Tag: n

Naked Soldier

  By

★★★★

Ten years after Maggie Q got her career as an action heroine kickstarted with Weapon, and twenty after Killer rampaged its way into cult status, Jennifer Tse takes over – bearing more than a passing resemblance to her predecessor, I think. I think it’s kinda cool how the series gets revisited every decade, regular as clockwork: maybe famed producer Wong Jing has a house payment to make or something? Admittedly, there’s not much more than a tangential connection between the entries; three different directors, three different stars, and not much overlap in terms of plot. However, they still share a common approach, fetishising the female form and the act of assassination, with no shortage of style, and are the longest-running (in terms of years) GWG series around.

The story of this third installment opens with a prologue from 15 years ago, when Interpol agent CK Long (Sammo Hung) intercepts a $35 million shipment of drugs. As punishment, its owners unleash Madam Rosa and her killers on him, as he enjoys a nice family Christmas in Florida: most of his relations are killed, Long barely escapes with his life as his house is blown up, but watches as his daugher is whisked away by Rosa, to be brainwashed and trained as one of her army of assassins. Back in the present, Rosa is now sending our her minions to kill the five leaders of a proposed international drugs cartel. Long is assigned to the cases, because of his familiarity with the way Rosa operates, and is startled, to say the least, when DNA testing shows one of the killers appears to be his long-lost daughter. Not as startled as he will be, when she turns up in his apartment, with murder in mind. Naturally, his investigating partner (On) meets Phoenix in her undercover role as a student, and falls in love with her, at a speed only ever seen in movies more concerned about action than relationships.

There’s a lot to enjoy here, not least the presence of Hung, who has always been an under-rated talent in my eyes. He’s pretty damn sprightly for a 60-year old: a step slower perhaps, but there are still moments to treasure here, such as the chopstick duel with his other daughter. He served another important purpose here: for my wife, his early presence legitimized watching a film called Naked Soldier, which I suspect might otherwise have led to some dripping sarcasm – even though she remembered and enjoyed Weapon, and as in its immediate predecessor, the actual nudity in this is confined to the title. There’s another veteran of HK cinema who shows up at the end. While I’ll avoid spoilers, it was someone whom we were equally delighted to see – even though he was single-handedly responsible for putting Chris off Chinese food for a year!

However, these are supporting roles and here, we’re more interested in how Tse and the other ladies acquit themselves. And there are a number on both sides, even if, early on, things do move relatively slowly into gear. Despite token male killer, Black Dragon, Madam Rosa still has her admirable fondness for female assassins, and we see them in action early on as Ivy, Selina (Beilke) and Phoenix carry out their missions in a Vegas hotel, boxing gym and at a funeral respectively. [Selina’s viciousness is quite belied by her final haircut, which appears to have come straight from a Flock of Seagulls fan convention!] One of their targets is an ass-kicking Thai gangsteress, who teams up with a gay Dutch guy against one of the assassins, in a nice handicap brawl at a boutique.

naked_soldier_ver2_xxlgIt’s mostly the end, when Long, his daughter and Phoenix head off to Madam Rosa’s island, that things really kick in, as it turns out that betrayal is a two-headed beast. There, we get an excellent series of battles: one-on-one, two-on-one, many-on-one, that mor than make up for the relatively relaxed pace over the first hour or so, and feel like a throwback (not least becauge of Hung’s presence). Corey Yuen does the action: his track record speaks for itself, with solid action heroine entries such as So Close and D.O.A. on his resume, and this would be another. There’s plenty of variety and invention on view, up to and including the climactic battle between Phoenix and her nemesis, on one of the lethal training apparatus in Rosa’s lair.

There are some negatives, not least Long’s daughter, who serves little or no purpose beyond unfunny comedy, and appears to be played by an actress significantly older than she needs to be. And certainly, aspects of this don’t make much sense. For instance, why did Rosa’s efforts at revenge take a sabbatical for 15 years, after having killed everyone but her intended target? Or why are proceedings supposedly set in 1995, when it obviously isn’t 1995, for example, the tech everyone uses? However, there’s nothing a genre fan won’t be able to overlook, and plenty they’ll be able to appreciate, making this a worthy entry in the series: I wouldn’t mind if they skipped the 10-year waiting period for the next entry. Failing that: roll on, 2022!

