The convoluted plot of this martial arts / action flick from veteran schlock specialist Ted V. Mikels mostly boils down to the efforts of weapons merchants to deliver supplies to mercenaries and revolutionaries. The plot also involves a dirty magazine used as a front, a young woman named Catt Valone (Sharon Hughes) attempting to get revenge on behalf of her father, and a martial artist / former government agent (Cheng-Wu "Tiger" Yang) coerced back into action as his old associates desperately need him to acquire some nuclear detonators from the bad guys.
Make no mistake, this is pretty stupid and lame. A lot of the action is uninspired, even if real life Grand Master Yang is able to handle himself well in hand to hand combat. One would hope that this would reach certain heights (or depths, if you will) of ineptitude and absurdity, but it never really does. Mostly, it's just kind of boring. It's not that easy to care that much about this "story" or the characters, and the villains are, by and large, a nondescript, non- threatening lot. On the plus side, there are a few gorgeous girls (B movie favourite Jewel Shepard makes an appearance as "Miss August"), a little bit of T & A, and some moderately amusing sequences towards the end. Things do improve once the Detective Peterson character shows up. Just get a load of this idiots' "disguise". The music score is also kind of fun.
Yang, even basically playing "himself", is not a particularly expressive or charismatic guy. Not all of the performances are that terrible, though:Hughes ("Chained Heat") is modestly appealing, and Ronald Gregg is good in the role of Yangs' associate Harry. Look for Mikels himself (he's a hard guy to miss, what with that moustache) as a mercenary in the training camp.
Trivia at IMDb states that financing problems caused the movie to take around nine years to reach completion.
Four out of 10.
