A Grand Master of Tae Kwon Do and co-author of Christian book titled Power in No Other Name, Dong Jin Kim starred as Jack Foster in Secret War (Evan Seplow & David Kim, 2004).
Forster is a Korean-American New York cop preparing to retire from the force so he can take over his master’s dojo. But after an accident puts him into a coma he becomes an unwitting guinea pig in a dangerous covert experiment.
In a misguided effort to save his brother’s life, Dr Mike Foster steals the valuable experimental chip he’s been working on to turn people into super soldiers and implants it into Jack turning him into the 38 million dollar man
Unaware that he’s being controlled, Jack is placed into a series of staged confrontations designed to test the chip and impress prospective buyers. It sounds more than a little bit like Steve Wang’s Drive (1997) but sadly it’s nowhere near as good.
Recognising that he’s not quite the man of control he once was, Forster learns to control his rage, much as Bruce Banner would do in The Incredible Hulk (Louis Letterier, 2008), but must still contend with various assassins sent by a grimacing psychopath with the same chip in his head.
Kim demonstrates his impressive martial arts skill in an almost unending series of decent fight sequences, choreographed by Marcos Antonio Miranda and Robert Samuels, that just about make this shoestring sci-fi action flick worth your time. The most notable being a long dojo sequence in which several black-clad assassins with weapons attack.
Dong Jin Kim is not the most handsome action hero, he’s no Ho-Sung Pak, but he’s no Leo Fong either and is a more than credible screen fighter. Secret War, his sole screen credit to date, highlights his weaknesses as an actor but you never doubt his capabilities as a martial artist.
