THE STORY:  I know hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Once a buddy of mine tried to hide out at my house from a jealous girlfriend. When she found out where he was it took three guys to control her and keep her from getting medieval on his ass.

Well, that old saying must apply to Lt. Harly Cordell. Harly was getting cozy with a navy seal named Frank Lydell. Lydell decided that he could get paid a lot more if he went into crime. So, he got his men together and faked their own deaths somehow...which is never clearly explained, and became professional assassins. He offered Harly a place on his team, but she refused. So Lydell shot her in the head.

In retrospect, Lydell isn't a good assassin. He shot Harly in the head, while she was naked in bed (he just got through doin' the nasty with her) at close range....yet he failed to kill her. Since then, Harly has spent every waking moment trying to track him down so she can kill him! To think, my wife will kill me if I don't fill the car up...this guy shot his chick in the head!

Harly has a bullet fragment lodged in her brain, and she needs an operation to remove it. This fragment causes her to have seizures at any given moment. Well, the given moments are only to add tension to the movie. They're always timed to exactly the moment when she needs them least...like when she's whoopin' bad guy ass. That in itself is ridiculous. How can Harly still perform her duties as a kick-ass Military investigator commando type when she can go "bloooey" at any time. There's no commander in the entire military that would not have ordered her to get the operation posthaste, or just relieve her of duty until she does. She's a danger to herself and others in that condition. Not to mention, Harly can die at any second until the fragment is removed!

There's one commander that would have a person like that on active duty. Major Deke, Harly's boss, gives her permission to hunt and kill Lydell, when Harly gets the scent of him after one of his hits. Keep in mind this is several years later...four, I believe they say in the movie. In four years she hasn't had this damn operation? Harly gets some info from a cop named O'Conner about the hit, by she's spotted by one of Lydell's men. So naturally they try to kill her. Which is stupid. At that point they could have laid low and Harly would most likely been off the trail. But this is the movie universe so Harly gets attacked by Lydell's goons, has one of her dizzy spells and then kicks their asses.

So the rest of the movie goes like...Harly is on the tail of Lydell and his crew, Lydell tries to kill Harly. Harly finds Lydell but instead of killing him as she's been saying trough the whole flick, she hesitates. Lydell escapes as his men shoot at Harly. Etc. Oh, and Harly as a boyfriend, David, who is a doctor. David gets kind of pissed when Harly comes to him for medical attention because he wants her to get the operation and save her own life. Screw vengeance.

Its only when David threatens to break up with Harly that she decides to do what he wants. Kind of. All David wanted really was for her to get the damn operation. But the cops are looking for Harly because she snuffed several of Lydell's men. So she turns herself in to O'Conner. Who coincidentally is working for Lydell. You see, Lydell's current contract is to kill a federal witness named DeMato, and DeMato is in protective custody at the police station! And of course, O'Conner tells Lydell that Harly's there and he can kill them both yada-yada-yada. Do I need to mention that Lydell then kills O'Conner or did you figure that out?

This is all so we can have the dramatic shootout at the police station, where Lydell and his men blow away every cop they see, kill DeMato only to be confronted by Harly, the only person not to be hurt in the multiple explosions and hail of bullets. Harly dispatches the minor goons and then goes after Lydell. A chase scene ensues and results in a crashup. Both Harly and Lydell live but Harly has the upper hand. She can now, finally shot this bastard!

She doesn't. She has to show some mercy so we can have the showdown. Which isn't too exciting. We know who's going to win, its just a reason for her to have another seizure, be helpless but yet come out of it long enough to kill Lydell. Then she wakes up in the hospital. Apparently the cops found her and Lydell's body and she was unconscious. so the docs fixed her brain. She tells David that she's getting out of the military and they can live happily ever after. I guess there's no court martial.

I can't call this a bad action flick,...at least not bad by Inferno standards...but it did lack a certain excessiveness to its title. I thought Harly would be completely ruthless. She should have been. Had I written this she'd have been torturing guys for info, blowing away scumbags like Dirty Harry and beating the "chicken-farts" outta everyone else. Part of the fault lies in the lap of Stacie Randall. She can fight but she damn sure can't emote. For awhile I thought her character, Harly was an android.  Oh, and check this...the guy that played the homeless man at the beginning is credited as Mandingo Warrior.  Yeesh....I suppose if he was a white guy he'd call himself Nordic Berserker.