Dir: Marco Mak
Stars: Jennifer Tse, Sammo Hung, Andy On, Ankie Beilke

Nikita: season two

  By

★★½
“More characters! ADD MORE CHARACTERS!”

When we last saw Nikita (Q), she’d gained some help for her struggle against Division in the shape of fellow defectors from the organization, Michael (West) and tech guy Birkhoff. But she’d lost protege Alex (Fonseca), who had stayed with Division to further her lust for revenge on those who’d killed her parents, while reclaiming her family fortune. Meanwhile, Nikita’s nemesis and former boss Percy had been usurped by Amanda (Clarke), and was now in a plexiglass box in the basement. Throw in Oversight, the government committee supposedly in charge of Division under Senator Madeline Pierce; CIA agent Ryan Fletcher and Pierce’s son Sean, who join Team Nikita; Owen, a rogue guardian, keeper of one of Percy’s black boxes… And I haven’t even got to Michael’s love-child, a source of much angst for all concerned.

I think the main problem with this sophomore season is clear: too many characters, resulting in plotting that’d be thrown out by a telenovela as far-fetched and convoluted. It was also notable that Nikita did significantly less heavy lifting on the action front, with Michael taking up more. Because, of course, no woman can survive without a man. Unfortunately, the increased focus on relationships – of multiple kinds – is probably almost inescapable on a network like the CW, even when a show gets buried in the “death slot” of Friday night. But it defused what made the show stand out: a kick-ass independent heroine, who could handle herself without relying on a team of men, and as a result, I frequently drifted off, either to sleep or to do something else more interesting. Which would be just about anything.

By the time of the last few eps, I would genuinely not have been bothered if the show had been canceled. But then, it returned to form: Percy escaped, getting himself a nuke and a satellite – nothing good can come of this. Focus on a genuinely threatening villain and the heroine, not the soap-opera “Mikita” ‘shipper bullshit, and I was engaged again. The end came almost full-circle – in part, I suspect because the makers didn’t know when they were shooting the final episodes, whether or not they’d be renewed. And, in the end, I am glad it has been given a third season, because there’s no show quite like it on television – despite the flaws, it’s flying the flag for genuine action heroines, almost solo. Still, how long my interest lasts when it returns, remains to be seen.

Star: Maggie Q, Shane West, Lyndsy Fonseca, Melinda Clarke

Nexus: The Drug Conspiracy

  By

★★
“You’ll probably need some drugs to get through this one.”

If you’re going to use a cover like this, you’d better live up to it, even if we can forgive the heels as artistic license. And while not a complete lie, this takes far too long to deliver, and comes up short of expectations. Holly (Kosaka) is a nightclub singer, separated from her husband, who got custody of their daughter due to a DUI Holly got, with the daughter in the car. On arrival at his house to pick up their child for a scheduled visit, she finds him missing – and a gun in the basement, along with a case of drugs. She calls the police, but ends up getting arrested after the police find her husband’s body, and her fingers on the murder weapon, which has mysteriously moved from the basement to the scene of the crime. The drugs have also vanished; while held in jail over the weekend, Holly gets a visit from their owner, who busts her out and insists she return with him and his thugs to the house to show her where they are. Can she escape their grasp, rescue her daughter and find out who the real murderer was?

Among the things we learn from the movie is that trees give off a shower of sparks when hit by bullets, there are only three cops per American town, and getting shot in the knee doesn’t slow you down. Yeah. I can forgive many things in low-budget films, but stupidity isn’t one of them, and too often, we were left rolling our eyes as the story developed. Kosaka isn’t bad in the lead role, and shows a commendable willingness to do stunt, not least being swept down some fairly nasty-looking rapids, as she tries to escape from her pursuers. It’s only then that the film develops any real energy, Holly developing in to a (somewhat) unstoppable force, prepared to go to any lengths to save her offspring.

If they’d adopted this approach from the beginning – hell hath no fury like a separated mother – this might have been salvageable, even on the low budget. They could even have lobben in her using the new drug mentioned here, Nexus – a mix between cocaine and ecstacy – to sustain her rampage. Just a thought. Instead, the script spends way too much time hanging around and chatting about things, instead of doing them, and the results are as pedestrian as you would expect.

Dir: Neil Coombs
Star: Grace Kosaka, Andrew Kraulis, Jefferson Mappin, Nick Alachiotis

No Contest II: Access Denied

  By

★★½
“Second time’s the not-so charming.”

