Lady Dragon (1992)

Gibson: "You're totally flipped-out girl."
Kathy: "It's a living."

A lady seeks revenge against bad guys that killed her husband.
Starring: Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton, Piet Burnama, Bella Esperance, Robert Ginty

Link to IMDB

The time has come to watch Cynthia Rothrock movies.
Get ready for a heavy dose of karate chops and roundhouse kicks, because all of October will be Cynthia RothRocktober.

Kathy Galagher is an ex-CIA agent that uses her superb martial art skills to fight for money in dangerous competitions held by criminals. Her reason behind this is that she's trying to find the man responsible for killing her husband. The man she's after is a powerful villain named Ludwig, who is as cunning as he is dangerous.

Kathy goes undercover as a prostitute to get closer to Ludwig, but her plan becomes a disaster when he discovers that she's a threat. Ludwig shows us how brutal he can be as he rapes Kathy and leaves her for dead on the side of the road!!
Luckily, she gets rescued by a little boy and his grandpa, and they take her to their home to nurse her back to health.

Ludwig

Much of the movie now becomes Kathy training to get her strength back, as Grandpa teaches her how to be strong in mind, body and spirit.
She occasionally makes a trip into the city to get info on Ludwig, which gives us a few quick fight scenes, but the action is restrained and we spend a lot of time just watching people sit around.
The movie seems to have forgotten that it's a revenge story!

Eventually, Kathy prepares to once again infiltrate Ludwig's organization, but now she's twice as prepared and wants twice the amount of revenge! Finally, we start getting the action that's expected, with plenty of ass kicking and chases in the last 30 minutes.
It feels like the movie saved everything for the end, because it does get pretty epic and there's even a big surprise in store for our heroine.

"I like to live dangerously." - Kathy

Cynthia Rothrock isn't going to be mistaken for a great actress, but you can tell she's trying her best and she has a certain cool quality about her that makes her likable. It doesn't help that the script here is very weak and formulaic, but when she gets a chance to jump into action it's fun.
The martial arts all look great, but the choppy editing in the fight scenes usually gets in the way of letting us actually see what's going on. Not cool.

The strong points here are the heroine and the villain, both played with just enough melodrama to be enjoyably corny and exaggerated. It's almost like the actors knew the plot sucked, so they had to compensate by spicing it up with a bit of ridiculousness.


Be sure not to miss:
- The song playing at the night club seems to just be a collection of all the cheesiest sounds they could find.
- If you're going to kill someone, you might as well try to get a free meal out of it.
- Rats enough!

Internet review:
"Not enough action to keep the grin on my face." - DJ4

Should I watch it?
Not essential viewing.

Where can I find it?
Links here.

Lady Dragon gets...