To Spy with Love
Once again I fall for the Amy Yip gambit only
to quickly discover that she is a mere pawn, a decoy to get me to watch
this fairly lame comedy. The Yipster is in this film for nearly the first
ten minutes and then disappears never to be seen or heard from again.
The opening move is good – the Yipster is on the
run from two hitmen played by Eric Kot and Jan Lamb in one of their earliest
roles (but Kot's trademark shtick is already evident). At first you think
they are just two geeky guys chasing after Amy, but then they pull out
their guns and start shooting at her. They reminded me a bit of the two
killers in A Brother from Another Planet if you have seen that – silly
but occasionally deadly. Amy turns out to be a Taiwanese spy and she passes
on some microfilm to an unsuspecting manager of a female band. This guy
(who I assume must be Teddy Robin from the credits in the HK Database)
looks like Linda Hunt in Year of Living Dangerously and regrettably the
film follows him for the duration. Why I can’t imagine. Lets see – we have
Amy and this dwarf – why don’t we forget about Amy and have him as the
star in the film. Brilliant !
It’s all played for humor(?) as spies from Japan
and Taiwan follow him around by the score in order to find the microfilm.
But there is very little that is funny – this guy is just too irritating.
The only saving grace of the film is a sexy performance from Nina Li. Sibelle
Hu is also in the spy game. The last five minutes of the film has a nice
fight between the two ladies. If the rest of the film had been as interesting,
this would have been a recommendation. As it is, this is only for Nina
Li fans.
My rating for this film: 5.0
