My review was written in October 1987 after watching the movie on Vidmark video cassette.
"White Phantom" is an okay followup to the action film "Sakura Killers". Pic is well-lensed, boasts an evocative, varied musical score and better acting (with well-recorded English dialog) than the usual martial arts fare, but an almost nonexistent plotline keeps it routine (it debuted on video cassette with no U. S. theatrical exposure).
As with "Sakura Killers", Pic opens with a raid by ninjas of a U. S. scientific installation, with five megatons worth of plutonium stolen. Military colonel Bo Svenson's mission is to retrieve it. Action shifts to Taiwan where scruffy young hero (in a N. Y. Yankees cap) Jay Roberts Jr. Is eventually put on the case. Again it's the Sakura family of Japanese gangsters running a local protection racket who are the villains. Dance Pge Leong is an undercover agent who also is fighting the Sakura family.
Roberts, dressing in a white ninja outfit, displays good martial arts skills, but film's premise of retrieving the plutonium gets lost in the shuffle. Similarly, Leong, alluring in her dance routines, is pointlessly written out of the script before the finish. Pic's highlight is a very impressive strobe-light sequence integrating Leong's flashdance routine with an outburst of violence.
"White Phantom" is an okay followup to the action film "Sakura Killers". Pic is well-lensed, boasts an evocative, varied musical score and better acting (with well-recorded English dialog) than the usual martial arts fare, but an almost nonexistent plotline keeps it routine (it debuted on video cassette with no U. S. theatrical exposure).
As with "Sakura Killers", Pic opens with a raid by ninjas of a U. S. scientific installation, with five megatons worth of plutonium stolen. Military colonel Bo Svenson's mission is to retrieve it. Action shifts to Taiwan where scruffy young hero (in a N. Y. Yankees cap) Jay Roberts Jr. Is eventually put on the case. Again it's the Sakura family of Japanese gangsters running a local protection racket who are the villains. Dance Pge Leong is an undercover agent who also is fighting the Sakura family.
Roberts, dressing in a white ninja outfit, displays good martial arts skills, but film's premise of retrieving the plutonium gets lost in the shuffle. Similarly, Leong, alluring in her dance routines, is pointlessly written out of the script before the finish. Pic's highlight is a very impressive strobe-light sequence integrating Leong's flashdance routine with an outburst of violence.