Bullet Points: Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back
I’m all about giving second chances here on Bulletproof Action… and sometimes third and fourth chances. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment.
I knew Phillip Rhee’s work from the movie Best of the Best, but unfortunately the first Phillip Rhee movie I watched and reviewed for this site was a real piece of garbage called L.A. Streetfighters.
I decided to check out one of the Best of the Best sequels, since I had never seen any of them before. 3 won the coin toss over 4.
Not only does Rhee star in Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back, he was also the director.
- The Premise: Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee) goes back home to the small town of Liberty. But things aren’t as he left them. The town has a growing “white supremacist” element now. The Aryan Brotherhood is making life miserable for the people of the town, but they are too intimidated and scared to do anything about it. This makes it difficult for the Sheriff and Tommy’s brother in law (played by Christopher McDonald) to bring the group to justice. But Tommy Lee doesn’t get intimidated, plus he knows karate.
- How Bad Are They?: The Aryan Brotherhood in Liberty are some bad human beings. How bad are they? Well just a few minutes into the movie, they abduct a black reverend, burn his church to the ground and then beat him with a baseball bat. You don’t get much lower than that. And all because his sermon from the day before got coverage in the local paper. He was preaching against hate.
- The Right Mix: Best of the Best 3 has the right mix of action and storytelling to keep it moving and keep the audience engaged. We get to see some of Rhee’s skills through out and then like any good action movie, there’s a pretty explosive finale. There’s also a solid supporting cast. The aforementioned Christopher McDonald as the Sheriff. Gina Gershon plays a school teacher who is one of the more outspoken members of the community and eventually becomes the love interest of Tommy Lee. Dee Wallace Stone has a small role as the mother of a local youth who is getting caught up in the “white power” hype. R. Lee Ermey plays Preacher Brian. His teachings are taken too far by Mark Rolston, who plays the ring leader of The Aryan Brotherhood, Donnie Hansen.
If you’ve never seen any of the other Best of the Best movies, it really won’t matter. This works well as a stand alone piece, in fact according to IMDb, this movie was originally written as a stand alone movie called No Turning Back, but when Phillip Rhee got a hold of it, he had the idea to make it the third Best of the Best movie. So the script was altered and the title was used as the subtitle to the film.
Like many action movies that start getting into multiple sequels, this one needed a gimmick, and to its credit it didn’t go with the popular “war on drugs” theme and instead chose hate crimes/racism as the social problem to be addressed and fought.
If everything I’ve written to this point doesn’t have you the least bit interested in checking this movie out, then let me point out that you can watch Phillip Rhee fight while he’s dressed as a clown. Where else are you going to see that?
