This is like no other Jet Li movie you've ever seen. His character, Danny, master of the Chinese art of Wushu, has spent his life a slave to Glasgow loanshark Bart (Bob Hoskins, playing what I imagine is a very extreme version of the adult version of the Simpsons character with the same name.) Having only mentally reached the age of 10, Danny wears a collar around his neck, and Danny has been raised, after been taken from his mother (Jaclyn Tze Wey), to be Bart's personal pit bull, and when Bart removes Danny's collar and commands him to attack uncooperative mafiosos, Danny erupts into violent fury, beating the tar out of anyone who comes whithin five feet of him. Bart also uses Danny in the illegal fight circuit, wining him bundles of dough. In his first match, Danny kills his enemy with one forceful blow to the throat.

One day, a car accident hospitalizes Bart, and the badly wounded Danny runs away, encountering Blind Piano tuner Sam (the one and only Morgan Freeman) and his stepdaughter Vanessa (Kerry Condon). Danny stays with them, and soon, he begins to become more of a human than a dog. He evens voluntarily removes his own collar, and accepts Sam offer to return to th U.S. with him and Vannesa when she finishes High School.

But Bart, of course, is not dead, and before long, is hot on Danny's trail. Danny, who has lost all desire to kill or hurt people, is not going to give up his newfound freedom without a fight.

And fight he does. UNLEASHED has what are quite arguably the most down-to-earth, realistic, street-style martial arts fights of any Jet Li movie. The movie opens with one of the best fights Jet has put out in years.

I was particularly pleased with the final one-on-one match, in which Danny takes on a bald martial arts fighter. Baldy, called simplyTHe Stranger in the end credits, is played by Brithish Tae Kwon Do champion Michael Ian Lambert, who was alos the The Scottish Fighter in Van Damme's THE QUEST, and who previous traded punches with Jet in the original BLACK MASK. These two give each other one hell of a battle.

But UNLEASHED manages to effectively balance the action with the story of a man with the mind of a child and the instincts of dog experiencing kindnes for the first time and gradually regaining his humanity

The plot is so universally well known at this point, that I will condense it and focus the majority of this review on those questions. Harvard Symbology Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is summoned to The Louvre in Paris to help decipher a serious of clues left by the curator, who has been mysteriously murdered. Before long, Langdon discovers that the Parisian police believe him to be the murderer, and he joins forces with the curators granddaughter, Sophie Noveau (Audrey Tatou) to get to the bottom of the mystery and, after meeting up with historian Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellan), discover that the murder involves a secret the Catholic Church will kill to suppress, going all the way back to the time of Jesus.

Religious leaders have had nothing but contempt for the film and the novel, objecting to the very notion that Jesus may have had more Earthly aspects to his life than we have ever known. They insist the film is completely fiction, and maintain that the Catholic Church, and Opus Dei in particular, are not really like what they are depicted as in THE DAVINCI CODE. To them I say, there is a Chinese proverb, that goes like this:

The guilty always proclaim their innocence the loudest.

As to the controversy in question, I have this simple quote from Tom Hanks in the film that speaks for me and I believe, most Christians: "Why couldn't Jesus have been a Father and still been capable of all those miracles?"

To me, Jesus experiencing sexuality and having an actual life actually strengthens faith. It shows what he lost by giving his life on the cross: his wife, his child(ren), the life of a simple man, uninterrupted by significance and martyrdom.

The baby-faced Michelle plays Fok Ming-Ming, a Chinese pilot/mercenary. She is recruited by the Chinese to head to Northern China to locate Agent 001 (Derek Yee). She must transport the humorous Youda (Lowell Lo), the ruler of Kaal, back to Sourthen China. The Japanese army led by General Toga (Matsui Tesuya), are trying to softne up Youda to Imperealist Japan, hiding the fact that they intend to use Kaal as a site for a new poison gas factory. Ming and Agent 001 agree to help fight off the Japanese invaders, leading to many black-eyes, both Chinese and Japanese.

It's nice to see a Hong Kong movie without much wire-work that still manages to impress with the choreography, and the incredible inpact of landing blows. In her interview on the [UK] DVD, Michelle describes the experience of making MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS as having been "possibly the one time when I said I would never do another action film." No surprising, considering that the original three-week shooting schedule in Taiwan extended to three months, and the filmmakers also had to endure a huge earthquake while working. Michelle remembers MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS not as a fun movie experience, but "very challenging."

