I have never seen a film with Cynthia before this one with the exception of the much newer Santa's Summer Home and she was pretty cute in that one, in this one she blew my mind with her cuteness. Her yells as she does her karate and kicks are even cute! If she were kicking my butt, I would also be falling in love. Unfortunately, she is paired with the not nearly as charismatic as his father, Chad McQueen and the film is not as good as it could be due to this and a few questionable decisions in terms of plot and such.

The plot has a guy who is an excellent martial arts cop whom they refer to as Martial Law! His brother though is a dumb dude who wants to work for David Carradine who is an evil dude who demonstrates his karate prowess by taking out the James Bond villain Oddjob! His brother actually does a good job for Carradine, but the problem is some crazy dude really wants to work for Carradine again despite the fact Carradine loathes him. So the younger brother ends up dead and Martial Law must be enacted along with his super cute girlfriend!

David Carradine is pretty good in this and does good as the bad guy. Too bad they could not come up with a better fight for him and Chad at the end because it was a letdown after all the buildup. I much preferred Cynthia's portion of the fight with the guy with the heavy British accent, mainly because I enjoyed watching her beat him up as much as I enjoyed watching that crazy guy who wanted a job finally being killed! Seriously, Carradine did not like you, what did you think he was going to do?

So it had some good action and watching Cynthia made my heart aflutter; however, the disappointing final contest between Chad and David plus David's lack of charisma dropped this film down a notch. There is a sequel to this and Chad is gone and I think Cynthia is the star so I will have to check that one out for sure! This one is not bad, bad and was entertaining, it just needed a bit of work.

Cynthia Rothrock kicked off her movie career in Hong Kong, but was eventually lured back to the U.S. to star in numerous martial arts films, very few of which come close to the quality of her Eastern output. Martial Law, one of her earlier American efforts, is a forgettable action flick with Ms. Rothrock relegated to supporting character, vice cop Billie Blake, love interest of Sean Thompson (Chad McQueen), who goes undercover to bring down the bad guys responsible for the death of his wayward younger brother Michael (Andy McCutcheon).

With such a clichéd plot and with Cindy playing second fiddle to McQueen, the film doesn't offer much for fans of the lovely lethal lady to get excited about. There are sporadic fight scenes that fail to impress thanks to uninspired direction from Steve Cohen and weak choreography, and the casting of David Carradine as crime-lord Dalton Rhodes leads to a rather disappointing final showdown, the actor (54 at time of shooting) unable to pull off any impressive moves. The most memorable performance is by Philip Tan as Rhodes' Cockney right-hand man Wu Han - he's a blast. Also look out for the great Bennie 'The Jet' Urquidez as a nameless henchman.

In terms of early '90s martial arts vehicles for Cynthia Rothrock, I really enjoyed CHINA O'BRIEN and its sequel, which were thoroughly entertaining and full of slick action. This film, not so much. It's saddled with the chubby and decidedly uncharismatic Chad McQueen as the lead, and the storyline and action just aren't interesting enough to get excited about.

The plot sees McQueen and Rothrock going up against a minor crime lord, played with overacting relish by David Carradine. Philip Tan is the Cockney-speaking henchman, and there's a hell of a lot of scenes of Rothrock kicking various goons in the head, but it's all underwhelmingly shot with below par choreography. I suppose if you're in a deeply forgiving mood then this sort of thing might just about pass muster, but it's not my cup of tea at all.