China O'Brien Reviews

A clumsy direct-to-video release, CHINA O'BRIEN is an attempt by executive producer Raymond Chow to push Cynthia Rothrock into the American action market. With her pudgy-cheeked, all-American good looks, Rothrock is already a big kung fu star in Asia, courtesy of Chow's unexported but superior Hong Kong-produced action movies. Faced with heat from her superiors after shooting and killing a criminal, urban police officer China O'Brien (Cynthia Rothrock) resigns from the force, then returns home to small-town Utah where her sheriff father (David Blackwell) is gradually losing control of law and order to local underworld kingpin Sommers (Steven Kerby), who controls crooked deputy Lickner (Patrick Adamson). When sheriff O'Brien and Tyler (Chad Walker), an honest deputy, are killed in car bombings, China runs for election as sheriff while cleaning up the town with the help of roadhouse waitress Patty (Lainie Watts), former high school sweetheart Matt (Richard Norton), and mysterious Indian biker Dakota (Keith Cooke), whose mother Sommers had earlier murdered. Largely a female version of the Buford Pusser-inspired WALKING TALL trilogy, CHINA O'BRIEN also recalls the fighting heroine blaxploitation films of the 1970s, a genre that longtime partners director Robert Clouse (ENTER THE DRAGON, BLACK BELT JONES) and producer Fred Weintraub have had extensive experience with. Films like COFFY, FOXY BROWN and CLEOPATRA JONES, with their crypto-feminist overtones, and powered by star turns from leading ladies Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson, were great fun, but Rothrock is nowhere near these actresses' equal in either personality or acting skills. In addition, Clouse's screenplay is a predictable string of cliches with no appreciable story, his direction is lifeless, and Weintraub's production, shot in and around Park City, Utah, often looks surprisingly amateurish. The martial arts violence is plentiful and adequately staged (screen newcomer Cooke comes off best in this department), but bloodless and pitched at the cartoon level. It is also annoyingly "speeded-up" by use of an undercranked camera. Acting is uniformly substandard. Since completing CHINA O'BRIEN, which bears a 1988 copyright, Rothrock's martial arts skills have been featured in NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER II, MARTIAL LAW and FAST GETAWAY. With several other films--bearing titles like "Triple Cross," "Rage and Honor," "Tiger Claws" and "Thunder and Lightning"--on the way, she appears to indeed be filling a profitable niche in the domestic action market. (Violence, profanity.)