★★½
“Bruce rolls over from beyond the grave.”
Four years after Bruce Lee’s death, and film-makers were still trying to fool moviegoers into believing their product had some connection to kung-fu’s first global star. Not sure where the deception occurred, as the print here simply overlays the new title over the (still-legible) Hong Kong one, Five Pretty Young Ladies. You really need to combine the two for any genuine accuracy: Five Pretty Kung Fu Girls, would be about right. The five are visiting Hong Kong, where their “uncle” (it’s not clear if this is a genuine relation, or just an honorific title) is a police superintendent. While at a swimming pool, they bump into a guy being pursued by a gang, and take care of the pursuers. Turns out they wanted to get their hands on a formula he had developed. Might there be some connection between this and the invisible thief who is wreaking havoc in the colony? And could the unseen one be planning to steal a moon rock, newly arrived as the centerpiece of an exhibition?
Oh, who am I trying to kid. The answer is, of course, yes to both, and the film doesn’t have any surprises to speak of. What it does have – and this is close to falling into the “only saving grace” category – is Polly Kwan as the head of the group. She’s easily the most talented in terms of fighting, and the makers know it, giving her the bulk of the action. This she handles with grace and flexibility, kicking her way out of trouble, regardless of the number of opponents. Beyond these scenes, there’s a lot of other stuff which drag proceedings to a grinding halt, such as the camping trip, climaxing with what’s probably the worst fake guitar-playing in cinema history. However, there is some entertainment value to be had from things like the matching black hot-pant uniforms worn by the girls on moon-rock guard duty, and the film’s ending teaches us a valuable lesson: when you have strapped a belt of dynamite around your waist, it’s probably best if you try not to fall over.
It is all, clearly, nonsense, with little or no effort made to differentiate the four pretty young ladies that aren’t Polly – one of them has pigtails and pouts a bit, that’s about the extent of it. But I’ve seen less entertaining nonsense, and when Kwan goes into action, becomes worth watching to a high enough degree, as to justify its existence. Unfortunately, all available prints are horribly cropped, which certainly affects the experience: truly a case where seeing more of the lead actress would be a help.
Dir: Shut Dik
Star: Polly Shang Kwan, Lui Ming, Wong Lan, Yeung San-San
a.k.a. Five Pretty Young Ladies
It’s 1993, and the peace process in Northern Ireland is cautiously inching forward – though there are some who prefer a more robust method of rebellion, shall we say. Among them is Collette McVeigh (Riseborough) whose little brother was killed by the British Army when she was 12. Along with her brothers Gerry (Gillen, whom you’ll know as Littlefinger from Game of Thrones) and Connor, she is part of the armed struggle, until a mission to plant a bomb in London leads to her capture. MI5 officer Mac (Owen) gives her a stark choice: face a long stretch in prison, separated from her children, or become an informer on her own family. Collette chooses the later, perhaps influenced by Mac showing her it was an IRA sniper who killed her brother. But it soon becomes clear more is at play, with Mac’s boss (Anderson) apparently intent on sacrificing Collette, in order to protect another, more valuable asset.
It’s really the finale which makes this stand out – not necessarily for its qualities (though it’s far from bad), more for the batshit insanity. It sees ex-cop Michelle Yip (Yeoh) storm a construction site in an armoured car, to rescue the coffin containing the body of a colleague, which has been suspended from a crane by the bad guy. How the hell did we get here? Good question. It all starts on a plane back from Japan, where among the passengers are Yip, Interpol agent Peter Yamamoto (Sanada, recently seen creating doomsday diseases in Helix) and security guard Michael Wong (Wong – a lot of thought clearly went into that character). On the flight, there’s a hijack, in an attempt to free a killer being extradited to Hong Kong; our heroic trio foil it, killing the hijackers. But that just brings down the wrath of the rest of the gang, who vow to take their revenge on the people who killed their colleagues. And they really don’t care who gets in their way, as a mass gun-battle at a night-club shows – it also gets Yip taken off the case.
