“Land of the Free” is an unremarkable thriller starring martial artist Jeff Speakman (“The Perfect Weapon”, “Street Knights”) and William Shatner (“Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan”). It has a few moderately entertaining parts but a lot of it looks rather amateurish and it has a distracting score.

In “Land of the Free”, Aidan Carvell (Shatner) is succeeding in winning public support as he campaigns for a seat in the United States Senate. His campaign manager, Frank Jennings (Speakman), is approached by authorities when they fear that Carvell is secretly funding dangerous militia groups. Frank and his family find themselves targeted by Carvell and corrupt elements of the federal system as he tries to shine a light on the truth.

Speakman never really made it as a big action star. He’s supposedly a very talented martial artist but you wouldn’t know that from this movie; a lot of the fight scenes are edited rather poorly. Speakman gives a mundane performance. He’s certainly not terrible and maybe he has better acting skills than Jean-Claude Van Damme (“Bloodsport”) but there is a reason why people don’t still talk about Speakman. Shatner is enjoyable as always and I really wish that he was in more of the movie. The other characters are rather forgettable.

“Land of the Free” has some decent car chases and I like the performance from Shatner. However, this is not a particularly exciting thriller. Some of the ideas are interesting but the film clearly had major financial constraints. Maybe we could have seen Speakman fight the militia groups. Fans of Shatner will likely enjoy the ridiculous fight scene at the end where he battles Speakman. It’s not as good as some of the fights from the original “Star Trek” but I’ve not seen Shatner kick anybody so well since I saw “Star Trek III: The Search For Spock”.