But what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and Michelee has made one hell of a kung fu/World War II movie that helped pave the way for her many subsequent roles. And having Tae Kwon Do legend Hwang jang-lee in with you is always a major plus, but his fight with Michelle is probebly the best one he's put out since battling Jackie Chan in DRUNKEN MASTER.

There are many magnificent wariors in the Hong Kong movie industry, and MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS proved Michelle, even in her youth and rookie-ness in martial arts movies, to be one of them.

I had seen none of them before, but I had ordered them sight unseen because of the fact that I'm a military kid living in another country, and so copies of the OUATIC series were quite scarce. I had never actually seen any Asian films before in their original languages, so you can see that i felt like ihad might have made a mistake.

Boy was I wrong! I had never seen anything like this before, and I was with the movie every step of the way, carefully following my trusty english subtitles for plot references, although I could absolutely not take my eyes off the screen in any one th fabulous fight scenes, especially the finally, in which good old Wong Fei-Hung (Jet Li, about the umpte-millionth Wong Fei-Hung) engages in a fierce martial arts battle with the sinister Master Yim, whose in cahoots with the bad guys, who are kidnapping Chinese for slave labor and prostitution, and who wants to defeat Wong so that he can be the number one kung fu master.

This particular scene starts out on an elaborate structure of ladders, and then goes to the ground for some more fightin'. True, the OUATIC series is not a wire-fu movie, but the occasional assistance of wires allows some of the more breathtaking stunts to come out.

The point is that ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA holds a spot in the hall of fame of those martial arts movies that have surpassed all standards and expectations, and will no doubt stand the test of time. The other films in this "Kung Fu Hall of Fame" include (but aren't limited to) ENTER THE DRAGON, FIST OF LEGEND, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, the DRUNKEN MASTERs, RAPID FIRE, THE ONE, and loads of others. If you have not seen any of these, ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA is as good place to start with as any. Just sit back, and feast your eyes.

Plotwise, TOM YUM GOONG is the same movie as ONG BAK, only Tony's character is named Kham, the ONG BAK buddha's head is replaced with two elephants from Kham's village, the movie takes place in Sydney, Australia instead of Bankok, and a handful of the dialouge is in English. They've even brought Tony ONG BAK co-star Petchtai Wongkamlao in as a Sydney cop.

Okay, so that's the plot. Nothing GONE WITH THE WIND-ish. But the film certainly doesn't lack in action. There are a number of great fights in TOM YUM GOONG. The first, when Kham storms into a local poacher station demanding to know where his elephants have been taken. The warehouse fight, featuring Tony jumping into (and kicking his pursuers out of) subway cars, executing backflips and sumersaults to evade his dirt bike ridin' enemys.

The next action scene may be one of the best ones. It is a continuous single shot of Tony climbing up a circular staircase and crushing succesive waves of evildoers to get to the top. This GAME OF DEATH style-battle is immediately followed by a resturant brawl with of the bad guys Wushu-trained henchmen.

Then Tony takes on a Capoeira expert in the sahllow pool inside a Buddhist temple. The is arguably the best one-on-one match Tony has put out. He soon after faces a hulking henchmen named T.K., played by pro-wrestler Nathan Jones, who ultimately defeats Tony.

Finally, we come to the big showdown. As is typical of these movies, the main showdown is preceded with a prelimenary showdown in which the villian (or in this case, villainess) sends out God know's how many henchmen to stop the hero, to no avail. This scene, clearly inspired by Bruce Lee's classic cave sequence in ENTER THE DRAGON, has Tony crippling what must be at least three dozen guys with a combination of throws, bone-cracking joint locks, and high, aerial spinning kicks. After finishing with them, Tony faces his big rematch with T.K.

Bottom line: TOM YUM GOONG is Tony Jaa signing in blood that he is ready to be Jet Li's successor. If anyone felt that Tony would not be able to live up to his own standards after ONG BAK, TOM YUM GOONG will put all that to rest.

And in truth, FIST OF LEGEND doesn't have much to do with FIST OF FURY, other than than the basic plot (a martial artist avenging his master's murder) and the Chinese vs Japanese element, so no, I don't consider this a remake of FIST OF FURY, but even if you do, I promise you FIST OF LEGEND is by far the better film.

