They Call Her Cleopatra Wong. "She purrs like a
kitten, makes love like a siren. This side of the pacific, she is the meanest,
deadliest and sexiest secret agent." Cleopatra is a rock-em sock-em babe
working for Interpol when she isn't in bed with company. Her days are full
- archery in the morning, pistol practice in the afternoon, karate match
against one guy afterwards, hitting the disco at night and then having sex
with four men. Wait. Wait. That was four men she beat at one time in karate
and one man in bed. Then she is woken up by her boss at 4.am - we need you
Cleopatra. Right now. Stop having sex and get over here. Every time someone
is called late at night, they are having sex. Don't people just go home and
sleep?
Cleopatra is in real-life Doris Young Siew Keen aka Marrie Lee (after Bruce),
an 18-year old from Singapore who was picked out by producer/director Bobby
Suarez from the Philippines to star in his film about a crime fighting gun
toting female. The film is clearly influenced by Cleopatra Jones and other
blaxploitation films, but to its credit it came before all the Hong Kong
Girls with Guns films by about a decade. There are two sequels to this
but as far as I know they are lost (oops - at least the second one is around
I have learned). This one was thought to be, but they found a copy a couple
years ago and were able to restore it. Badly dubbed but no worse than most
of the old kung-fu films. The film sounds a lot cooler than the execution
unfortunately. You can see why Tarantino loves it because there are some
nifty ideas and in his hands he would have made it great. But it has so little
get up and go and the action is very amateurish. Every karate blow has a
bang around it, every kung fu move has a whoosh, then the choreography feels
like it is in slo-mo. They needed to undercrank the action, speed it up.
Still, this film has been on the fanboy wish list for a while and here it
is. Silly fun and Marrie Lee is great.
Counterfeiters of currencies are pouring money into the Asean economy to
crash the currency. Then buy up things. Hey, maybe these guys were behind
the Asian currency crash of 1997. Cleopatra starts off in Singapore, beats
up a dozen or so no-goods. At one point she is captured by a bad guy and
taken to his home. "So why are you here?". "I let myself get captured so
that I can find out who you were and where you were and now I am going to
beat up all your men including those fat wrestlers and then jump over your
20-foot wall". And she does. Leading to a chase on cable cars and running
that is never-ending. Then she is off to Hong Kong where she beats up more
good-niks and discovers that they are smuggling in the currency in cans of
strawberry jam. Then on to the Philippines where the bad guys have
the printing press in a convent and they are all disguised as monks and nuns.
At least 100 of them. She gathers four men with her, all with special skills
"he is a cold-blooded killer" and they attack. And that is about 30 minutes
of killing people. Very stupid people who stand there and get shot.
Not the smartest film around but I would be happy to see the sequels if I
ever find them.
