It's Maggie Q Time! I am always happy to see that she is still working
and still kicking ass. I feel like I have watched her grow up since she landed
in Hong Kong some 20 years ago. Even before she started acting she was in
all the society magazines attending galas and dating actors. She was this
exotic flower from Hawaii, part American, part Vietnamese. Unable to speak
Cantonese of course. But who cared. Hong Kong had worked around that plenty
of times with actresses from elsewhere. I rented her debut film. Something
I expect she has destroyed all copies of. It was titled Model from Hell and
co-starred Simon Yam. That was when Simon would appear in any film as long
as there was a paycheck attached to it. Dreadful film. At the time I wrote
"Director Chiu Jan Keung should be on a wanted poster. Crime – causing bodily
damage to careers and reputations with a loaded camera." but at the end I
said "Now Maggie does have a nice scary stare – one I am sure she has long
practiced on room service waiters and dress fitters – and she is undeniably
lovely, so hopefully someone will give her another opportunity in a film
in which she only has to act with one head." In the film she has two heads.
Well, clearly she was given another opportunity and found action to be her
forte with Gen-Y Cops, Naked Weapon and Dragon Squad in Hong Kong and came
back to the States with some experience and a resume and got the role as
Nikita, female assassin. It appears she is still a female assassin these
many years later.
The female assassin has admittedly been beaten into the ground over the years
- not that I ever tire of them - and it must be hard coming up with something
mildly original. And they don't really here but it has enough of a personality
and a few twists that make it entertaining. And it's Maggie Q. And let's
not forget Samuel Jackson and Michael Keaton. And give the director
Martin Campbell some credit for knowing how to shoot an action scene - i.e.
Casino Royale. You may question the logic of the plot or the queasy dialogue/relationship
between Maggie and Keaton but the action scenes play out very well. The exit
from the building with guns blazing was terrific. As was the lovely first
scene by the pool, "I didn't come for the money". My kind of film.
The film begins with Moody (Samuel Jackson) entering a room in Vietnam and
coming across a bunch of dead bodies recently shot. He hears a noise in the
closet and when he opens the door, a young child is pointing a gun at him.
And pulls the trigger. Empty. But apparently this brings out his latent father
feelings and he takes the child with him. And 20 years or so later that child
is Maggie Q and has been trained by him to be an assassin. A very good one.
Those must have been some parent-child days at school. She also runs a rare
book store. Events force her to go back to Vietnam to look for whoever put
out a kill order on them - and her book store. Keaton plays a charming bad
guy. A little old for the role but always good to see him. A lot of killing
follows.
