Best Cynthia Rothrock Movies
Also known as The Lady Dragon, the United States-born Cynthia Rothrock first started acting in Hong Kong films in the 1980s following a very successful career as a competition martial artist. She holds 5 black belts, was a five-time World Champion in forms and weapons, and is ranked 8th Dan Grandmaster. She competed against men for a good part of her competition days due to there not always being a women’s category, and she won against her male counterparts many times over. This is why she has been inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame and named the Queen Of Martial Arts. Her achievement in the martial arts world got her the first female cover of Karate Illustrated and paved the way for her to start a film career that has seen her starring in a number of films over the last several decades. Her film career is filled with action and a bit of humor, and here are 5 of the best Cynthia Rothrock martial arts films (with some bonus movies thrown in):
YES, MADAM! (1985)
Rothrock made her screen debut in director Corey Yuen’s martial arts action comedy Yes, Madam!, a fun martial arts movie with some cool fight scenes, some impressive stunt work, and some flashy gunplay. (Not to mention musical stings lifted directly from John Carpenter’s Halloween score.) Rothrock plays Inspector Carrie Morris, who has flown in to Hong Kong to investigate the murder of a fellow Scotland Yard investigator, who happened to be having a fling with Hong Kong Inspector Ng – played by Michelle Yeoh in her first lead role. The MacGuffin of the film is a microfilm that contains a forged contract for a business deal. It doesn’t matter much. The Scotland Yard Inspector was killed for the microfilm, but it ends up in the hands of a trio of dimwitted criminals who report to an “Old Master” (played in a cameo by Sammo Hung) who lives in a nursing home where he’s been on some kind of diet where he’s allowed to eat cookies but not allowed to eat chicken. A surprisingly large amount of the running time focuses on these criminals bumbling around and being goofballs.
Rothrock earning second billing, taking on a role that had originally been written to be a man, a Bruce Lee type. The producers were so impressed when they saw Rothrock’s martial arts skills while they were looking for this Bruce Lee successor that they decided to change the character’s gender. Then they allowed Rothrock to truly show off her skills in the film, demonstrating kicks, hits, jumps, splits, and using a pole as a weapon. This intro to Rothrock is one that is memorable to this day and truly showcases her capacities – and yes, it even features her signature move, where a villain rushes at her from the front and she turns his attack against him by leaning forward, swinging a leg back up over head, and kicking him in the face. You’ll see that in a lot of her movies.
RIGHTING WRONGS (1986)
Rothrock reteamed with Yes, Madam! director Corey Yuen for this wild movie, which stars Yuen Biao as Jason Ha Ling-Ching, a prosecutor who has lost faith in the system and decides to take the law into his own hands. Rothrock plays Senior Inspector Cindy Si, who is assigned to bring the vigilante prosecutor to justice – but, of course, over the course of her investigation she discovers that her boss is corrupt and joins forces with Biao’s character.
Rothrock only ended up working on this movie because she has been cast in the Jackie Chan movie Armour of God, which got delayed when Chan had a near-fatal accident on set. So production company Golden Harvest moved Rothrock over to Righting Wrongs – and since she injured her right ACL while practicing her moves for the film, she had to do her kicking with her left leg during some scenes. The fact that Rothrock was hurting while performing the dazzling fight choreography in this movie makes it all the more impressive, as she really got to show off her abilities in this movie. She gives the viewer some fight scenes to remember and delivers a great performance. One standout moment sees Rothrock having a fantastic fight in a mall with a character played by Karen Sheperd.
Oddly, the filmmakers seemed determined to give this movie a downbeat ending to some degree. Multiple endings were shot – and one of them is the most shocking bummer endings to ever be considered for an action movie. If you watch the version of the movie that has that ending, it could ruin your viewing experience entirely.
CHINA O’BRIEN and CHINA O’BRIEN II (1990)
This film is what some consider the ultimate Cynthia Rothrock film, and it’s the one she’s best known for. For six years, China O’Brien (Rothrock, of course) has been working as a police officer and teaching self-defense classes in the big city… but it all comes crashing down when she pulls a gun while being attacked by a gang – and is traumatized to find out that the gang member she shot was a young kid. She turns in her badge and heads back to her small hometown of Beaver Creek, Utah, where her father John (David Blackwell) is the sheriff. But there are still plenty of butts to kick in Beaver Creek, which has been overrun by a crime boss named Sommers (Steven Kerby). When Sommers takes Sheriff O’Brien out of the equation with a car bomb, China decides to run for sheriff herself and start cleaning up Beaver Creek with the help of her high school buddy (and former Special Forces soldier) Matt Conroy (Rothrock’s fellow action star and frequent co-star Richard Norton) and a biker named Dakota (Keith Cooke) who’s out to avenge the death of his mother.
China O’Brien was written (from a story by producer Sandra Weintraub) and directed by Robert Clouse, who is best known for being at the helm of the Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon and the Jim Kelly movie Black Belt Jones – but don’t expect this one to be on the level of those classics. Still, it’s a fun, low budget action flick with small town Walking Tall vibes and plenty of action – which, as we know, Clouse could shoot quite well. The movie was filmed back-to-back with its sequel on a production schedule of just six weeks, so that gives you an idea of how fast and cheap these were.
In the sequel, O’Brien and her deputies have turned her small town into the safest community in the state. But now, former Special Forces soldier turned drug smuggler C.Z. Baskin (Harlow Marks) has escaped from prison for a mission of revenge, ordering the deaths of everyone who was responsible for putting him away. And one of his targets happens to be living in Beaver Creek, putting Baskin and his hired killers (a small army that includes an Indiana Jones wannabe, Billy Blanks, and a guy who wears steel claws on his hands) on a collision course with our heroes.