The movie begins in 1937, during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Chen Zhen (Jet Li) is attending college in Japan when he learns that his master, or as Chinese call them, Sifu, was killed in a match with the Sensei of Shanghai's Japanese school. Though Chen Zhen does not hate the Japanese (his girlfriend Mitsuko, played by the lovely Nakayama Shinobu, is Japanese), he returns to Shanghai, and challenges the Sensei who beat his Sifu to a match. Chen Zhen easily wins, and therefore deduces that since he won, his Sifu should have as well. Chen Zhen has an autopsy performed which reveals that shortly before the match, his Sifu was poisoned.

The poisoning is the work of the evil Japanese Genral Fujita, who wants to lead Japan into conquering China. Fujita had the Sifu poisoned because he was the leader of a Chinese resistance movement against the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Now Chen Zhen is out for one thing: revenge.

Yes, vengence is a typical, almost traditional element of kung fu movies, but FIST OF LEGEND also focuses on the romance between Chen Zhen and Mitsuko, such as the disapproval of Chen Zhen's fellow Chinese towards him romancing a Japanese. When she arrives in Shanghai, she is immediately cast out as being an evil, almost less than human, person simply for her nationality. But Chean Zhen comes to her defense.The message appears to be racial tolerance must always prevail, even in times where one race mistreats another.

But martial arts action is still what audiences are looking for here, and those not wanting wire-fu will be pleased. Two drawn-out confrontations stand out in this film. One is a match between Chen Zhen and Funokoshi Fumio, Mitsuko's uncle. The other is the final battle between Chen Zhen and Fujita, in which you can almost literally feel it as both men punch and kick the hell out of each other.

So the next time your in the mood for a real action-packed kung fu film, FIST OF LEGEND should come to mind.

ONG BAK is about Ting (Tony Jaa), a master of the art of Muay Thai, who volunteers to travel to Bangkok for his village to retrieve a Budhha's, which the villagers believe gives the town good blessings. Sort of a martial arts version of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM.

ONG BAK is Tony Jaa's first starring role, but you can bet your last nickel it won't be his last (He's already completed and put out the ONG BAK sequel, TOM YUM GOONG, available on [...].) While the movie is pretty lacking in martial arts for the first half hour or so, the on foot chase through the streets of Bankok more than make up for it, with Tony leaping over and under moving cars, through a wreath of Barbed wire, and literally running over the heads of his pursuers.

Whenthe movie does get into the martial arts, it does not disappoint. At one point Tony is forced to fight three matches in an underground fight cicuit, all of which he wins.

But the best is saved for the finale, when Tony crushes some thugs in a cave, has to fight his way past some more thugs to retrieve the Buddha's head (and keep them from stealing an even bigger Buddha's head), and face-off against the number two bad guy.

I must say, that being a martial artist myself, with a black belt in Tae Kwon Do (which Tony also is an expert in), ONG BAK has given me a completely different view of Muay Thai. I used to think it was nothing but low round-house kicks, knes, and elbows by skinny Thai guys. I sure am glad I've never had to fight Tony Jaa. He'd have sure proved to me that Muay Thai isn't necesarily superior to Tae Kwon Do, but a Muay Thai fighter is nevertheless, a force to be reckoned with.

ONG BAK has set a new standard for martial arts movies, and it's one that Tony Jaa will clearly be able to live up to.

In PIT FIGHTER, Jack (Dominique Vandenberg)is a man with no past. For reasons he is unaware of, he has survived a near-fatal bullet to the brain, which has completely blasted his memory away with it, and leaving him stranded in a small town in Southern Mexico. With no money and no identity, Jack befriends Manolo (Steven Bauer, of SCARFACE) and soon discovers he is a martial arts expert, and gets involved in the sport of Pit Fighting, one of those absolutely-no-rules martial arts fight clubs, and after dominating as the reaigning champion for the last five years, he sees a woman he hasn't seen in five years. His past begins to return to him, and, after being baptized as a Catholic and trying to reconcile himself with God, he realizes, "I may not have been the best of men."

Belgian-born Dominique Vandenberg is no stranger to martial arts. A former legionairre, he has been training since the age of four, in everything from Muay Thai and Judo to Krav Maga and Kyokushinkai Karate. He is known for thraining Leonardo DiCaprio in knife-fighting for GANGS OF NEW YORK, but by far, hi most noted pre-PIT FIGHTER role was as the fighter who gets frozen by Sub-Zero in MORTAL KOMBAT.

