Silk (1986)

It took me a few minutes of Silk (1986) to realise that the action was meant to be taking place in Hawaii, thinking that it looked more like the Philippines - which is probably because that's where it was filmed.  Another low budget action movie from prolific Filipino director Cirio H Santiago, Silk, as can be gathered from the trailer, was marketed as part of the 'lone rogue cop' genre, but with a female star, promising lots of shootings, explosions and beatings along the way as she kicks arse in order to get results.  The reality of the film, however, is somewhat different - while it does, indeed, muster plenty of action, not to mention shootings, explosions and beatings, anyone expecting see a sassy female bad ass cop defying authority, bending the law to breaking point and telling the DA to shove their indictments up their jacksie, they are likely to be disappointed.  Detective Jenny 'Silk' Sleighton might be tough as nails, but surprisingly, she is quite the team player, co-operating with colleagues and other agencies to bring down the bad guys.

Silk is one of those movies that falls into that vast category of films that could never be described as good, yet isn't actually particularly bad.  There's certainly nothing remotely original about its story line, which works its way through just about every cop movie cliche already established by a thousand other movies.  Moreover, the script serves up uninspired and sometimes clunky dialogue to a cast of mostly servicable actors.  Star Cec Verrell, while not exactly charismatic, is curiously impressive with her hair slicked back for the action sequences, looking quite convincing as she variously shoots, beats and kicks assorted thugs and villains.  But Santiago moves it all along at a good pace, setting up a sufficient action sequences to maintain the audience's attention - which isn't surprising as he'd making these sorts of movies since the early seventies, (he turned out Fly Me (1973) and TNT Jackson (1974) for Roger Corman's New World Pictures, for instance).  This time, it has to be said, he does to seem to up his game, with some larger scale action sequences than usual.  Unfortunately, the best of these - an impressively staged chase and shoot out involving cars and a train, comes right at the beginning of the film - and nothing that follows can ever quite live up to this early promise.  Nevertheless, Silk is a somewhat above average for a direct-to-video action film.  Silk was successful enough that a sequel, Silk 2 (1989), followed a few years later, with Santiago still at the helm, but a different leading lady.