Raven Hawk Reviews

The avenging Native-American heroine of RAVENHAWK is ably embodied by bodybuilding queen Rachel McLish, who is stunning when she kicks and stupefying when she speaks. In order to build a super factory on sacred ground, a venal consortium headed by tycoon Philip Thorne (William Atherton) slays a tribal chief and his wife and frames their young daughter for this "ritual" murder. As a result, Rhyia Shadowfeather (Rachel McLish) is raised in a mental institution and a juvenile detention center. But then an accident during a prison transfer enables her to escape, while the authorities presume that she is dead. While Indian Affairs agent Marshall Wilkes (John Enos) investigates the Rhyia Shadowfeather case and the unsolved murder of an EPA agent, Rhyia polishes off one of her parents' killers with a boating "accident." After Rhyia drops another yellow-bellied conspirator off a bridge, a nervous Thorne quells his surviving associates' fears by hiring professional assassins. After the thugs torture Rhyia's only tribal friends to death, she knifes hit man #1. Dragged by killer #2 behind his horse, Rhyia climbs up the rope and chokes Thorne's assassin to death. After Thorne loyalist Rikker (Mitch Pileggi) wounds her on an escarpment, Rhyia sends him sailing over the mountainside. Although Wilkes stops vengeance-driven Rhyia from delivering a coup de grace to master crook Thorne, he provokes Thorne into drawing a gun on him, then arranges Thorne's death to look like a suicide. Allowing the officially dead Rhyia to escape, Wilkes feels vindicated by the closing of Thorne's toxin-belching plant and by restitution made to the tribesmen of Rhyia and her late parents. Not since Custer's Last Stand have so many Caucasians bit the dust at the hands of any Native American. Exceptionally violent, RAVENHAWK should satisfy ambidextrous action buffs who can applaud McLish's kickboxing skill with one hand while wolf-whistling her form-fitting vengeance silhouette with the other. In a few bold strokes, RAVENHAWK sets up its simple premise and adheres to the brutal slaughter at hand. The subplot about peacekeeper Wilkes just interrupts the main events. Limited only by a colorless speaking voice, alluring McLish has enough fighting flourish to ensure a long martial arts movie career as long as her gifted legs hold out. (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, adult situations.)