Dom brings a suitably hard-edge to PIT FIGHTER. His kicking ability is fantastic, and the sight of his agile, quick hands in motion is nothing short of jaw-dropping. His many opponents range from challenging to push-overs. Dom's first match in th Pit along with his two matches against Andre 'Chyna' McCoy, who doubled for Lurence Fishburne in THE MATRIX, are the best.

If you like brutal but beautiful martial arts choreography, PIT FIGHTER is right up your alley.

DRIVE is often compared to Jackie Chan's RUSH HOUR. While it's clear that DRIVE is greatly influenced by Jackie Chan's Hong Kong pics, I found it more comparable to CHILL FACTOR.

The story begins as our hero Toby Wong (Mark Dacascos) arrives in San Francisco from Hong Kong, attempting to escape his slavery to a Hong Kong assassin ring. He has a "bio-engine" inside his chest that greatly inhances his physicality, and has learned that he can earn $5 million from an American coporation to is interested in buying the chip. Naturally, Wong's superiors don't want this, and have sent some goons after him. Wong kidnaps Malik Brody (Kadeem Hardison) to DRIVE him to L.A., and insures Malik's cooperation by offering a 50% cut.

DRIVE takes the best parts of Jackie Chan's movies and shows them to an American audience. For example, The lengthy brawl in the motel garage I found reminiscent of the auto-test center finale in TWIN DRAGONS. Also, the excellent final match between Mark and Masaya Kato follows the Jackie Chan tradition of the fighters being so evenly matched that their duel goes back and forth to the point where you just don't know who will win.

Even Mark plowing an opponent down on a Motorcycle is something of a tradition in kung fu movies (it's been seen in POLICE STORY, RAPID FIRE, IN THE LINE OF DUTY IV,etc.)

And the comedy in DRIVE in every way matches the action, so do yourself a favor, and check out DRIVE for Kadeem Hardison's comedy and Mark Dacascos' FISTS OF FURY.

Review of BEST OF THE BEST 3: NO TURNING BACK

Korean-American martial arts expert/champion/instructor Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee) goes to visit his sister, Karen (Cristina Lawson) brother-in-law Jack Banning (Christopher McDonald), whose also sherrif, and nephew Justin (Kitao Sakurai) in Liberty, USA. He is appalled to discover his hometown has become a hive of racism. The Church of the Aryan Crusade, led by Donnie Hanson (Mark Rolston), seeks to do what the Nazi's and KKK have failed to, destroy all non-WASP's. They've already murdered the town's Baptist minister Reverend Phelps (Andra Ward), apparently disgusted at his sermons of a God who doesn't judge people by race or creed. It's up to Tommy, with a little help from Sherrif Jack and schoolteacher Margo Preston (Gina Gershon) to drive these neo-Nazi's out of Liberty once and for all!!!

Review of BEST OF THE BEST: WITHOUT WARNING

Martial arts insructor Tommy Lee lives in L.A. with his daughter Stephanie (Jessica Huang), now as a single father. He has recently began training the LAPD in his techniques of Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido. While in a local grocery store just trying to get a cake for Stephanie's birthday, Mickey (Jill Ritchie) comes in screaming, being pursued by Russian mafiosos after the disc she has containing evidence of their organizations counterfeit money crimes. The thugs kill Mickey, but Tommey kicks the stuffing out of them, and escapes unharmed, not knowing that Mickey has slipped the disc into his pocket. The Russian thugs blast into Tommy's house looking for the disc, but Tommy fights them off and drops Stephanie at the local church while he seeks help from the cops. All he encounters is a crooked cop who Tommy is forced to kill in self-defense. The L.A.P.D., led by grouchy Detective Gresko (Ernie Hudson), belieing Tommy to be a cop-killer are hot on his trail, as are the Russian mafiosos, putting Tommy in one hell of a pickle.

I'll start by declaring my one and only disappointment with both films, and that is that after Phillip faced off against massive former Mr. Universe Ralph Moeller in BEST OF THE BEST 2, he really has no single formidable opponent in either NO TURNING BACK or WITHOUT WARNING. Fights in both movies where Tommy faces off with only one opponent routinely become instantly achieved victories on his part, save for a thrilling knife fight with Donnie Hanson at the end of NO TURNING BACK. But this was probably to be expected anyway. As a result, Phillip routninely takes on two, three and more opponents in the majority of both film's battles. Of course, that's what martial arts guys do. Phillip Rhee certainly provess both his well known martial arts skills and directing ability in both NO TURNING BACK and WITHOUT WARNING. It's an absolute mystery to me why he has been doing these movies ever since.