In many ways, this is a shameless rip-off of a shameless rip-off, trying to recapture the success of the original. It’s not quite as successful, lacking the gleeful sense of energy which help its predecessor overcome its (obvious) limitations. Once more, Tweed plays action actress Sharon Bell, this time filming her latest work in Eastern Europe. She arranges for the film to do some location work in a gallery owned by sister, Bobbi (Heitmeyer), which is just about to open an exhibition, showcasing artefacts that were looted by the Nazis in World War II. The gallery is taken over by Eric Dane (Henriksen) and his crew, who seal the place off from the outside world, intent in stealing a lethal German nerve agent hidden in the base of one of the sculptures. Unfortunately, inside at the time are both sisters, along with the movie director Jack Terry (Payne), who is scouting the place out.

To be honest, the plot makes little sense. Why does Dane – who has apparently had access to the statue for quite some time – wait until it is installed in the gallery, behind a hefty security system, before going after the nerve-gas? And when he does, his subsequent actions and plan seem to be designed more to artificially generate tension for the movie plot, than any practical purpose: for example, his decision to leave one of the canisters, attached to an unstoppable time, in an air-duct, while he is still present in the sealed building. Meanwhile, the heroes prove adept at fashioning tear-gas and lethal blow-darts from everyday materials (or, at least, everyday materials for an art gallery).

If you don’t look too hard, this is still passably entertaining, with the art gallery providing an interesting location for some battles (the cat-fight between Sharon and Dane’s henchwoman comes to mind, ending on a piece of unfortunately-pointy artwork). Henriksen us good value as ever in the psycho role, e.g. shooting people because they can’t deliver Shakespeare to his liking and, while Payne is better known as a villain, he does decent work here in a more sympathetic role. However, the film doesn’t use them as effectively as before, and the film needs to be less obviously stage-managed towards its conclusion, which is obvious well before it happens. The flaws are likely not much worse here – just a little more obvious.

Dir: Paul Lynch
Star: Shannon Tweed, Lance Henriksen, Bruce Payne, Jayne Heitmeyer
a.k.a. Face the Evil

No Contest

  By

★★★
“No originality, no budget… But no disaster, either.”

An almost-entirely shameless Die Hard rip-off, this stars Tweed as Shannon Bell, the host of a beauty-pageant, which is interrupted by Oz (Clay) and his gang, who take a half-dozen of the beauty-queens and Bell hostage, up in the penthouse, and demand $10 million in diamonds for their release. Bell manages to slip away and, fortunately, her character is an actress, famous for playing action heroines [yeah, it’s all a bit ‘meta’ – except, it came out in 1992, largely before ‘meta’ became popular…]. So she gets to go all John McClane on their asses, crawling round air-ducts and assisting ex-federal agent Crane (Davi), who was bodyguarding one of the participants, who is a politician’s daughter, but popped outside the building for a fortunately-timed smoke.

The script is hackneyed, certainly, but it’s a stellar B-movie cast, that works well, and largely keeps things entertaining. This is where the thought has gone in. While Oz is undeniably brutal, he is as far from Hans Gruber as can be imagined, a foulmouth sleazeball rather than a suave sophisticat, and Bell, similarly, is the opposite of McClane, despite her action pedigree (one character describes the roles she plays as, “Bruce Lee with boobs”). Endearingly, she bursts into tears after she has to kill someone. Davi, of course, was in the original, playing Special Agent Johnson [“No – the other one…”], and we’ll watch anything with Piper in it, after They Live. It’s clear Tweed is not exactly in the realm of Lee, but does credibly enough to paper over the cracks, action-wise, and perhaps surprisingly, keeps her clothes entirely on.

Things do fall apart at the finale, which is convoluted and strained, to say the least: the film is much better when sticking to its basic premise – or, more accurately, someone else’s basic premise. But, having sat through much the same film with Anna Nicole Smith in the lead, this is an enormous improvement. Certainly, it’s cheap and cheerful, the kind of thing you can imagine seeing in an early 90’s videostore, with an appropriately lurid cover. But it is entertaining, and given the sights of the makers were clearly aimed no higher than that, has to be judged a success.

