British action star Scott Adkins has starred in several martial arts film franchises, but how do they rank from weakest to strongest? Adkins has been delighting audiences for over twenty years with action films such as Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Hard Target 2, Liquidators and Triple Threat. As Adkins gained more and more followers over the years, Hollywood and Hong Kong also began to take notice of him.
This success led to him being cast in major blockbusters like The Expendables 2 and Doctor Strange, as well as facing Donnie Yen in Ip Man 4: Endgame.
Some of Scott Adkins’ biggest hits have also become franchises, and even the weaker ones still outperform their higher-budget counterparts. Indeed, more often than not, subsequent installments of the series under Adkins’ direction tend to outdo each other. Here’s a ranking of all of Scott Adkins’ franchises, ranked from worst to best, plus some that are already in development.
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3. Debt Collectors
As Scott Adkins began to gain more recognition, he began to dabble more and more in dark comedy roles, and the Debt Collector films put his renowned action talent into comedy, directed by longtime stunt expert Jesse W. Johnson. . In The Debt Collector, Adkins plays French, who is on the verge of losing the lease on his martial arts school, forcing him to team up with local L.A. “middleman” Sue (Louis Mandylor) to earn some emergency income. In the sequel, French and Sue are back at it again, struggling to recover money from a trio of defaulters in a crowded Las Vegas casino.
Like the first film, the fight scenes are less of a life-and-death struggle than a comedic headache that French and Sue have to wade through just to complete their task, although the best of both films is the alley fight in They Live style, with French and Sue finally unable to contain each other’s frustrations with mere verbal sparring. While Ninja 2 is better than both Debt Collector films, French and Sue’s two adventures had a stronger start that they managed to maintain.
2. Ninja
The two ninja films starring Isaac Florentine occupy a strange place in Scott Adkins’ films. The First Ninja was Adkins’ first-time starring role, and his protagonist, American-born Casey Bowman, was tasked with protecting a priceless chest of ninjutsu weapons known as the “Yoroi Bitsu” from the assassins of Masazuki (Tsuyoshi Ihara), who was banned from participating in the duo tournament . . Ninjutsu dojo. “Ninja” doesn’t quite hit the mark that is usually given to the duo of Florentina and Adkins, and its ending in particular feels a little like two fight scenes that should have been combined into one. However, even though the elements were a bit developed, Ninja was well ahead of most theatrical action films.RELATED:
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The 2013 sequel, Ninja 2: Shadow of Tears, took bits and pieces from where the first Ninja could have improved a bit, and essentially, in just 95 minutes, what the first film did well, making it an awesome ninja movie . This time around, Casey’s mission is to avenge the murder of his pregnant wife Namiko (Mika Hiji), and while the film doesn’t go to great lengths to distract the viewer from guessing about the identity of her killers, it’s impossible to get too excited when Casey goes to war on his vendetta. The fight scenes in “Shadow of Tears” are the stuff of inja action movies, including a one-shot battle in a dojo, Adkins’ showdown with fight choreographer Tim Man and Kane Kosugi as ninjutsu master Nakabara.
1. Undisputed
The role that was Scott Adkins’ big break, Yuri Bokya aka The Most Complete Fighter in the World, also came in a sequel that seemingly sprung out of nowhere in Undisputed: Last Man Standing. Directed by Isaac Florentine, Undisputed 2 sees Michael Jai White as former World Heavyweight Boxing champion George “Iceman” Chambers—White replaces Ving Rhames from the first Undisputed—railroaded into a Russian prison in order to set up a fight with the champ behind bars, Yuri Boyka. After Adkins reinvigorated the Undisputed series, the Florentine-helmed 2010 sequel Undisputed 3: Redemption paid that off, shifting Boyka into an anti-hero role and placing him in a prison tournament where the victor will win his freedom.
As Bokya points out to fellow competitor Turbo (Mykel Shannon Jenkins), the real enemies are outside of the ring, with the prison officials pulling strings to ensure the victory of their chosen fighter, Dolor (Marko Zaror). Boyka also has the challenge of his bad knee after his loss in Undisputed 2, which heightens the stakes of the incredible fight scenes of Undisputed 3, including a ring battle with Adkins and Capoeira ace Lateef Crowder dos Santos. Undisputed 3 still saves the best for last in Boyka’s showdown with Dolor, with the painful ending of Undisputed 2 inverted to the tenth power.
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2017’s Boyka: Undisputed continued to show the now free Boyka wasn’t a static character after he accidentally kills an opponent in the ring, and enters a series of fights to pay off the debts to the mob the fighter’s widow is saddled with. Boyka: Undisputed, directed by Todor Chapkanov with Florentine producing, is as jam-packed with jaw-dropping martial arts fights as its two predecessors, pitting Boyka in his first two-on-one ring match with Andy Long Nguyen and fight choreographer Tim Man, and giving Boyka his most challenging foe ever in the towering Koshmar (Martyn Ford). However, the movie is just as concerned as Boyka himself is in atoning for his past sins, and completes Boyka’s transition from the man he was to a genuine hero.