Here, for your viewing enjoyment, are the ten most buttkicking martial artists in Western films. Eastern films have been left off the list, because the lister is not an expert on them. All the entrants on this list are legitimate martial artists, but they are ranked according to their on-screen prowess and influence.
Jeff Speakman
Speakman is not a very good actor, and that will be something of a mantra throughout this list, but then, martial artists look for excuses to exploit their skills, and they find it in films like The Perfect Weapon and The Expert, and thus, martial arts is an exploitative film genre. You don’t go see one of these films hoping for Daniel Day-Lewis’s level of acting .

Speakman had his moment of glory in the early ’90s, in the above-mentioned films and a few others. He showcases his expertise in American Kenpo Karate, which is not the sort of karate you often see in films. It stresses an equality of speed with power, namely that the practitioner become fluent in both. Speakman is, in real life, an 8th degree black belt in Kenpo, and does all his own fighting in The Perfect Weapon.

Were it not for the film rarity of Kenpo, he wouldn’t have made the list, because his acting and the writing are almost immorally simple: Jeff plays a karate loner named Jeff, whose sensei is killed by a karate gang. Now Jeff’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, whoop untold buckets of ass all over Los Angeles. As is typical with martial arts films, the fight scenes provide the entertainment that the acting and writing miss.