Rothrock

HONOR AND GLORY-1993-Tracy (Cynthia Rothrock), an FBI agent leaves Hong Kong for Washington DC to investigate something about a Soviet warhead detonator. Her sister Joyce (Donna Jason)) beats up a black woman in a parking lot. They both practice martial arts. Most of this badly directed and acted martial arts crime drama is Joyce investigating corrupt banking CEO Jason Slade (John Miler) who calls Ronald Reagan an "old bastard". Eventually Tracy gets involved and gets help from (the unfortunately named) Asian FBI agent Dragon Lee (Robin Shou later in MORTAL KOMBAT) when it turns out Slade has the warhead.

 The whole thing is very disjointed. It almost seems like two movies edited together but it was directed by Godfrey Ho the master of the Kung-Fu paste-up job so that could explain a lot! It even takes time to deviate from the time story to focus on Hideo (Richard Yuen), Slade's disillusioned bodyguard. It also features phony shieks and one actor waits for his cue. Like a lot of Shaw Bros. films at the end four good guys fight the main bad guy.

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Bad Action

24 HOURS TO MIDNIGHT-1985-Cynthia Rothrock is Devon Grady, a martial artist who's husband (Juan Chapa) is killed by gangsters led by "White Powder" Chan (Stack Pierce). Meanwhile two kung-fu cops (one male, one female) ride around beating up thugs. To get revenge Devon dresses as a ninja and bumps off the gang members in various ways. The story line with Rothrock was filmed by writer/director Leo Fong but never finished (several stories abound as to why). A few years later Fong filmed another story featuring the two cops and Brinke Stevens (who also dubbed Rothrock's voice) as Devon's avenging ninja. Scenes of Rothrock crying over her hubby's death and him showing her some martial arts moves are repeated several times. Fong himself shows up un-billed toward the end and is blown up. 

This inept paste up job was only Rothrock's second role (she made many more direct to video) and martial artist/actor/preacher Fong's first as director (he only got slightly better). He and Pierce acted together in LOW BLOW and KILLPOINT.

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Inept Action

MANHATTAN CHASE-2000-A hit man named Jason (Loren Avedon) is busted in NYC by Nancy (Cynthia Rothrock), a tough female cop. After spending only 6 years in jail he gets out and wants to live a normal life with his young son. Meanwhile Jason's ex-boss searches for a stolen drug cache. He wipes out a family who's stupid abusive father may have been responsible but his step-daughter escapes and runs smack into Jason. His ex-wife shows up too and as it goes is also Nancy's sister. 

This movie is badly acted and directed and the fights pretty ineptly staged except when Nancy kicks ass which is about the only highlight unless you count the fact that many scenes were shot in NYC and the outer boroughs. A bad movie was shot in my hood!!! 

This was the last film by the incompetent Godfrey Ho (using the alias Godfrey Hall; he's used other names too) who also directed Rothrock in HONOR AND GLORY.

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