Dir: Paul Lynch
Star: Shannon Tweed, Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay, Roberto Davi, Roddy Piper

Nikita: season one

  By

★★★★
“TV Sinners”

Most action-heroine fans will know that this was not the first TV series inspired by Luc Besson’s classic GWG film. Between 1997 and 2001, La Femme Nikita ran for four full seasons, plus a shorter fifth one, with Peta Wilson playing Nikita. In early 2010, the CW Network announced it was developing a pilot to try out a new version of the show, and this was picked up for a series in May. The CW seemed a bit of an odd choice: their idea of an action heroine tends more towards shows like Gossip Girl and the 90210 reboot, with a target demographic of 18-34 year-old women. So was this version going to showcase a kinder, gentler Nikita?

I was reassured by the casting of Maggie Q as the lead, who has a solid action pedigree, both in Hong Kong (Naked Weapon) and the West (Live Free or Die Hard and M-I:3). While its source material was clear, it took a different approach. Instead of telling Nikita’s story from the beginning, with her recruitment into a shadowy semi-official organization and training as an assassin, it starts later, after she has mutinied and left them. Now, she is working to bring down the organization known as Division, its leader, Percy (Berkeley), and his right-hand man, Michael (West), who trained Nikita before she went rogue. Her ‘secret weapon’ is Alex (Fonseca), a new recruit going through training, while acting as Nikita’s mole and feeding her information, allowing her to sabotage and obstruct Division’s missions.

The results have generally been pretty impressive, probably the closest thing to a true kick-ass heroine on network TV since the demise of Alias [which may have have happened some time before the end of Alias, if you get my drift]. If not quite as dark as the Wilson incarnation, it is certainly satisfactory on this level, with death, torture and treachery lurking in just about every episode. The characters arcs certainly have their twists and turns: the alignment of loyalties at the end of the series is radically different from where they started, with people on both sides crossing over. It’s easy for a show like this to get into a rut – Division sets up an operation, Nikita foils it, or whatever – and the generally avoided this pitfall.

In what one suspects was a nod to the target demographic, this was as much about Alex as Nikita, who has her own past to contend with. There is, probably inevitably, the love interest, in the form of a blandly attractive next-door neighbour, who is basically the first man she meets after Alex completes her training and goes into the outside world. There was something similar for Nikita, though this first looked to be heading in one direction, then swerved in another during the second half of the show. That was one of a number of changes made mid-season: it seemed as if the makers needed to fine-tune things on the fly; I was concerned where this might lead, but it didn’t hurt the show.

One particular improvement was the appearance of Amanda (Melinda Clarke). Initially Division’s psych evaluator, she took a much more prominent role, and the relationship between her and Alex made for an interesting dynamic, not unlike Sidney Bristow/Irina Derevko [hmmm…]. We also enjoyed Berkeley’s portrayal of Percy: remembering him as the heroic, if inept George Mason in 24, this was a real change. The final couple of episodes had some epic twists, though I was a bit peeved with the “deaths”, which proved not to be terminal. I find it a cheat: as we saw with Buffy, once a character has come back from the grave, death tends to lose its sting, though the execution here was not as clunky or contrived.

They even crammed in nice nods to the original movie and its TV predecessor too, with a dive down a chute to escape, and a cameo from Alberta Watson, one of La Femme Nikita‘s actors, as part of the intelligence committee supposedly in charge of Division. By the time the dust has settled, Nikita was driving off into the sunset with a surprising ally, and Alex was also teamed up in a new way, setting things up nicely for the second series. Whether it was going to get one or not seemed in doubt for a while, as the rating did sag mid-season, dropping the show onto the ‘bubble’. However, it was announced in May that the CW would pick it up for another series, moving the show to Friday nights to play along with Supernatural.

However, all the plot is perhaps secondary; we want to see ass being kicked. I have largely to agree with Maggie Q, who said, “In terms of action, I don’t see our quality of action on any other show right now. I’m sorry. They may have bigger explosions, but our fights are genius.” For TV work, it’s certainly well above average, and she was apparently instrumental in getting the original co-ordinator fired: “This is my genre, what I’ve been doing for 14 years. I know it well. There’s a level of quality I will not let dip, ever, when it comes to the action… I said, he’s gotta go. It’s dipping. It hasn’t dipped enough in a way that audiences have recognized yet, but it will. I know his style. He’s not innovative. He doesn’t have what it takes to take the show to the next level. And we’re done. We’re done here. We need to bring someone else in.”

