I came across
the title of this Australian film doing a Google search for female action
movies. And I found it. In the opening credits, I see the name Kim Maree
Penn flash across the screen. First. This gets me excited. Admittedly, it
doesn't take much. But still, she was one of those gweilo females who I came
upon in a number of Hong Kong action films. Almost always as a villainous
and in small roles. Just one fight and she was usually gone. In the Line
of Duty 5, Police Story III, Knock Off and How to Meet the Lucky Stars are
four of the eleven films she made in Hong Kong. She impressed because she
was the real deal. Coming from Australia, she won a number of World Championships
in various martial arts, but even though quite attractive, she was never
able to get to the Cynthia Rothrock level in Hong Kong. Who knows why. Well,
she probably does. Her last film in Hong Kong was in 1999 and after that,
only this film. She apparently now runs a security firm in Hong Kong.
This all to say, I was really looking forward
to this. And it is pretty . . . awful. A pilot for a TV series that never
happened. For good reason. It is just a bad plot with silly characters which
is ok if the action is good but it isn't. There are a number of fights but
the choreography is slow and overly edited. Goofy when it should have taken
itself seriously. Maybe this is why Australian TV is unknown outside of the
country. That and the accents. They cure that by having two Americans in
the cast.
A weird group of actors. She and her father
run a detective agency. The father is played by none other than the Six Million
Dollar Man, Lee Majors who shows that aging does not make you a better actor.
She is getting married as the film begins, but gets a call from dad that
he is in trouble. A female (Simone Kessell who has gone on to better things)
is beating him up and is looking for a gem. Dad ends up in the hospital in
a coma with Majors doing his best acting and she hires an ex-Australian cop
played by an actor from Brooklyn (Thomas Calabro). If anyone gets all three
of these gems it will give them immortality. Worse than it sounds. No wonder
she left acting after this. Still a favorite from her Hong Kong films.
