The best Joe Mari Avellana’s crime movies

Leon Isaac Kennedy is Doug Russell, an American who steals a shipment of gold in the Philippines with two Vietnam War buddies, who cut his throat and throw him overboard. Russell washes ashore an island inhabited by two Japanese soldiers stranded there since World War II. They nurse him back to health and he is taught martial arts and the art of the samurai. Back in the States, his treacherous pals, Marelli and Maghee, use their loot and viciousness to muscle their way into Los Angels mafia turf.

Silk, the toughest cop in Honolulu, busts small time smugglers only to reveal a larger syndicate smuggling Asian mobsters into the States by buying the identities of Hawaiian citizens.

Ty's pal J.J. frames him in a murder and cocaine theft in Hong Kong in 1992. Ty's wife Rachel may be in on the con, so, when Ty gets early release from prison as a gesture of good will from the city's new Mainland government, he doesn't bother to look her up. But she finds him in Southern California to warn him that J.J. wants him dead. Whack J.J. first, she tells Ty, so he heads for Manila where J.J. runs a lucrative business under the cover of exporting tropical fish. But what is that business and who's pulling the strings? With the help of Inez, a young Filipina prostitute, Ty gets to the heart of the matter even after Inez no longer has the stomach to pursue the guilty ones.