What stands out in particular is how much of her own work Q is doing [and, to a lesser extent, Fonseca]. As she also pointed out how much things have changed: “I remember seeing bad wigs on doubles. Then they cut to a close-up, then there’s a wide shot and you know the actress is not doing it. When I fight, you’re right there in our faces – very Bourne. You expect that from that calibre [of film], so why wouldn’t you expect it on TV?” That’s what I think probably impressed me most about the show: at its best, you could stand it beside Salt, and it would not suffer in the comparison. Here’s an example:

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Yep. I think it’s safe to say that the series has delivered copious amounts of high-quality action, combined with mostly interesting characters, and sufficient plot twists to keep us thoroughly entertained. Overall, it ranks among our favourite five shows of the year to date, of any genre, and comfortably leads the pack as far as action heroines go. We’re already looking forward eagerly to its return, so we can find out what lies in store for Nikita, Alex and Amanda. Oh, and some of the non-heroines too. I guess. :-)

Star: Maggie Q, Shane West, Lyndsy Fonseca, Xander Berkeley

Ninja Masters

  By

★★★½
“Solid action, hampered by limited acting and particularly poor storyline.”

It’s nice to see Hong Kong making a decent action heroine film: that’s really where the genre started off, and it’s been responsible for some of the best entries in the field. That said, this doesn’t quite deserve to be placed on the same level, but star Jiang Lui Xia certainly has her potential – my immediate thought is to put her in the same film as Jeeja Yanin, and we might really have something. [Sidenote: Jiang got her big break as the result of a couple of unusual ways. Viral videos she posted on the Internet, which in turn got her a slot on a reality show called The Disciple in Hong Kong, produced by Jackie Chan. The winner – not her – got to star in a feature.] Much like her Thai colleague, Jiang is clearly a martial artist first, and actress…well, probably fifth or sixth, despite her resemblance to Shin Eun Kyung from My Wife is Gangster. She seems to have three expressions, used in strict rotation, and the plot is frankly implausible nonsense too.

She plays Yi-Yi, the bodyguard of a gangster’s wife; when her charge is kidnapped, Yi-yi starts getting phone messages leading her to various locations. Hoping to redeem herself by rescuing the wife, she follows along, only to discover she is walking into trouble. Turns out the battles which result are being streamed over the web, with bettors wagering on the results. As Yi-Yi’s reputation rises, the sites become more and more popular, and profitable; can she fight her way through, to discover the truth about what’s going on? Yeah, “total bollocks” would be putting it kindly. It is not much more than a flimsy excuse to move the heroine from level to level, until a final confrontation with tae kwon do fighter Kosugi.

Fortunately, the fights are entirely acceptable, with a range of spectacular, if somewhat contrived confrontations – such as the one in a disco, outfitted with a pit containing a shallow pool of water (maybe it’s a standard accessory for Hong Kong discos?). The best is perhaps a kitchen brawl against German Wanja Götz, where just about everything bar the sink comes into play; there’s also one on a set of bamboo scaffolding, which appears to be the current venue of choice in the same way that car parks or Chinese restaurants were in their time. They were nicely put together, and sufficient to keep us watching, despite subtitles on our copy which were a) ten seconds behind the dialogue, and b) in Lolcat font. That we were willing to struggle past this says a lot about the fights, though even they could do nothing to help a particularly lame plot. Still, we’ll be interested to see where Jiang goes from here.

Dir: Xiong Xin Xin
Star: Jiang Lui Xia, Sam Lee, Eddie Cheung, Kane Kosugi
a.k.a. 7 Assassins

Ninja Cheerleaders

  By

★★
“B-movie rule of thumb: “ninja” in the title in never a good sign…”

Probably half a star should be taken off if you’re not a fan of really bad movies like us, for this is a bad movie. Really. Let me begin with a straight-faced recap of the plot. Courtney, April and Monica are junior college students who are trying to earn the quarter-million bucks necessary for them to go to an Ivy League college. They earn this by go-go dancing at a strip-club, Their plans are thrown into disarray when the owner of the club (Takei), who has been looking after their savings, is kidnapped by the mob. Fortunately, he is also their martial arts sensei, and they just qualified as ninja. Can they rescue him, get their cash back and make it to the All-City Strip-Off?

