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
