Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee) is a single parent who raises his daughter Stephanie (Jessica Huang) with a caring hand. But one of his friends’ daughter has collected evidence on Russian mobsters who plan to make large amounts of counterfeit money. During a violent shootout in her father’s shop, she manages to slip a tape with all the evidence into Tommy Lee’s jacket, unknowingly to Tommy. Soon afterwards the mob is after the tape and Tommy has to protect his daughter and himself from the ensuing mobsters. It might not be a terrific story, but it does fit the film nicely. Why pretend to have some complex plot when you just want to do an action film? After securing his daughter in the care of a Priest (Paul Gleason), he decides to tackle the situation head-on. The first thing he learns is that the cops can’t be trusted, not even his own friend who he is forced to kill. At the end of the day he can only trust one man, Detective Gresko, played by veteran actor Ernie Hudson. Detective Gresko may be a tough cookie and impossible to work with, but at least he’s a honorable and honest cop. The rest of the film carries on this premise to the very end when Tommy Lee has to face the Russian brothers as they try to leave the country.

As mentioned earlier, it’s the action that makes the film worth seeing. Phillip Rhee’s brother, Simon Rhee, headed the fight choreography. Besides having trained famous stars such as Beau Bridges, Heather Locklear and Faye Dunaway, he holds a 7th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and a 4th degree black belt in Hapkido. While he doesn’t appear on-screen in the film, you can witness his martial arts talent in the first two Best of the Best films. On the other hand, brother Phillip Rhee is no slouch either with three black belts to his name. He has a 6th degree black belt for Tae Kwon Do, a 3rd degree black belt for Hapkido and a 1st degree black belt in Kendo. Together the two siblings form an amazing set of fighting sequences. The fights in the film are hard and as realistic as they come. Phillip Rhee’s favorite way of attacking is to throw someone, and he does a fine job of varying the different moves. The best fight in the film is staged inside the mobster’s gym as he takes on the whole training group. While films like Fist of Fury (1972), My Father is a Hero (1995) and the more recent Kiss of the Dragon (2001) have admittedly done a much better job, it is surely way above the average low-budget fight scenes we are so use to seeing in American films. The gunfights in the film are there to carry the film along and when they do occur they are rather good, although they are very short-lived. They don’t cut away when someone gets shot, which would have been the easy and bloodless path, and this type of action does a nice job of introducing guns into the film. Towards the end Tommy Lee also gets to drive a freakin’ cool red bike and he does a stunt or two on it.

Speaking of the ending... it will probably disappoint most people and it features a ridiculous scene where he throws a bomb into a plane’s wheel mechanism from far away! And what would a film be without music? The music is nothing special though, but it does its job. The film has one of those generic electronic soundtracks that some guy generated on a keyboard. It doesn’t detract from the action though, but it didn’t grab me either.

Phillip Rhee might have done as good a job as he could with his budget and limited acting abilities, but it remains a low-budget film. And that is unforgivable to some people. If you just want a simple action flick with a terrific real-life martial artist then by all means go and at least rent this film. Phillip Rhee hasn’t been involved in the film industry in many years now, but I hope that he gets the chance prove his worth in Hollywood sometime in the future.