When the first lady is kidnapped by some terrorists demanding something or other, Joshua McCord is dispatched to rescue her and, against all the odds, he does. However after the mission he cannot help but feel that he is getting too old for these dangerous missions and even his mentor agrees. With help from his companion Que, McCord selects special forces soldier Deke Slater – only problem being that Slater is currently doing 30 years in prison for disobeying an order, hitting an officer and killing an inmate.

Some television movies are made because they deal with subjects best suited to the small screen; however some are made because the companies need some filler that will draw the undemanding audience and keep them watching long enough to sell them lots of stuff in the adverts – guess which type this film is? That's right, this is filler and nothing but filler. The plot is about an old hand taking on a new student to make him an all-kicking hero – from just this summary it pretty much writes itself and you can see that it is aimed at repeating this formula over a weekly, or movie-special basis. It tries to push the buttons but it gets sillier and sillier, to the point where it goes out of its way to drag in backstory and the Veitnamise into the final story – with almost laughable results! The training and mission structure allows for bits of dialogue and plenty of kicking. However the dialogue is flat and obvious while the kicking is never that exciting or stylish, just looking like every other action series kicking around on the cable backwaters.

The cast rise to the challenge by matching the average material blow for blow. Norris sleep walks his way through the lead role – happy to have a bit of cash in his pocket but seemingly damned if he'll do more than that. Neal is typical "special forces hardnut" stuff but if I walked past him in the street I still wouldn't recognise him because he is just very samey and uninteresting. Tung is quite cute and is at least sassy – not much but it makes her look like an Oscar contender next to these two blocks of action wood. The support cast are just as bad as the lead two – wooden stereotypes down to the slightest character.

Overall this is action filler for the cable stations, pushing all the basic buttons for beered up viewers. The plot does everything you expect it to, the acting is wooden, the dialogue clunky at best and the action is enjoyable enough but has nothing special or unique about it. If you are a very undemanding action fan who has had a few beers then by all means, try this out, it might just satisfy you but it certainly did nothing in particular for me.