By Iris Johansen
If John Woo were to direct a romance novel, the script might come out something like this. Leftist rebel Elena Kyler, Johansen's martial-arts-expert heroine, has been tortured and raped by the evil Colombian drug lord Chavez. Elena flees with the aid of sinewy, handsome Sean Galen, a hostage-extraction specialist who enlists handsome, sinewy assassin Judd Morgan in a plan to lure Chavez to the U.S. There's a lot of repressed romantic friction and body blows (imagine Tracy and Hepburn scissor-kicking each other), but as flesh-and-blood characters—well, these folks might as well be androids. (Bantam, $25.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Two-dimensional action
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