Madam City Hunter

Here we go again: another early-90’s low-budget Hong Kong action film where the action is great and the film is sloppy. The good news is that the fight scenes (choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping) are fast, intricate and very well-performed; the bad news is that while you’re waiting for them, you are subjected to a story that is not only uninteresting but often doesn’t even make sense from scene to scene, and to humor that, more often than not, misses the mark. It doesn’t help any that the English subtitles (on my World Video version at least) become just about invisible against white backgrounds, which means that any non-Chinese-speaking viewer is losing entire sentences of dialogue. On the bright side, Cynthia Khan looks very beautiful, plays a fearless character, and is in top fighting form. Kara Hui spends most of the film being seductive, but also gets a couple of fights near the end; however, this is mainly a showcase for Cynthia and Anthony Wong, and they are both up to the challenge. In short: enjoy the fights, but prepare to be scratching your head in-between them. (**1/2)