It's a familiar story: when her family is threatened by a martial arts expert and bully twice her size, Terry (Graciela Casillas) heads straight to the local kali (Philippine martial arts) master (does every American town have one?) who claims to know nothing about fighting, but has an endless supply of sage one-liners. And the rest is history.
This movie is full of worthwhile messages about women empowering themselves without losing their femininity, and it gives some interesting background on Philippine history and culture. The folk-dance scenes are particularly good. Ms. Casillas is a martial arts great, a multiple world champion and black belt, who has devoted much of her life to helping women and teaching martial arts and self-defence in an American University. Anything she does deserves respect and she is also expert in the fighting techniques used here - the scenes of her training sessions are also excellent.
Sadly though this is not a brilliant movie. Casillas was hired as martial arts trainer, then offered the lead role when the original actress was fired. She had never been trained to act and got little support from the novice director (no surprise he never directed again). The film plays like Karate Kid with a woman instead of a kid, supported by a bunch of wooden TV actors and bit players. Despite Casillas' obvious skills, even the fight scenes aren't great - short, scrappy and never competitive enough to be exciting. The plot is simple and obvious, the direction clumsy, there are plenty of sound booms in shot and the dialog is corny and predictable throughout.
Watch this, if you get the chance, for the beautiful, formidable and entirely admirable Ms Casillas alone. But it's a shame such worthwhile messages were presented so poorly.
