Aging martial artist Steven Seagal vehicle alternately pummels panderers and shows his sensitive side as a conservationist.
When not rescuing forest creatures at his nature preserve, former US secret agent William Lancing (Steven Segal) corresponds with his Polish foster daughter, Irena Morawska (Ida Nowakowska), who lives in an orphanage in Warsaw. But Lancing's surrogate child is soon in danger of her own: When orphaned teens like Irena reach a certain ripeness, crime boss Faisal (Matt Schulze) pimps them out as hookers in an international trafficking ring. Lancing loses contact with Irena and flies to Poland to investigate. Though the bad guys haven’t had an opportunity to deflower Irena, they have killed her best friend and palmed off her corpse as Irena's. Realizing their deception, Lancing obstinately searches for Irena and in the process uncovers a conspiracy linking the foundling home with a children’s humanitarian group called the UAN. It might have been easier for Lancing to locate absentee Irena, if Faisal hadn’t tied up loose ends by murdering both Mrs. Donata (Maria Maj), the orphanage’s matron, and nervous UAN executive Mr. Weiss (Wietold Wielinski). With the help of local police detective Kasia Lato (Agnieska Wagner) and an abandoned orphan boy, Lancing closes in on the pedophile ring. However, for their own clean-up purposes, Lancing’s old government agency now wants him dead. Surrounded by corrupt American officials and international white slavers, Lancing dodges bullets at an Embassy Ball. Can he save himself and Irena?
Segal’s declining career found him making low-rent thrillers like this awkward, European-financed mix of social causes and unconvincing kickboxing sequences; it waited three years before getting even a direct-to-DVD release. --Robert Pardi
