenders' armed with spiked maces, a 'guard' armed with a chain, and a 'quick'. The game periods are three and last '100 stones'. The aim of the game is to free the quick and allow them to stick a dog's skull onto a stake in the opponent's field.
Professional players of the game participating in an official league held in arenas within the underground cities are generally treated with respect not only by all other inhabitants but also by the ruling classes and live under relatively good conditions. Sallow was one of the strongest professional players, but after clashing with influential members of the aristocratic class, he lost everything he had and started 'playing' around the world on the surface. He will return to 'Nine City' only many years later, driven by the charge of a new young player on his team, the quick Kidda (Joan Chen), and the desire to reclaim his name.
Focused mostly on the action scenes where the teams compete in the game, I must say that - upon re-watching it after many years - the film turned out to be more valid than I could remember. Meanwhile, Joan Chen is simply adorable. The characterization of the settings and the character of Sallow in particular ('Sharko' in the Italian version) and even the depiction of the combat scenes work well. Except in the finale where perhaps due to different lighting and unfortunate editing choices, the dynamics of the action (although predictable) become completely incomprehensible. But this is, after all, the only weak point in a film that, with all its limitations, we can still consider perfectly successful.
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