Drive Reviews

Who needs an intricate plot-line when your martial arts team is working at peak capacity? Certainly not fans of Mark Dacascos, who can also act — a rarity among martial arts stars. Toby Wong (Dacascos) is no ordinary stowaway, slinking around the crates at a San Francisco harbor. On the lam from evil magnate Mr. Lau (James Shigeta), Toby is a surgically enhanced bionic man with a mind of his own. To Mr. Lau, Toby is merely missing property, and he issues orders from his Asian headquarters to his American mercenaries Madison (John Pyper-Ferguson) and Hedgehog (Tracey Walters) to bring back Toby alive. Toby makes the acquaintance of aspiring-songwriter Malik Brody (Kadeem Hardison) in a bar, and takes the chronically Malik and his car hostage in his efforts to escape Lau. Despite the rocky start, Malik listens sympathetically to Toby’s life story and master plan: Toby has been implanted with a bio-energy module, which he hopes to sell to Lau’s competitors at the Continental Company in Los Angeles. Unfortunately for Toby, Mr. Lau’s scientists have perfected an advanced model in the interim. So Lau dispatches a new, improved model e (Masayo Kato) to America and hands the demoted Madison and Hedgehog a new set of orders: Annihilate Toby and eliminate the Continental Company’s industrial spies. After a brief respite at a motel, Toby and Malik near their rendezvous with their potential buyer. Using brains instead of brawn, Malik helps Toby temporarily outwit the whip-wielding biowarrior. But after the she mows down Continental’s bodyguards, he's forced to go hand to hand with his superior replacement model. Scott Phillips’ quip-filled script gives Dacascos and his sidekick something to do between kick-ass fight scenes, which also showcase some top-notch stunt work.