Love to Kill
Director: Lin Chan-wai
Year: 1991
Rating: 4.5
Someone tipped me
off that there was an obscure film out there by this name with Yukari Oshima
in it. There is another film by this title starring Danny Lee, Anthony Wong
and Elizabeth Lee. To my surprise my HK video store actually had a film by
this title and sure enough Yukari is in it. A little less surprising was
the fact that there are no sub-titles and to no surprise was the fact that
this is not a very good film. It appears to be shot on video and is likely
a straight to video production of some kind. It is listed on HKMDB.
Often with non sub-titled films, I can figure
out what is going on to some degree. I didn’t really have a clue on this one.
Not that it was all that complicated, but I could never understand what relationship
the characters had to one another.
At first it looked like Yukari wasn’t going to do much in this film, but
look sweet and do a bit of bowing. Then she passes some bad fellows on the
staircase and she gives them the patented Oshima look that says “get you
later sucker!”. Then I knew the film would not be a total loss.
As best as I could tell Yukari and her partner (or husband or boyfriend)
are cops from Japan that have come to HK to look for some Yakuza type. They
hook up with a HK cop (who flirts with Yukari much to the dismay of her partner)
and go after the bad guys.
Yukari gets involved with four to five fights – shows some quick leg kicks
– but none of them are very interesting until the last one. This is the big
showdown and Yukari gets to kneecap a couple guys.
If anyone ever sees this and understands
it – feel free to let me know what was going on!