I’m on the fence with regard to the Japanese uber-gore films, most notably, by the Sushi Typhoon studio, which have achieved renown (or infamy) of late. While some (
This is definitely a case where less would have been more, and with a more enthusiastic hand on the editor’s knife, this could have become a decent eighty-minute feature – and possibly an even better 50-minute one. Kamikura does often demonstrate an awareness and acceptance of exactly how ludicrous the entire scenario is, and the film is at its best when wholeheartedly embracing its own insanity. For instance, each of the cyborg athletes’ talents is influenced by their sport: Hitomi Oka is a tennis-player, so whacks people with an over-sized, pneumatic racket, and lobs exploding tennis-balls at them. Additional helpings of that kind of imaginative lunacy – and considerably less tied-up schoolgirls being prodded or whipped – would certainly have made for a more entertaining end product.
★★★★
Crackle is the streaming content subsidiary of Sony – it has been around for a while, but we only became aware of it last December, when a new widget popped up on our Apple TV. Think of it as a little like an advert-supported version of Netflix; you can watch for free, whenever you want, but you have to “pay” by sitting through commercials (during which the FF option on your remote is disabled. Bastards!). The library of movies and shows offered is based around that studio’s library, and has a number of entries for action heroine fans. Bonus points, not just for having Run Lola Run, but in the subtitled version; they also have Ultraviolet: Code 044, the anime spin-off from Milla Jovovich’s action-horror film, though that is only available dubbed. We’ll get to that later, I imagine, but the first thing to leap out at us was this original series, about a pair of female assassins. It’s certainly not to be confused with the Samuel L. Jackson movie or Benjamin Brett show.
There are six episodes, but they’re barely 20 minutes each, discounting adverts, and by the time you remove the credits, and “previously/next time on Cleaners” sections, it’s basically a single feature. Maybe I’ll get round to editing it together in exactly that fashion. There’s a hint of Tarantino in the fast-paced dialogue, as the characters snark back and forth at each other – my favourite line was Roxie’s response, after Veronica had expounded on some topic: “Jesus! What did you have for breakfast? Wikipedia?” Leyden throws on large helpings of style, which is something of an acquired taste: in the first episode, it seemed more of a chore than a pleasure, but as the show wore on, he either restrained himself better or we grew used to it.
After the genuinely impressive bleakness of Assassin Lovers, the series comes crashing back to earth with a splat like a rotten tomato for this entry, which fizzles out early on, and then manages to lumber on for another 45 minutes. Rei (Tachihara) spends her time between missions hanging out at a gay bar, and rescues one of the rent boys, Mitsusu (Kitagawa), who ply their trade there after a vicious assault – accompanied, it has to be said, by the least appropriate music in the history of cinematic homosexual rape. He ends up moving in with her, to the latest in a series of unfurnished apartments provided by Section Zero, and the two damaged individuals start creating a life, of sorts, for themselves. However, there’s a serial killer, apparently with a deep hatred of men, operating in the area, and Rei is given the mission of tracking down and eliminating the psycho.
★½
It really is nowhere near as good as this sounds, and the synopsis above is significantly more coherent. I swear, I didn’t fall asleep – but it felt like I did, the story lurching from scene to scene in a disjointed manner that rapidly drained all interest. Outside of the heroine, there was hardly any significant effort at giving the characters motivation or depth, and matters weren’t helped by the fact the entire nation seemed to consist of about 25 people. The scenery is nice, and the soundtrack has a full, orchestral feel which seems to have escaped from a higher-budget movie, but it doesn’t work as a historical piece or as a political one – and, certainly, not as an action film. However, I was amused by what I suspect is likely a realistic, if ruthless, depiction of what would probably happen when a warrior maiden comes up against her male counterpart.
As with the preceding entry, there’s a smattering of social commentary; here, the topic is Vietnamese boat people, who reached Hong Kong in droves during the late eighties. The bad guys are a group of pirates, led by Keung (Chu), who prey on the boats, stripping the refugees of valuables before killing them. On one raid, member of the crew John (Yam) recognizes friend Gary (Chow): while he manages to hide Gary, and stop him from being killed, the stowaway suffers cinematically-convenient amnesia, until the boat docks in Hong Kong.
I watched this purely on the strength of