Best of the Best is well named, because this is one of the if not the best martial action movie series ever made.All the sequences are beautifully choreographed, and the action and the story comes together as one - which many martial action movies fail to do.Phillip Rhee is a multi-talented director, actor that puts the likes of Chuck Norris, and Michael Dudikoff to shame. Only Bruce Lee had his kind of precision movements on screen.The series also gets cudos for not losing quality through out its four episodes. Every other series of this type was a hit or miss proposition. They never were as consistent as this series.The movie is also beautifully made, that has crisp looks, and elegant style.Maybe this was the swan song for this type of martial arts action movie, but as they say, swans last song is its most beautiful,as this movie is.

Tommy Lee is back! Not the Motley Crue drummer of course (in the press he's always Rocker Tommy Lee, and he's called that so often he should just legally change his first name to Rocker) - It's Phillip Rhee, and this time he teaches martial arts to police officers. He has a young daughter, Stephanie (Jessica Huang), and life seems good. All this ends when a gang of Russian-type mobsters, working out of an abandoned warehouse (where else?), begins a large counterfeiting operation. The details of this illegal activity are on a disc, and Tommy inadvertently ends up with it.Now on the bad side of criminal mastermind Slava (Bell), as well as his many goons, including Boris (Thorsen), he entrusts Stephanie to a priest (Gleason), so he can go off on his own and fight the baddies. But while he has some friends on the force, notably Jarvis (Lemmon), he also butts heads with the hard-line Detective Gresko (Hudson). Can Tommy Lee stop the counterfeiting agents, rescue his friends and daughter from imminent doom, and clear his own name in the process? Some people might think about the Best of the Best series, "there are FOUR of them?" While it may seem puzzling and hard to justify, this fourth entry in the series was solid fun and worth seeing. Phillip Rhee is a very talented guy - he stars in the film, he directed it, co-wrote it, and he's a gifted martial artist and worked on the choreography. He's also likable. Rhee does seem to have well-rounded skills, and because of this, his name should be more well-known outside of die-hard action circles. He's so badass, he doesn't turn off his lights at night using a lightswitch like a sucker, he JUMPKICKS his lights off.Supporting him is an impressive array of B-movie names. Tobin Bell puts in an understated, low-key villain performance, which was a welcome change from the frothing-at-the-mouth baddies we usually see. He pulls off a tricky balance - be subtle but not be boring. He does a great job, and, interestingly, there's some pre-Saw torture he's involved with. Coincidence? Or did the makers of the unending Saw franchise see this movie and picture him as the ultimate torturer? And speaking of people who probably saw this movie, there's an American Beauty (1999)-like fantasy sequence one year before that film. Is it possible the American Beauty people saw this movie and thought, "If we rip this off, no one will know, because we don't share any of the same audience"? Hudson plays the BYD (instead of Black Yelling Chief, here he's a detective) and there's even a fight scene between him and Rhee where Hudson attempts some Hudson-Fu on him. Chris Lemmon's not in it that much and resembles Joe Piscopo. It's no Firehead (1991) for him. Paul Gleason, Art LaFleur and Sven-Ole Thorsen round out the cast of familiar faces, and someone who's been turning up a lot lately, David "Shark" Fralick (Deadly Reckoning, 1998, Executive Target, 1997 Inside Edge, 1992) is on board as well.A highlight of the movie is a combination stickfighting/fencing fight scene. We don't believe we've ever seen that before. While the movie falls prey to a cliché we see often "We've got to get the disc!" - a movie about a disc - Best of the Best 4 has a lot to offer in the pure entertainment department. Regardless of how you feel about the other Best of the Best movies, you should see this one if you love that implausibly-plotted-but-who-cares-let's-have-fun action style pioneered in the 80's.For more action insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