Yes it’s every bit as silly as it sounds, and unfortunately not as entertaining. Nor even as potentially full of flesh, since they’re go-go dancers, not strippers they keep their clothes on – which seems odd since it’s not as if Cannatella is exactly a shrinking violet. [Link NFSW, if you hadn’t guessed] How exactly they are supposed to have raised 250 grand in six months doing that is unclear. In a lame attempt to compensate, Presley splices in occasional footage of nekkid boobies, presumably to avoid the PG-rating this would otherwise deserve.

There’s definitely scope for humor in the goofy concept – students by day, ninjas by night, or something like that. However, the movie rarely succeeds in mining any of the potential. Occasionally, Takei appears to realize how ridiculous it all is, and I did laugh at one scene where the girls are questioned by a cop, and feign innocence with the kind of stupidity familiar to anyone who has raised teenagers. Otherwise, however, it’s mostly guilty either of trying too hard or not trying hard enough. Natasha Chang playing the evil henchwoman Kinji is probably the most memorable character, with an odd quirk of referring to herself in the third person. This alone, probably gives her as much personality as the heroic trio; they’re otherwise just not very interesting, despite McConnell’s resemblance to Hilary Swank.

The action isn’t exactly breathtaking either, with the ninja costumes used to conceal body-doubling [save in Takei’s case, where it’s pretty damn obvious]. As a result, it’s never exactly convincing; while there are a couple of fights where the girls have to take on various low-level Mafia people, it’s only at the end, when they face Kinji, that things are interesting. And it’s kinda odd to have the bad girl outnumbered three-to-one by the heroines, which just doesn’t seem fair. Overall, it just about scrapes by if you find it as a freebie on cable. Spending any more than ninety minutes of your time on this is probably not recommended.

Dir: David Presley
Star: Trishelle Cannatella, Ginny Weirick, Maitland McConnell, George Takei

Nightmare at Bitter Creek

  By

★★
“Made for television, and no better than you’d expect from that.”

Nita Daniels (Wagner) and her three girlfriends take a horseback trip up the mountain, expecting to meet their husbands at the top. However, the trip becomes a nightmare, as four members of the ‘Aryan Survivalist Brigade’ are holed up there, and decide to take out the women and their alcoholic guide, Ding (Skerritt). Initially, Ding takes the fore, but when he is injured it’s up to Nita and her pals to fight back. This TVM struggles, largely because of the lack of justification for the white supremacists: the entire party they attack are about as Aryan as they come, so why, exactly, should they be targeted for elimination? It would have been far more plausible had the party been ethnically-mixed, or even their guide been black – or, heck, Jewish.

Instead, the threat here is…well, a bit crap, really. They’re all but entirely faceless, clearly no good at marksmanship, and even the biggest of them is no match for a hungover Ding. Understandable, the TV-movie limitations restrict how “nasty” they could be shown, but there’s no sense of threat. It probably doesn’t help that the best actor in the film is Buster the dog, probably because his motivations are the most clear. The four women rarely get beyond the most shallow of caricatures, without any background to make you care for them – but I must admit, things do pick up significantly in the last twenty minutes, as the heroines find themselves trapped in a canyon, and Allison (Cassidy) needs to grow a spine if she’s to save her friends.

It’s not a terrible concept; this just needs to be executed with more conviction, and the medium of the television movie is probably not the right one for the story. That doesn’t permit the necessary level of dread, which would be something no TV company would want to show, especially back in 1988, when this was made. Finally, a small note on truth in advertising. Of all the facets depicted on the sleeve (right), there are certainly no bears and no lynchings. Nor is there any mention of the Confederacy or the Ku Klux Klan. Skerritt and Wagner, I will give you, but I’m not quite sure what the middle image on the right is supposed to depict.

Dir: Tim Burstall
Stars: Lindsay Wagner, Tom Skerritt, Constance McCashin, Joanna Cassidy

Naked Weapon

  By

★★★★

Naked Weapon (2002)After a decade of “sequels” that weren’t worth the video-tape they were apparently filmed on, Wong Jing finally went back to the well in 2002 for what is, in truth, a surprisingly-tame movie. Given the names of the lead actresses (“Maggie Q”, “Anya”) sounded more like porn starlets than anything, I was expecting loadsa sleazy fun, but they’re model names, and this is probably closer to Heroic Trio – also directed by Ching – than the original.

