Beautiful Killing Machine
(XX: utsukushiki kinou)
Director: Takahito Hara
Year: 1996
Running Time: 91 minutes
Coiffed like a runway model, Cheryl (Rei Natsume
– "Fudoh 2") is a deadly and proficient bodyguard for hire who prefers
working in high heels and short skirts. She has a certain Jade Leung/Black
Cat ambience about her. She is employed by a small boutique agency in which
the boss is missing an arm and the assistant is stuck in a wheelchair.
Cheryl fits right in though because she is missing her womb. She doesn’t
care who the client is or what he has done to earn the enmity of people
who want to do him harm. A job is a job and her job is to keep him safe
for the proscribed time in the contract – she doesn’t have to like him
or respect him – just keep him alive. Her first client in the film is a
small Caucasian boy who she has to deliver to a helicopter pad. Three bad
guys want to stop that from happening – with her kick boxing skills and
a little gunfire she makes sure they don’t.
Next she takes on the task of protecting the odious
Ko, a Japanese businessman from Hong Kong, who has been cheating his partners
and is in Japan to pick up some hidden gems. Cheryl checks him into a hotel
but after being rejected sexually by Cheryl, Ko calls an escort service
to keep him a happy boy. She shows up but has more in mind than a massage
as she and a coterie of killers try to get to him – but the cool implacable
bodyguard takes them out one by one – until she meets Owl. Owl is the number
one hired killer in Japan who takes an ear off his victims as a souvenir
and he has a reputation of never giving up. Cheryl has him in her sights,
but can’t pull the trigger – she knew him from years before and killing
your first love isn’t easy.
There isn’t much new here – though the gender
roles have been reversed from the typical bodyguard film – until
a freaky twist near the end that may seem astonishingly silly and contrived
but makes for a fascinating turn of events and a splashy bloody ending
of regrets and sorrow. Director Takahito Hara doesn’t have a lot of credits
that I could find – perhaps this is a pseudonym – but he shows a very able
hand and a still photographic sense of imagery
(of an adult nature). His shots of Cheryl immersed in the water, of an
ear sinking in a pool by an underwater swimmer and an overhead look at
kickboxers surrounded by hanging red cloth are surprisingly artistic and
give the video production a certain sheen. The action in this film is more
plentiful than in any of the other films in the series – with some hand
to hand fighting as opposed to simple gunplay – and a few decent if still
vastly under-budgeted set pieces of killing. In these days when girls with
guns has hit rock bottom in Hong Kong, we will take what we can get from
anywhere.
My rating for this film: 6.0