Sexy and Dangerous II
Even though this Bad Boy production is a sequel
in name only to the original 1996 film, it is interesting to compare the
two films as a means of showing how quickly the HK film industry has lowered
it’s quality standards. Both films deal with the same subject matter –
a gang of girls and their interaction and relationship with each other
and with the triads – but the outcome is very different.
While Sexy and Dangerous I was far from a classic
and certainly had budget restraints, it still managed to exude a great
deal of charm, create multiple involving story lines, have in depth original
characterizations, utilize the city of HK effectively and in total just
be a lot of fun to watch. Sexy and Dangerous II has little of this.
It clearly has no budget to work with and you
know the old saying “talk is cheap” – well, that is pretty much all that
goes on here. If talk was sexy and dangerous these triad boys and girls
would own HK – but talk is mainly cheap to film. So the film consists primarily
of one set talk piece after another – until the final ten minutes when
everyone finally shuts up and gets to “chopping”. If the conversations
were interesting or amusing that would be one thing – but these are meandering
conversations that often feel badly ad-libbed. In particular, the director
-Kant Leung (should be Can’t Direct) - has chosen to include a number of
conversations between two minor characters (a couple) that go on and on
and say nothing and have no point. Perhaps the director thought they were
amusing – his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – but more likely he realized
that he needed some filler to make it to the 90-minute mark and asked this
twosome to just talk.
The film does have the presence of two of the
better new actresses – Josie Ho (Purple Storm) and Kristie Yeung (Portland
Street Blues and A Man Called Hero) – and they come across as fine as the
script allows them to. There is something about Josie’s intensity and piercing
eyes that make her interesting even in a film like this – and Kristie is
simply a good actress and very lovely. So the film was not entirely painful!
They are part of a small group of four girls
– Nozzle (Josie), Pepper (Kristie), Cocky and Mistress. The last two are
Suki Lee and Shirly Hung, but I am not sure which is which. They unfortunately
get mixed up between the rivalry of two minor gang leaders of the Hung
Hing triad. Prince (Michael Tong) is as they put it “a righteous rascal”
as opposed to Dragon (Tony Ho) who is clearly the bad guy. This is easy
to tell because Prince has a great blonde hairdo and is almost always smiling
while Dragon always has a contorted facial expression and is always sneering.
Prince spends much of the film trying to woo Josie
who has not got over her last boyfriend – a triad member who was chopped
to death. Perhaps Prince should have been spending more time watching his
back than watching Josie though because before long Dragon springs his
trap. Josie in the meantime has fallen in love – not a wise choice
doing the triad tryst thing again – maybe time to try going out with someone
with different career goals than chopping other people to death – perhaps
a banker – that’s the ticket!
So finally in the last ten minutes of the film
we have some fun as the girls try and protect Prince from attack and have
to take up choppers themselves. Not enough though to save this film from:
My rating for this film: 5.0