Best Lines: "So that now that you know everything, can I borrow your car?"- Harly once again sweet talks her boyfriend.

"I'm a neuro-oncologist, not Doogie Howser!"-Harly's doctor makes Movie history, my droogies! Witness an ancestor of our Beloved Doctor "Bones" McCoy.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?:

1.) Why do the cops start taping DeMato while he's eating his breakfast? Better yet, why do they tape his little rant full of curse words and all? If he's a federal witness, and this is his videotaped testimony does the court really need to know that he thinks his breakfast is crappy?

2.) In the seedy little titty-bar Harly goes searching for her quarry in, it looks as if one of the customers has a date there. Now that's pretty low....I mean, who wants to take a date a strip bar? The girl doesn't look skanky either...in fact she looks like someone you'd see in a...well, a regular bar! I guess her date is either a cheap bastard or she's really kinky. In my experience any girl I could take to a titty bar on a date I wouldn't want to go out with anyway.

3.) Harly's injury almost gets her killed...more than once. All of her friends tell her she should get "the operation" to remove the bullet fragment from her brain. What I don't get is how her commanding officer even let her go on this mission of personal vengeance if her health...her very life...is a risk because of the injury. If something happens to her, what's he gonna tell his commanding officer? Why is she even on active duty if she's got this injury? In real life she'd be ordered to a hospital and convalescent leave, not running around kicking ex-navy seals in the ass.

4.) If I hated someone so badly that I would spend years of my life tracking them down with the purpose of killing them, ignoring the fact that I needed a life saving operation in lieu of that goal I wouldn't waste a damn second in busting a cap in dey ass when I found them. Harly damn sure does. She could have killed Lydell twice but she wants to talk about it first. Funk Dat! Why do you think James Bond gets out of so many deathtraps? Because he's enemies want to gloat about it! She should just blast the sucker and thy ass to a hospital.

NUDITY AND SEX:  Harly has a sex scene in a flashback doing it doggy-doggy with Lydell. Boobs abound in the titty bar scene.

HUH?:  I was going to put this in the best lines section, but I think it can better dealt with here. When Harly's boyfriend/doctor reminds her that she will die without the operation she needs, Harly replies with "We both know there are worse things than dying.". I agree. But not in that circumstance. The way its put in this movie, Harly can die at any given moment without the operation. What's worse than that? After the operation she can go chase bad guys! Right now she's facing certain death! In her situation saying there are worse things than dying is pretty moronic! That's like saying  being punched in the teeth with brass knuckles is worse than being hit in the teeth with an aluminum bat...who cares? The effect is pretty much the [unwrite]ing same!

If DeMato's a protected witness why in the name of Fox Mulder is he being secreted away at a police station? Are we to believe that there was NOWHERE else to hide this guy? And how the [unwrite] did O'Conner know? He has no reason to know DeMato's whereabouts! Its hard to keep a secret if you freaking tell everybody!

Give me a break! Harly says several times that she wants Lydell dead! she even tells her lover that all she wants is to live 1 second longer than Lydell. So what does she do when she has Lydell at her mercy? she misses on purpose at point blank range. Now she says "She wants Lydell to live in hell" which I assume must be prison. Harly, you stupid dunderhead! This guy has tried to kill you several times! He's murdered innocent people and a whole mess of cops! By not blowing his head off right then, Harly gives Lydell the chance to kill her and escape and only by the fact that she's the heroine does she survive...and up killing him anyway.

um...besides Harly, isn't the rest of the military and Federal authorities interested in Lydell. If Harly's discovered that Lydell isn't dead and is raising Cain, hasn't anyone else? Doesn't she report to anyone?

THE TALLY: For a run of the mill action flick this was entertaining...it had enough good scenes in it to warrant three devils....but I'm taking one away because Stacie Randall's acting was a fly in the ointment. Still, this should be good pick for people who like mindless action and don't want to concentrate too hard on the details.