Even though the number of writers increased (Clouse wrote this one with Craig Clyde and James Hennessy), China O’Brien II is exactly the sort of sequel you would expect to result from a project where two movies were shot back-to-back in six weeks: shorter, simpler, and sloppier. That said, it’s still entertaining, with plenty of action and low budget charm on display. It’s recommended that you watch China O’Brien and China O’Brien II in the same way they were shot, back-to-back – and if you decide to have this double feature, you’ll probably have a good time with it. Production company Golden Harvest was so pleased with these movies, they wanted to move ahead with two sequels that would, again, be shot back-to-back. The Utah sheriff who refuses to use a gun was going to have quite a franchise. But Rothrock was distracted with an offer to co-star in an adaptation of The Executioner novels that was going to star Sylvester Stallone and be directed by William Friedkin. So the China O’Brien III and IV idea was shelved… and The Executioner never happened, either. Regardless, the China O’Brien duology really helped put Rothrock on the map for American audiences, even though they were not her first releases in the US. Her work here is strong as usual and really sets her up to be the force to be reckoned with that she became in American action films of the 1990s.
TIGER CLAWS (1992), TIGER CLAWS II (1996), and TIGER CLAWS III (1999)
A serial killer called the Death Dealer (played by Bolo Yeung!) has been taking out martial arts masters with the dangerous “tiger claw” style of martial arts. It’s up to a pair of detectives, both of whom are also into martial arts, to bring him to justice. The Tiger Claw trilogy stars Jalal Merhi and Rothrock as detectives Tarek Richards and Linda Masterson, and most of Rothrock’s best work in the series comes in the first movie, where she not only gets to show off her hand-to-hand combat skills, but also does some swordplay and even has impressive fight while wielding a boat oar, showing that anything can be a weapon in this lady’s hands. “Martial arts cops vs. martial arts serial killer” is a great set-up, and it was brought to screen in a fun, action-packed, bone-crunching way, building up to a climactic fight where Tarek has to take on the Death Dealer while wearing handcuffs.
The Death Dealer returns for Tiger Claws II, which sees him getting mixed up with a criminal organization that brings an unexpectedly supernatural story element into play: the head of the organization is planning to open a magical portal to the past so they can greet their ancient martial arts masters. He’ll do this after he holds a fighting tournament, of course. The sequel is fun, although messy and strange, but Rothrock is, disappointingly, sidelined for much of the action and isn’t given a whole lot to do until we’re already an hour into the movie.
Merhi is really the star of this trilogy, which is most apparent in Tiger Claws III, which dares to kill off Rothrock’s character within the first 20 minutes! This will be an unforgivable sin as far as most viewers are concerned, but stick around, the filmmakers attempt to fix the mistake in the most ridiculous way possible. But before we get to that, we get to see a villain called Stryker (Loren Avedon) perform a ceremony that brings three seemingly immortal ancient assassins that have to ability to deflect bullets and blast electricity from their hands into the modern world. Stryker then sets out to use these assassins as his personal henchmen so he can take over a local criminal organization. To be able to defeat his supernatural enemies, Tarek learns a special martial art from Master Jin (Carter Wong), the man who trained and was later betrayed by Stryker.
There’s not enough Rothrock in either of the sequels, but if you watch the first Tiger Claws, you might as well keep the good time going and watch the whole trilogy.
SWORN TO JUSTICE (1996)
In Sworn to Justice, Rothrock plays criminal defense psychologist Janna Dane. At the start of the movie, Janna comes home to find that her sister and nephew have been murdered in a home invasion – and the perpetrators are still there! When they attack her, Janna shows off some of her martial arts self-defense skills, then takes a dive from the high-rise balcony, smacking into some tree limbs on the way down. A head injury leaves her with extra-sensory perception; she can now see psychic visions while handling objects that were involved in intense situations. She uses this ability not only to see the truth in court cases she’s working on, but also to seek out criminals when she starts patrolling the streets as an ass-kicking vigilante. She’s sort of like a female Daredevil, but with ESP instead of radar sense.
When she’s not avenging the deaths of her loved ones, Janna enters a relationship with a man named Nicholas (Kurt McKinney), who proves to have some impressive fighting skills of his own. He also has some serious wooing skills. If you have a crush on Rothrock, this is the movie to check out, because she has lingerie / underwear scenes, and even has two sex scenes with McKinney. This was a change of pace for Rothrock – and if you don’t have a crush on the actress going into Sworn to Justice, you might develop one by the time the end credits start rolling. But the movie isn’t just about showing skin; Rothrock picks this film as her personal favorite of her work in America because the script also gave her more challenging dramatic scenes to perform.
This one has a fun set-up for a low budget action movie and some cool action moments, so it’s an enjoyable watch. It also features Mako in a supporting role as a blind newspaper vendor, Brad Dourif as a courtroom defendant, Walter Koenig as the doctor who helps Janna confirm that she now has ESP, and Ninja Turtle Kenn Scott putting aside the turtle costume to play a villain.
Cynthia Rothrock said she was retiring from acting in 2004, but that retirement only lasted a few years. She is still very active to this day, with multiple films at different stages of pre-production and post-production at any given moment. She also maintains an active online presence, teaches seminars, attends non-profit events, and meets fans as often as she can.
Are these picks what you would consider to be the Best Cynthia Rothrock Movies, or were there others you wanted to see on the list? No Retreat, No Surrender 2? Martial Law? Fast Getaway? Undefeatable? Let us know!
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