★★½
“Gal force winds.”
Not to be confused, in the slightest bit, with Lady Whirlwind (though both Tubi and the IMDb do, affixing posters from it to their entries for this movie), it is a straightforward slice of chop-socky – with all that entails, both good and bad. The plot is simple in comparison to some. Lin Jo-Nan (Shang-Kuan) is the daughter of a law official, who tries to stop the salt hijacking operations of notorious bandit, Chang Piao (Kurata). After he refuses to let the criminals go, he’s framed and arrested. Jo-Nan and her little brother, Shao Lung (Yeh), try to take revenge on the bandit, but end up getting their butts kicked, so another, more subtle plan is clearly required.
This involves both siblings dressing as the opposite sex, with Jo-Nan getting a job as assistant foreman of a salt company. She gets her boss. Ma Wen (Ma) to agree to take the fight to Chang Piao, and hijack a few of his salt shipments. That gets her promoted to chief foreman, and the disgruntled man she replaces is ripe for recruitment on to Chang’s side. The section thereafter is likely the weakest, as the movie drifts into broad comedy, after someone discovers Jo-Nan’s true gender, and falls for her. Of course, as is usual in these things, the heroine is hardly convincing as a man, and the plot basically relies on everyone accepting her preferred pronouns without question. Though she at least has a short haircut to help the illusion.
Eventually, the core plot shows up again, with Chang Piao putting into action a plan to kill Ma Wen with a booby-trapped sculpture. Can anything then stop him from taking over? Well, you will likely not be surprised by the answer to that particular question. Though, again, it takes a while for Jo-Nan to get back into the action, after a brisk start where it seems like every scene is another battle for her. The annoying kid also falls into the category of “Things I could probably have used less of”, right down to the inevitable urine-based humour. His kidnapping does kick off the final battle, with Jo-Nan riding to the rescue, and storming Chang’s villa, where she has the inevitable final fight against him.
The kung-fu on view here is generally fine. Polly has a no-nonsense style, which fits in nicely with the larger opponents she has to battle, and it’s also apparent she’s doing all (or close to all) of her own work. Disappointingly, she ends up needing help to dispose of the main bad guy, from an undercover policeman, and the ending falls rather flat, without her getting to batter Chang Piao into oblivion. As kung-fu revenge flicks go, the way this finishes falls into the kinder, gentler, “let the law punish him appropriately” category, and that’s disappointing. However, the biggest problem is the lack of Polly-action in the middle, and your attention should be forgiven if it drifts elsewhere.
Dir: Cheng Hou
Star: Polly Shang-Kuan, Yasuaki Kurata, Chi Ma, Hsiao-Yi Yeh