Widow Warriors
Director: Johnny Wang Lung-wei
Year: 1990
Rating: 6.5/7.5
In this family drama/girls
with guns film, the males (Michael Chan, Phillip Chan, Ken Lo and Shek Kin)
in a triad family are betrayed and gunned down by a rival gang and
the women in the family - from the matriarch to the youngest - decide that
rather than sit around and mourn their men that they will extract revenge.
This is HK after all.
The film is surprisingly brutal at times and the women certainly get as much
as they give. Elizabeth Lee has the Michael Corleone role - fresh from abroad
- kept out of the family business for her own protection but forced by circumstances
to do whatever has to be done to protect the rest of the family. Two of the
other widows are Kara Hui Ying-Hung and Michiko Nishiwaki and they also get
their pound of flesh. It takes a while to get everything set up, but once
it moves into high gear it has some excellent action scenes and some unexpected
and at times unpleasant twists.
My rating for this film: 6.5
Review by YTSL
It is one of the more bemusing as well as amusing
things about Hong Kong films that their English and Chinese titles can differ
as much as they often do. Sometimes, the Chinese designation can be
more revealing than the English one (Compare and contrast “Seize Life Beauty”
and “The Lady in Black” for a 1986 revenge drama starring Brigitte Lin).
For others, it is the reverse, at least for those who aren’t in the cultural
know (On the Hong Kong Film Critics Society web site, it’s been written re
the Chinese title of “He’s a Woman, She’s a Man”: “For those who are
still wondering why the hell it's called “Gold Branch Jade Leaf”, it's simply
a common term used to describe female aristocracy”!).
Although the Chinese title of “Tiger Courage Daughter
Red” may seem somewhat obscure, this (re)viewer must say that she prefers
it to its English WIDOW WARRIORS. For one thing, I would not otherwise
have known for sure that the male members of the large family -- which includes
an unofficial second wife of the patriarch and her (but not his) teenage
daughter -- whose members are individually introduced at the beginning of
the film would be decimated before the end of the movie for which Manfred
Wong (best known for his similar involvement in the “Young and Dangerous”
series) was the producer and scriptwriter. As it was, I was gripped
with too much tension regarding their inevitable violent deaths and consequently
neither able to enjoy what happy family scenes there were early during the
film nor really care about the little quarrels that were going on between
some of the female relatives.
Perhaps those who are not new to Hong Kong movies would have guessed before
too long anyway that the cast of this not very big budget production was
too large to not have its number soon get decreased. As it was, I initially
had a few problems trying to figure what status different individuals had
within the family. I also wasn’t too sure for a while which roles the
movie’s four better known actresses (Elizabeth Lee, Tien Niu, Kara Hui Ying-Hung
and Michiko Nishiwaki) were playing. Once the women sprung into action
though, that became very clear!
As befits her being the most experienced woman warrior in this revenge movie’s
cast, Kara Hui (whose character is the wife/widow of the second son in the
family) has by far the most impressive and acrobatic moves as well as is
accorded the most extended fighting time of anyone in WIDOW WARRIORS.
The character played by Japanese action actress, Michiko Nishiwaki, not only
gets introduced by her husband (the third son) to his returning -- from law
studies in England -- sister as being a karate expert but also looked great
handling something akin to a samurai sword. Meanwhile, it was the lot
of the movie’s two lead actresses, Elizabeth Lee and Tien Niu (the former
plays the lawyer daughter; the latter portrays her step mother-aunt figure;
neither are particularly noted for their martial arts abilities...) to undergo
the most battering along with being the ones who could only wreck major havoc
with the aid of guns and other easier to handle -- by Hong Kong action movie
standards! -- weapons.
WIDOW WARRIORS features plenty of exciting action but also possesses quite
a bit of moving melodramatic moments (there is a particular strong scene
in which Tien Niu’s up until then conservative-looking character takes off
her blouse in somewhat public space to reveal her triad tattoos to her rebellious
daughter as evidence that she has been on the path which she is loath for
her daughter to take) along with a rather interesting story (which is as
full of twists as players). Although this 1989 effort doesn’t pack quite
the emotional punch of the more star-powered (Carina Lau, Tony Leung Kar
Fai, Sandra Ng and Sammo Hung feature in it along with Joyce Godenzi) 1990
“She Shoots Straight”, IMHO it has the more impressive physical performances
and a much more intense -- and consequently cathartic -- climactic battle.
All told, it is one of the better female revenge dramas I’ve seen; full of
women who as far away from being pathetic as one can imagine, battlers and
survivors in a world portrayed as generally bleak and violent but also full
of loyal and firm familial bonds.
My rating for the film: 7.5.