★★
“Can’t spell Ballistic without balls…”
You know you’re in for a slice of stinky, nineties action cheese from the opening sequence. Undercover cop Jesse (Holden) has just taken down a sleazy yuppie drug-dealer, and a homeless woman tells her, “You know what you are, sweetie? You’re ballistic!” We probably need to explain why the film is titled that way, because there’s really not an enormous amount of great action here to justify it. Jesse is your typical, no-nonsense cop, who has just transferred from homicide to the Urban Crime Taskforce, where she is meeting resistance from her new colleagues. She is also trying to help her father (Roundtree), a former cop now doing 20 years after being framed with kilos of coke.
Jesse inevitably makes enemies: she comes under suspicious when a witness is killed on her watch, and is then suspected of the murder of the other cop who was in the safe-house. In reality, it’s all a plot by “respectable businessman” Braden (Jones), who inevitably is a dealer in both drugs and illegal weapons. He runs illegal fights in a warehouse lined with cardboard boxes: his top henchman, the person who killed the cop, is actually a woman, Claudia (the impressive looking body-builder Corinna Everson), and we get a small role from Michael Jai White, who would go on to considerably better things than this. As would the movie’s composer, Tyler Bates, and the cast also includes veteran cult actor Charles Napier as Jesse’s superior.
Despite a relatively good cast, it’s largely dull, often almost painfully so, with the action scenes suffering from a particularly brutal style of editing. Holden comes at at six foot even in height, towering over some of her male co-stars even when not wearing high heels, and does have a degree of film presence. It’s just that Bass, making his directorial debut, does not appear to have any idea of how she should be used. Early on, she’s treated as not much more than a slice of cheesecake, e.g. the opening credits feature Jesse showering in slo-mo, for no reason beyond titillation. The sex scenes with her boyfriend (a character which serves no purpose) are little better, and you could make the case Claudia is actually treated more seriously than the heroine.
The film does at least have the courtesy to give us a fight between the two women, though like much of the rest, the results are far from overwhelming, with them lazily snapping kicks toward each other, at a glacial pace. That’s about the peak as far as Jesse is concerned, with the movie’s climax thereafter largely involving a lot of running round the warehouse by everyone involved. It’s difficult to believe this kind of feature would ever have passed muster, even in the days of straight to video schlock. Though given this was the effective end of Holden’s career as a leading lady, perhaps it didn’t.
Dir: Kim Bass
Star: Marjean Holden, Sam J. Jones, James Lew, Richard Roundtree
a.k.a. Fist of Justice
Quite often, in films featuring women who are supposed to be boxers, they simply do not look the part. Safe to say, this is not an issue here. That is apparent from the opening scene, in which Kaylee (Reis) is preparing for a fight. As she warms up with her trainer, the speed and power of her punches is clear, and not cinematic trickery. It’s unsurprising, since Reis is, at time of writing. the current WBA, WBO and IBO light-welterweight world champion. It’s just a shame this movie chooses not to make more use of her undoubted talents in the combat field, and is a tad too earnest to be value as entertainment.
Daphne Wool (Varela) has finally had enough of her abusive husband, so has killed him, chopping up the corpse and keeping it in a storage locker. Which actually is a good thing, because it turns out he was wanted by the Mob, and there was a price on his head. For their “help” in carrying out the hit, Daphne and pal Tony Steele (Cappello) are rewarded, but things go further. Daphne becomes a full-time assassin for the gangsters, learning to kill with everything from a paper-clip up, while Tony acts as her facilitator. However, they quickly become a liability to the organization, and are given a “poison pill” contract, being sent to kill weapons inventor Vincent McCabe.
This largely unfolds over the period of about a week in May-June 1987. History buffs will recall that being the time when the Soviet Union was beginning to fall apart, and it’s that which provides the background to the novel. President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev is trying to shepherd his country into a more open era, but is facing strong opposition from some elements within the government. He writes a letter to his American counterpart, Ronald Reagan, whose contents are potentially explosive, and which the anti-Gorbachev faction in the Kremlin will do anything to stop. They fail to stop the communication being handed to American courier and CIA agent Tracie Tanner in East Berlin, but that’s only the start of their efforts to prevent Tracie completing her mission.
After finishing Volume 1, I was pleased to discover I’d been smart enough to pick up Volumes 1-3 as a freebie (you can also get the first seven books 
Again, there’s no much of a pause between the end of one story and the beginning of the next. No matter how much Tracie may have been taxed by her exploits, she’s thrown back out there by boss Stallings, on another hazardous mission. I do wonder about her motivation, since she’s now entirely off-books, no longer even being a CIA employee: why love your country so much, and be prepared to put your life on the line for it, when its agencies treat you in such a disrespectful manner? I’d be high-tailing it towards the private security sector after all she’s gone through. That might just be me though.