In fact, the nipple-count here barely reaches two, mostly right at the start when Madam M’s (Wong) assassinettes go on the job, only to be killed by a rocket-propelled grenade. Her boss clearly takes the long-term view, kidnapping forty thirteen-year olds girls, and whisking them off to a remote island for a six-year version of Survivor. At the end, they are down to three in number: Charlene (Q), Katt (Anya) and Jill (Jewel Lee, who is a genuine Wu Shu expert, and also doubled for the other stars when necessary). However, dogged CIA agent Jack (Wu) is still on the trail of Madam M, falls in love with Charlene during an encounter in the back of an ice-cream truck – which must have been fun, given Wu was Q’s ex-boyfriend – and vows to save her from a life of meaningless murder.

The action sequences are great: director Ching is noted for his wire-work in films like A Chinese Ghost Story and Hero – it’s used to great effect here, just don’t expect “realistic” fighting skills. The editing is weird in that it’s not coherent, but still works – it’s almost like highlights, in that consecutive shots clearly don’t connect, but still are effective, and give a good sense of how the fight is progressing. The editors on shows like Alias could learn a lot from this. Speaking of which, the film has much the same feel as a feature-length version of the series, back when it was still good fun, and before the whining and angst took over. Exotic locations, high-fashion, plenty of ass-kicking – on that level, this film certainly delivers. It’s also a nice bonus to see Cheng Pei-Pei (Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger) as Charlene’s mother, though I kept expecting her to bust out a few moves on the bad guys.

Instead, there’s a laughable scene after an assassination attempt on her by Jill, at the behest of Madam M, who realises she could lose Charlene back to her mother. Jack ends up carrying the wounded parent to the hospital, but keeps stopping to converse with Charlene, which had us screaming, “The hospital! It’s over there! She’s bleeding profusely!” at the TV set. And in general, I’m unconvinced by the story, which suddenly shifts angles in the third act. Up until then, it’s been angling towards a confrontation between the girls and Madam M; that’s suddenly discarded, in favour of a villain we’d not seen before.

Despite possessing more holes than a golf resort, Wong Jing’s script is pretty restrained; even the lesbian aspects are more implied than shown, and mercifully, the dumb comedy beloved by Wong is almost entirely absent. However, there is a rather nasty rape scene to end the training; while I can see the point, it does go on past what’s necessary and doesn’t fit with the generally slick tone. For even when the film is gunning down pre-pubescent girls for attempting to leave Madam M’s fantasy island, it does so in a…well, “tasteful manner” isn’t perhaps the phrase, but you know what I mean.

For in general, this is fast-paced, mindless entertainment, not to be taken the least bit seriously. At least, that’s my view: reading others, it’s clear opinions differ sharply on this one: “In a year of relatively disappointing Asian films, it’s one of the worst around,” says filmsasia.net, but hkfilm.net calls it, “The best movie of 2002.” Weirder still, one person described this as “boredom-inducing”, which had me checking to see whether they were discussing the same film. If you’re bored here, you probably need to lay off the caffeinated beverages for a few days: those of us with normal metabolisms should be more than entertained by this fluff.

Is it better than Naked Killer? A difficult call, and one that likely depends on your state of mind – as well as whether the word “good” could ever be applied to Killer, a lurid blast that really could come from Hong Kong, and probably only from before the Chinese takeaway of the colony. Weapon is certainly better-crafted and has more crossover appeal: our son was going to pick it up in Blockbuster, till we informed him it was already part of our unwatched pile. On the whole, I think Weapon is the one more likely to be watched again in future – if only because Killer would require the room to be carefully swept for lurking minors and maiden aunts first.

[The sidenote of importance here for the DVD is: watch your language. As usual with Hong Kong movies, we opted to see it in Chinese with English subtitles. It wasn’t until the making-of documentary that we realised it had been shot mostly in English (Wu + Q do, others, such as Cheng, don’t), and we’d actually been watching a dubbed version. Oops. ;-) However, upon further viewing (hey, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it!), it doesn’t really make that much difference. The main benefit of the English track is, at least on the DVD we were watching, it’s available in DTS, which definitely enhances things.]

Dir: Ching Siu-Tung
Stars: Maggie Q, Anya, David Wu, Almen Wong