Director: Stephen Shin
Year: 1992
Rating: 4.5
I need more than just watching Jade Leung hold
a gun to sustain my interest. Not much more admittedly. Some women look
good with a gun in their hand, some don’t. Miriam Yeung, no. Almen Wong,
yes. Do Do Cheng, no. Wu Chein-lien, yes. The very sleek Jade rates pretty
high for this. But this follow-up to Black Cat is such an inept affair that
you wonder what was going on. Black Cat had made a star of her almost overnight
and there was real potential for a series of Black Cat films. But then this
happened and everyone scratched their head and thought what the hell. Both
films have the same director, Stephen Shin, but in truth he doesn’t really
have much on his resume to get excited about. Black Cat was a remake to some
degree of the French film La Femme Nikita but here they have to come up with
something original. It is sort of original but fully dreadful.
The CIA operate on Jade to make her a cybernetic killing machine only vulnerable to high pitched sounds and high heat. Hopefully, she stays way from operas and crying babies. She has all these built in senses and cameras. The usual devices for programing technical killers. Unfortunately, to do this or to make her a cold-blooded killer, they erase her memory and it seems her personality. She spends much of the film staring intently at things in the distance. Which she does quite well actually. And she hardly ever talks. I didn’t count the number of lines of dialogue she has but even I could probably remember them and my memory is terrible. She doesn’t say a word till past the 30-minute mark and that is to a cat. A black cat. Her code name. They need her in service because a special secret squad AYO has plans to kill the Russian President Yeltsin. This was produced soon after he took power from the Communists, so Yeltsin is a good guy and the CIA want him kept alive. I just want to know whether we can hire AYO right now. They don’t succeed but only because of Black Cat! Too bad when they missed Yeltsin they didn’t get that KGB agent hovering about.
The film begins with a big Bondian set-piece. The CIA is protecting a Russian
who has the plans to kill Yeltsin. They have him stashed away in a mountain
wood cabin. Heading security is Robin (Robin Shou) but somehow two huge
Russian assassins slip in undetected with about fifty agents looking out
kill nearly everyone before they escape on skis and then a paraglider. Those
Russians are tough, but not as tough as the Ukrainians. Then really not
a lot happens for a long time as they team up Robin with the Black Cat and
they drive around forever in the USA (really Canada) looking for the Russians.
Her senses go a little haywire as she shoots an 80 year old grandmother
in a mall. Mistakes do happen with new technology. Off to Russia they go
to warn the Russians. A decent action piece in a factory with a bunch of
hunky Russian men trying to kill Jade – though the wirework was kind of
herky-jerky.
Some more action at the end but seriously this drags along like a pregnant
slug. There is more of a focus on Robin, the Russian killer and Yeltsin than
Jade. Kudos to the actor Alexander Skorokhod who is the spitting image of
Yeltsin. He also played Yeltsin in Police Academy: Mission to Moscow. How
could any of us forget that? And also in a TV movie titled Tribunal.
He was probably Yeltsin’s double the rest of the time when Yeltsin went on
his drinking binges. So this was a real disappointment. Slightly better on
second viewing but not by a lot.
