Lethal Angels
Director: Steve Cheng
Year: 2006
Rating: 6.0
If I had realized that this vcd that I have had
for years was directed by Steve Cheng, I would have gotten to it a long time
ago. During a particularly bland period in Hong Kong films in the late 1990's
when one lousy cheap horror film after another was coming out to cash in
on The Ring phenomenon, he made three excellent ones that were grotty and
great fun - Horoscope I & II and Erotic Nightmare. All on low budgets
but that didn't matter. For some reason this was his last film and I think
he has moved on to directing TV. This isn't a horror film but something closer
to Girls with Various Killing Weapons. It has some very violent bloody moments
though not as many as you might wish. It starts off great with a couple scenes
in which women go to work on killing vile men - but then he makes the mistake
of shifting the story in the middle section to the two cops chasing them
and falling in love with them - and truthfully they were as dull as a washcloth.
Get back to the woman. Killing. This is called Lethal Angels, not Boring
Cops Who Mope.
It begins in a disco and two cops Darren (Jordan Chan - who has since this
turned into a despicable Beijing toady) and Jet (Andy On) are there keeping
an eye on a gangster - and half an eye on a few lovely women who look like
they have come to party. Actually, they have come to provide a community
service. Dora (Wai Wah) entices the owner (Samuel Pang) into a private room,
does a little strip tease for him and then cuddles on his lap. Pulls out
a wire and garrotes him to death. Meanwhile her friends are on the dance
floor knifing his men to death. By then Darren and Jet have left but they
recall the girls and Jet is fairly sure one of them was a girl he had a crush
on at university before she mysteriously disappeared.
Turns out that on the night they were to go see Hitchcock's Notorious (which
seemingly plays non-stop in Hong Kong because it is still playing five years
later and then ten years after that) Yoyo's (Tien Hsin from Taiwan) family
is killed by triads and she is about to be gang raped when suddenly all the
men are killed by a flying chain that strangles them. Behind this is Winnie
(Li Fei) who has organized a small group of girls with similar grievances
and good looks. That they want revenge for. Winnie trains them hard - Yoyo
is initiated by having to kill a chained man - one of her intended rapists
that Winnie was kind enough to put in storage. She fires bullets at the girls
that they have to deflect with a knife. Harder than it sounds. She also teaches
them how to excite men sexually because when the blood rushes from the brain,
they are easier to kill.
All good until her next assignment for Yoyo is to get a job in a triad's
home and find out where he keeps his money and then kill the family including
a little girl. For Yoyo this is going a step too far - grown men and
women sure - no problem - but a child. Both she and Emma (Cherie Ying) have
their doubts about this. And the cops are getting closer. A little comedy
is thrown in to lighten the film up such as when Emma has been knocked out
and two men dig a grave to bury her alive. But first of course they decide
to have some fun with her and one leaves to give his friend some privacy.
She comes to and cuts his throat and the sounds he makes make his friend
think he is having that fun with all of his heavy breathing as he tries to
stay live. That passes for humor in this film.
The film sags in the middle section like a middle aged man and it misses
a good opportunity at the end for a bloody massacre - but still for a Girl
Power film in 2006 it was pretty decent. It was a genre that was on life
support with a few exceptions. I had hoped that Li Fei might have reignited
it with terrific physical performances in Fist Power and Naked Weapon but
this turned out to be her last film as well. The ending is sentimentally
absurd but the characters that Joran and Ying play fall in love and in real
life so did they as he was to marry her four years later. Ying is a doll
and was a favorite of mine back in those days in a lot of solid films - I
wonder if she has become a toady as well? I hope not. Chan is a member of
the Huizhou Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Get me a barf bag. I can honestly say I never understood why he was so popular.