And the end-credits sequence of WITHOUT WARNING, showing Tommy displaying a wide array of self-defense techniques on his students (with him flowing like water, just as Bruce himself insisted martial arts are about) is another gem of beautiful, slow-motion martial arts action.

But as a bad, bad, bad movie, it's no SOUL PLANE. Now that's a blessing from God if I've ever seen one.

Jesus of Nazereth (Phil Caracas) is in Ottawa, once again teaching people to love one another and be more spiritual. But vampires are running wild in Ottawa,able to withstand sunlight with human flesh graphted onto their bodies and Jesus decides to put off his spiritual quest to fight the vampires, who are particualry enamored by lesbians for blood. Armed with wooden stakes, some holy kung fu and allied with masked Mexican wrestlin Champ El Santo (Jeff Moffet), Jesus heads to the local barber shop for a shave and a hair cut. He aquires another ally in the form of Mary Magnum (Maria Moulton), and is now ready for action!!!

JESUS CHRIST VAMPIRE HUNTER is everything theaverage student film is: Poorly made, poorly written, hilariously entartinaing in it's sheer lack of anything that could be called a budget, etc. It's also intentionally funny and enterataing. The musical number, with Jesus rallying Canadians all over Ottawa to his cause while healing people of their various handicaps, is perfectly funny and captivating; apparantly, the filmmakers drew as much on JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR as they vampire and kung fu movies.

The martial arts sequences are another story. Being a blackbelt myself, I have long entertained the notion of Jesus as a martial artist. Even though in his life, there is no record of him having any martial arts training, his teachings make him, in my eyes, a true martial artist. But on the physical end of martial arts, Jesus is not too good. The big fight occurs in a big park full of people who completely ignore Jesus beating up an army of Atheists. Yes, that's right, Atheists, who come at him a waves of five (the movie's director, Lee Gordon Demabre, apparently thinks thirty-six people can fit into a jeep) and are defeated with Jesus giving some of the sloppiest kicks ever captured on film. The very fact the there is NOBODY in the movie who is any good, and EVERYBODY engages in fight after fight, is an amusing, hilarious, if boneheaded concept. The same can be said for the movie's narrator, and the spinning cross that comes as a direct reference the 1960's BATMAN series

But of course, you can't make a movie about Jesus without biblical messages, even if he is hunting vampires. Jesus actually talks to God through a bowl of cherries ("Call your mom; she misses you" the Almighty intones); He heals a vampire's throat after slitting it ("Not even this separates you from my love"); experiences a modern-day good samaritan experience first-hand; And gives a sermon on a mount. Jesus also questions why the vampires select lesbians for their skin-grafting experimnets; he is told that their deviant lifestyle makes them ir-redeemable in the eye's of the Church, so no pries will bother investigating this "Critical Lesbian Shortage". And Jesus says something I honesty suspect he would say about Gays, "There's nothing deviant about love." And trust me, I'm not Gay.

JESUS CHRIST VAMPIRE HUNTER is a movie that must be seen to be believed, not for it's martial arts action, not for it's messages about accepting gays as children of God, not for being a biblical movie, but for being definitive proof that any really, really bad movie can be funny, when it means to be, and when it doesn't.

SILVER HAWK is even better than THE TOUCH. More action, more humor (not the campy, BATMAN-style, as this movie's detractors would have you believe), and as villians, it includes BLADE II star Luke Goss, and even better, playing one of his main henchmen, Michael Jai White!!!

SILVER HAWK takes place in the futre where billionareiss Lulu Wong (Michelle Yeoh) lives a double life. In public, she's Lulu Wong. In, well, public, she's also the Silver Hawk, only with a mask on. What distinquises Lulu from other super-heroes, is she actually finds it fun to battle evil-doers.

Her greatest challenge yet comes two-fold. On the one-hand, she is rekindling a romance with police man Rich Man (Richie Jen), whom she studied Kung Fu with at the Shaolin Temple, and who seems to be taking quite a while remembering who Lulu is. He also is hotly pursuing the Silver Hawk, who he is unawrae is Lulu.

On the other hand, she must defeat Alexander Wolfe (Luke Goss), a demented genuis with martial arts skills to match hers and two prostethic arms made of titanium. Wolfe has kidnapped an inventor and is forcing him to turn his latest invention into a mind control device, which Wolfe will use to brainwash humanity and conquer the world.

