★★½
“Slow, slow, Quick…”
Polo plays Quick, an assassin whose job is to take out mob accountant Brewer (Donovan) after he turns stoolpigeon. When her employer tries to double-cross her, she goes on the run with her target, who has hidden $3m in ill-gotten gains. Her corrupt cop boyfriend (Fahey) also has designs on the money, raising the suspicions of his partner (Carrere, an effective but wasted performance).
Despite the potential here, this 1993 film ends up being remarkably sluggish, with Brewer and Quick mostly driving around and, inevitably, going through the Stockholm Syndrome thing, wherein they eventually bond. While the sleeve wants you to believe she’s the ultimate bad-ass (“Young, hot and deadly…She’s Quick. You’re dead. She’s the perfect assassin”), the heroine is actually a bundle of badly-controlled neuroses. Which may be the point: everyone in the film seems to be controlled by someone or something else, save perhaps the top mobster, played by Robert Davi, who could do this kind of role in his sleep.
Polo, who’d go on to find stardom as the girlfriend in Meet the Parents, does make Quick an interesting character, but we’re given no reason why she turned killer, for example. And while the aim here seems more psychological than action, she’s not cold-blooded enough, or sympathetic enough, to be memorable. If the film occasionally manages to be surprisingly earthy, the overall effect is otherwise almost completely forgettable.
Dir: Rick King
Stars: Teri Polo, Martin Donovan, Jeff Fahey, Tia Carrere
a.k.a. Crossfire
It’s surprising no-one has mentioned the similarity this 1991 pic has to Kill Bill, especially given QT’s liking, both for lifting plots and Hong Kong movies. Here, Cynthia Khan plays Kwanny, the daughter in a gangster family whose wedding day is interrupted by the treacherous slaughter of her intended (and a good few others). Thus explodes a spiral of revenge and betrayal, in which she gets plenty of chance to use her martial arts and gun skills. Of course, there are differences – she is unaware of her enemy within – but the overlap is striking. No doubt Tarantino will claim not to have heard of it – any more than he’d seen City on Fire, before making Reservoir Dogs…