Best of the Best: Without Warning is set in Los Angeles & starts as two Russian gangsters Yuri (Thure Riefenstein) & Karina (Jessic Collins) bluff their way into city traffic control & kill everyone there, they cause chaos on the streets & every road is gridlocked, this confusion gives their Russian mobster mates the chance to steal a federal truck with blank bank note paper & a CD of US dollar bill typefaces. Together it's an easy way to print up untraceable money, Russian mobster Lukasz (Tobin Bell) can now print real money on real bank note paper using the real typeface. A young woman named Mickey (Jill Ritchie) develops a conscience & decide to steal the CD & hand it over to the DA but the Russian mobsters find out her plan & go after her. They shoot her dead in a shop but not before she slips the CD into the pocket of martial arts trainer Tommy Lee (co-writer, executive producer & director Phillip Rhee) who the Russian mob then go after, using his daughter as a hostage the Russians want Tommy to hand the CD over but he is unsure of who he can trust...Co-written, executive produced & directed by Phillip Rhee who also stars in the thing I didn't have particularly high hopes for the fourth entry in the Best of the Best franchise but to my surprise like the previous sequels I didn't think it was half bad, sure it's no masterpiece & Best of the Best 2 (1993) is still the best of the Best of the Best (!) films but to be fair they all are all quite watchable. Series continuity disappeared a long time ago, from being an only child the original Best of the Best (1989) martial arts star Tommy Lee suddenly got a sister from nowhere in Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back (1995) while here he was not only married but he actually has a five year old daughter, where did she come from? Then there's the oath never to instruct martial arts again in part three but here he's training the LAPD. To be fair the Best of the Best films have little in common, they all seem to have started life as routine action film scripts that were then slightly rewritten to include Tommy Lee who is the only consistent between the four films. Having fought illegal pit-fighters & Nazi racists this time Tommy Lee comes up against the Russian mafia. Now, having seen all four Best of the Best films I can say that it's dangerous to know Tommy Lee, I mean trouble follows this guy around like a bad smell. Bad cops, drunks, mobsters, racists, thugs, hit men, illegal fighters & his drunken brother have all given him a hard time & targeted his friends & family. In Best of the Best: Without Warning his mate the shopkeeper, his daughter & a Priest all get a rough deal merely by association with Tommy Lee. As far as action potboilers go this is fairy good, the plot moves along at a decent pace, the character's are alright even if the good cop bad cop twist is too obvious & it passes the time harmlessly enough I suppose.The action scenes save this really, the fights are again well choreographed & there's an audacious if far-fetched hijacking at the start in the middle of Los Angeles. There's some shoot-outs, a cool scene with Tommy Lee on a motorbike in a tunnel with a huge taker truck heading straight for him & a cool scene of a plane on fire crashing & exploding. Some of the CGI effects look dated but all the fights seem like they were shot on set with no digital touch up. The violence is fairly strong, the fights are brutal & there's plenty of blood & a bit when a man is tortured with golf balls. While the previous Best of the Best films all featured prominent moral messages this one doesn't for some reason & is far more straight forward, there's something about baking a cake but I didn't really care to think about it that much. Unlike parts one & two there are no musical training montages this time.A few familiar faces pop up here, Ernie Hudson needs to loose some weight, Art LaFleur, Paul Gleason, Chris Lemmon & the bad guy is played by Tobin Bell before he became famous for playing the bad guy Jigsaw in the Saw franchise. There is no credit for Kane Hodder who played various thugs in the previous three films so I guess Phillip Rhee becomes the only actor to have appeared in all four Best of the Best films.Best of the Best: Without Warning is a decent end to a surprisingly decent series of martial arts action films that have deviated more from the original concepts with each entry. You could do a lot worse I suppose. Part two is probably the best while I thought part one was the weakest.

The first two best of the best films, I feel, were the most entertaining but this fourth addition with Ernie Hudson was watchable and contained 2 really good fight scenes and one amazing shootouts! In general with it's low budget the film made due very well and I was glad I had watched it. If you liked the first two or three you will certainly enjoy the fourth.