Without Mercy

Former Marine Frank Zagarino is framed by a drug smuggling former officer, falls in love with Ayu Aszhari, and gets beat up a lot in this by-the-numbers martial arts film.

It's not as bad as that first sentence would indicate. Someone went through the script and wrote some dialogue to explain most of the plot holes, everyone speaks their lines with some emotional sense behind them, and cinematographer Gerry Lively gets some nice compositions; the big final confrontation is on a dam, with a rainbow below the performers -- very nice. But there isn't much to see here that will impress the casual viewer; the fans of martial arts films will be disappointed that sometimes they use guns when they actually want people dead, instead of kicking them in the head where no serious damage can occur.

"Without mercy" is one of these types of movies where we have a real cool hero that we are supposed to enjoy watching for 1.5 hours. There is not much of a story, and the acting is terrible. The only good actor is the UN soldier that is shot by terrorists 10 min. into the movie. That is because it is me...