It certainly is great seeing Michelle back in action. In terms of bith her beauty and her atleticism, you'd never guess she was 42 when SILVER HAWK was released in Asia. Her best battles in the film can be found with Michael Jai White, who has literally one line, but his skills confrim that actions speak louder than words. Michelle trading punches with Luke Goss is also noteworthy.

Alot of reviewers thought SILVER HAWK was a campy, BATMAN-style kung fu movie, but I must diasgree. The action and the humor were both outstanding, and personally, I think it's about time a superhero movie came out of Asia. Even better that the superhero is a woman. Don't listen to the detractors, SILVER HAWK is pure gold!!!!!!!

Like Tokyo Raiders, SEOUL RAIDERS has a plot that makes about as much sense as that of MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE. Something to do with Owen lee (Richie Jen)an American-born Chinese CIA agent who steals some counterfeit money plates and flees to Seoul, Korea, and this necessitates that Wushu master/ secret agentLam (Tony Leung) join forces with porfessional thief/babe J.J. (Shu Qi)call upon his three Korean angels (Choi Yeo-Jin, Cho Soo-Hyn, and Cho Han-Na)to get the plates back.

Like any Jackie Chan movie, SEOUL RAIDERS is made to be a comedy-dominated martial arts action flick, and there are several entertaining fights. The opening fight with Tony Leung and Shu Qi playing keep-away with some evil-doers statr off the movie with a bang. One very short fight that takes play while Lam is rounding up the Korean babes, all of whom are very attractive, showcases Sun-ah, played by Choi Yeo-Jin beating up some sexaully harrassing bikers with some swift Tae Kwon Do kicks. Shu Qi's humorous battle with Richie Jen totally outdoes any of her martial arts in SO CLOSE. Arguably the best fight takes place in alley, with Tony Leung fighting off several Korean thugs, including a quick-moving bouncer/Tae Kwon Do expert. Being a Tae Kwon Do blackbelt myself, I am quite pleased with all of the Korean fighters execution in SEOUL RAIDERS, a sequel that would fully justify any upcoming BANKOK RAIDERS

U.S. Navy Seal Joe Jinno (Kane Kosugi) is released from an American military detention center to the decrepit Tokyo of 2009 as an agent recruited by the Japanese government to bust drug traffickers. The most popular drug is an extrmely addictive steroid known as Blood Heat. Drug lords, hiding out in the worst parts of Tokyo, push their products while running a no-rules combat circuit where fighters, high on Blood Heat battle to the death. Joe's partner Aguri Katsuragi (Sho Aikawa) is captured by drug lord Kenji Rai (Masaya Kato)and forced to fight in the circuit against Blood Heat addict Lee Son-min (Ken Lo). He's brutally killed and Joe vows revenge. While Kenji attempts to force a scientist to manufacture more Blood Heat, Joe allies himself with Aguri's daughter and a group of orphaned children known as "Sewer Rats" and they declare war on the drug lord and his operation.

Let me just say that I, for one, am glad that drug dealers have finally made a name for a drug that can be an apprpriate action movie tittle. Kane has some of the fastest moves put on film.

He seems to always be attacking his opponents from every direction, and is able to deliver more punches in a split second than you can possibly count.

Several matches are worthy some karate oscar award. The hallway fight, which begins with Kane turning a corner and hurling two knives down the hall, is mind-blowing, and may be the the only scene since the original POLICE STORY to shatter so much glass. Kane's lenghty cage match with Ken Lo, who is aging but nevertheless can kick with the best of them, provides some of the best action. Kane's aggression in this scene is unparalled by any other fight in BLOOD HEAT.

The final match between Kane and Masaya Kato, of DRIVE fame, is also well done, and, to quote kungfucinema.com, "may be the first time in film history that two screen fighters duel with sledgehammers."

BLOOD HEAT ranks up with other great Japanese martial arts movies as THE PRINCESS BLADE and is fully worthy of repeated viewing. Kane's stepping out from his father's shadow mirrors Brandon Lee stepping out of Bruce's shadow and making a few great movies of his own before his tragic death (RAPID FIRE being the best one.) Kane may be new to having the lead in a martial arts movie, but if BLOOD HEAT is an indication of anything, it's of Kane's ability to carry an action movie.