BRANDON LEE

It's either in the genes, or I watched too many of his movies as a kid,'' says Brandon Lee, explaining why his film roles echo those of his dad, martial-arts master Bruce Lee. The elder Lee died of a brain edema in 1973, when Brandon was 8, and the boy's American mom, Linda, moved the family from Hong Kong to L.A. But the kid picked up the power of kicks. In the new film Rapid Fire, his first American starring role, Lee, 27 (shown here in a double exposure), martials his own brand of coiled power as he out-chops crooked cops and crime bosses. Though he's following his dad's fancy footwork, Lee declined an offer to play him in the upcoming movie bio Dragon. ''It's such an intensely personal thing for me,'' he says. ''I'd probably have been a little too crazy.'' Lee celebrated his first big role, in 1986's Legacy of Rage (filmed in Hong Kong entirely in Cantonese), by buying a 1959 Cadillac hearse, the same kind of vehicle featured in the first movie he ever loved, Harold and Maude. Now settled in the Hollywood hills with a more conventional luxury sedan and living with story editor Lisa Hutton, he choreographs his own fisticuffs. ''A fight,'' he says, ''can express things people might not be able to say with words.''