“Drive” is a film that should have got a lot more attention because it contains some of the finest martial arts action of the 90s. It reminded me a lot of buddy cop movies such as “Lethal Weapon” and “Rush Hour”. Looking at some of the choreography, there is clearly a lot inspired by the films of Jackie Chan (“Police Story”) and Jet Li (“Fist Of Legend”).

Mark Dacascos (“Only The Strong”, “Brotherhood of the Wolf”) stars as Toby Wong, a man with an experimental bio-device installed in his chest. He’s trying to escape from Chinese authorities (and the many goons they have hired). He ends up dragging barfly Malik Brody (Kadeem Hardison “White Men Can’t Jump”). The two men face explosive danger at every turn.

Dacascos is a seriously underrated martial arts action star. He has a decent amount of personality too so it’s a shame that he’s gone under the radar for most people. Some of the moves that Dacascos pulls off are as impressive as anything done by Jet Li. Kadeem Hardison is decent as Malik. The two have some chemistry and again, I was reminded of “Lethal Weapon” and “Rush Hour”. The villains are reasonable but not great.

The non-stop action in this movie is just terrific. There are fistfights, some spectacular flips and jumps and there is even some carnage involving cars and motorcycles. This is a splendid martial arts movie and I was reminded a lot of the frantic action of Jackie Chan’s “Twin Dragons”. The plot in “Drive” was perfectly fine for this sort of movie and some of the humour was pretty good too. I really hope that more people check this film out because it is very impressive and deserves more love and attention. This movie should have had a theatrical release too because it looks as good as any big screen martial arts movie of the era.