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NAKED KILLER | |
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Directed by Clarence Fok Yiu Leung
Starring Connie Ng Hong Kong, 1992 GRADE: B |
 Photo stolen shamelessly from the Naked Killer home
page.
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Leave it to Hong Kong to export this delirious concoction, which makes hash out of soft porn, rape revenge, and your average martial arts set pieces. The premise is that a string of grisly serial murders -- the victims are found castrated, with their limbs broken - is really being committed by women. Tinam (Simon Yam), the cop who figures this out, gets no respect from his peers (he was responsible for his brother's accidental death), but does wind up, as luck would have it, with an unwitting crush on Kitty (Chingmy Yau), who is subsequently recruited by master assassin Sister Cindy (Svenwara Madoka). Cindy trains Kitty to be a quick-witted killer, using such rude tactics as locking her in the cellar with a drooling, manic would-be rapist. Surviving such trials, Kitty gets a new identity as "Vivian", but Tinam recognizes her and gets caught in the crossfire as psychobabes Princess and Baby are recruited by their unseen Japanese masters to kill Cindy and Kitty. The whole thing unfolds in the Hong Kong action style of quick cuts and impossible stunts that endeared John Woo and Jackie Chan to their cult U.S. audiences. If it all sounds too good to be true, well, maybe it is. After a slam-bang first half hour, including a delicious James Bond-style credit sequence which maps out the trashy Nirvana that the movie aspires to, Naked Killer lapses too often into the doldrums. Instead of careening out-of-control, the movie remains remarkably sedate, with a couple of outrageous full-tilt set pieces revving the proceedings. The movie's best when it's most blatant -- when heads are flying, a whole bunch of guys brandishing suits and guns appear out of nowhere, or when the half-naked Princess and Baby are sharing a romantic moment in the pool as a nearby corpse bleeds into the water. Lots of directors could juice up the action scenes here without breaking a sweat; it's low-level gender politics that makes this killing machine run. Taking the tendency of Hong Kong movies to alternately exploit and empower female characters to the logical extreme, this one short-circuits sex and violence without the grisly underpinnings of Abel Ferrara's indispensable Ms. 45 or the leering yet paranoid sensibility of Hollywood's recent "erotic thrillers." The action and the characters are lightweight, but by dwelling on rape and the penis as symbols of male power, Naked Killer inhabits a subtextual realm that's hard to ignore. It's doubtless that this film belongs to the women, who blamelessly act out a decidedly violent fantasy that's traditionally beyond their purview. At the same time, they display themselves shamelessly for men -- the action fans who will buy the bulk of the tickets (and maybe get a bit of a nervous tic as they see their cinematic counterparts dispatched one by one). Is everyone happy? It's hard to imagine. But by offering catharsis, titillation, and equal ass-kicking for the fairer sex, Naked Killer sure can't hurt more than it helps. | |
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