White Tiger

After his partner, and best friend (Matt Craven) is brutally gunned down by vicious drug lord Victor (Cary Tagawa), initially straight-shooting DEA agent Mike (Gary Daniels) goes rogue seeking revenge, by any means necessary! Richard Martin's exciting Heroic Bloodshed-inflected DTV punch-fighter rewardingly delivers the explosive gun-happy goods! Amiable, good-looking martial artist Gary Daniels is on excitingly agile form in this punchy, fight-packed 90s DTV actioner. I never quite understood why the muscular, fleet-footed Gary Daniels didn't become a much bigger star, as his more than credible CV features some thrillingly action-loaded bangers! A rightfully popular actioner, White Tiger is another knockout hit from this handsome, blue-eyed, hard-hitting Brit!

"White Tiger" is a solid martial arts thriller starring Gary Daniels. Out to avenge the murder of his best friend and partner, DEA-cop Gary Daniels gets hot on the tracks of Chinese drug-lord Chow. He busts and kicks his way through Chinatown and gets kicked around a lot, until he meats a beautiful woman who is the only person to help him. Well, the show down is a bit disappointing, but the fight scenes are better than in numerous other movies of the kind. Julia Nickson plays her sensual, erotic and sympathetic part excellently, and I enjoyed the movie. I've seen many better ones but a lot worse ones. 90 minutes of solid martial arts entertainment. Jasper P. Morgan

Probably a notch above for straight-to-video martial arts flicks, thanks to above-average production values, key casting of Cary Tagawa as the villain and the beefcake charm of Daniels, who flexes his physique plentifully for his fans in this one. At least you get what you pay for here.

This was one of the movies which I used to like when I was kid. I'd been surprised with great action scenes full of attractive fighting elements. Gary Daniels was great in this movie. He is ex Delta squad or some kind of special forces, well trained and ruthless FBI agent. He got the most unexpected partner for his companion ( Matt Craven ), who was dedicated family man. Of course there' d always been some kind of double agent, who worked for the both sides ( Julia Nickson ). I remembered her from the sequel of Rambo, when he was in the mission of saving American prisoners who'd been captured on the wrong sight of the map and after American soldiers'd retreated from Vietnam they had been suddenly forgotten and left to die in pain and suffer. Her character in this movie was double agent, who'd been working for the both sides. Their mission was to locate, find and capture one of the most dangerous international criminals, who'd been charged for distributing bio-chemical weapon. His code name was The White Tiger ( Cary- Hiroyuki Tagawa ). Craven'd been killed in action and Julia was missing and completely disappeared. Of course, there came expect-able part when the main character'd been suspended and without any authority, on his own hand, trying to revenge partner's death and find the other before everything became too late.

I bought this on VHS in a double feature with "Terminal Rush", I wasn't particularly interested in Terminal Rush but I remembered seeing a trailer of White Tiger about 8 years ago now, and it looked like something which would be relatively entertaining. Having finally sat down and watched it last night, it maybe wasn't worth waiting 8 years for, but it's not bad, not bad at all.

First the negatives. The plot is the most derivative and beaten to death you can get. "He killed my partner now I'm going to get revenge" is probably the most overused of all except for maybe the infamous "terrorists take innocent civilians hostage" Die Hard rip off scenario. In White Tiger, the partner isn't just Mike Ryan's DEA partner but he's his best friend in life, and the criminal mastermind who shot him is a vicious drug lord who's invented a new designer drug which could replace heroin. So now Mike is going to get revenge on drug lord Victor Chow (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). In short, he meets up with Jade (Julia Nickson Soul) who eventually leads him to Victor Chow.

So with such a thin plot, why did I enjoy this movie so much? Firstly, Gary Daniels makes a likeable action hero and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Rising Sun, Showdown In Little Tokyo) makes a superb villain. But what I found really makes this movie were the action sequences. This has to be one of the slickest looking and most professional looking straight to video flicks of the 90's. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that this was done on a low budget, with production values that look equal to any A-list big studio production of the time and even many today. The action scenes are superbly handled, the fight choreography is flawless, the director puts the scenery of the mountainous locations to excellent use, and the action is all driven along very well by the music. There is a lot of use of slow motion, but this time it actually works, and the director knows when and where to use it and the sounds accompanying the broken glass and explosions are equally satisfying. The movie has a much more "modern" feel than the more simplistic 80's style action of Gary Daniels movies with PM Entertainment such as "Rage" and "Deadly Target".

The opening shootout at the docks and the fiery climax on the ship are the highlights, and there's several impressive scenes in between and it's all put together relatively well, and the movie moves at a comfortable pace.

Overall, I highly recommend this movie if you like this sort of thing. Putting the lack of plot aside, there's few things I can fault in White Tiger. It has everything you should want from action movie, and is excellent entertainment to pass 90 minutes.

Rating: 08/10