Sworn to Justice (1996)

"I defend people, that's my job." - Janna

A lady seeks revenge against bad guys that killed her sister.
Starring: Cynthia Rothrock, Tony Lo Bianco, Kurt McKinney, Katie Mitchell, Stephen Quadros

Link to IMDB

When masked thugs break into the house of Janna, an expert criminal psychologist, she defends herself with her martial art skills, but not before the bad guys had time to kill her sister and nephew!
Eager to put the violent night behind her, Janna goes back to work on a big case that needs her attention, but she keeps having intense visual flashes of her sister's murder. For no discernible reason, Janna has developed a psychic ESP ability to receive visions of the people around her, but they might be helpful in catching her sister's killers!

Detective Briggs is the man in charge of finding Janna's attackers, but since he's not able to find any concrete evidence Janna decides to become a vigilante and hunt down the men herself. Using her new ESP powers, she starts kicking ass and getting justice for her dead sister.... Sort-of. There's also a lot of romance crap to sit through.


This movie is all over the place and the narrative coherence is just terrible, making it difficult to understand (or explain) what the heck is going on. Everything in the movie feels like a sub-plot to a story that isn't going anywhere.
Anyways, Janna is getting romantic with a new guy named Nick, and also preparing evidence for a big murder case that is seemingly unrelated to anything else in the movie. All the while, she's still trying to hide her ESP-inspired vigilante missions from Det. Briggs.

Det. Briggs                                     Nick

Since the story makes no sense, I focused on how poorly everything was slopped together and that kept me surprisingly entertained. The sets look like they were made in someone's garage and the dialog is inconceivably bad, so that's rather amusing even during the unwanted sex scenes.
Thankfully, there are a few good fights here, and the one aspect of the drama that did work well was realizing that someone close to Janna was also secretly her enemy.

"You spend passion to buy peace, but you're surrounded by fury." - Mr. Young

I really can't decide who this movie was made for. Men, women or children? There's just as much violence as there is corny romance with swooning saxophones, and even some slapstick comedy thrown in for good measure... Maybe it was supposed to be "fun for the whole family" or something?

My concluding thoughts were that Sworn to Justice feels like what would happen if Law & Order got drunk, passed-out on a park bench and puked all over itself... The entertainment comes from watching the disaster happen.

Be sure not to miss:
- The great Mako has a small role, but he doesn't get to fight.
- Walter Koenig and Brad Dourif also make appearances.

Internet review:
"I'm convinced the people making this really wanted to do a softcore porn." - maskull

Should I watch it?
Only worth it for Rothrock completionists.

Where can I find it?
Links here. or on YouTube.

Sworn to Justice gets...