Brave Young Girls
Director: Kam Bo
Hong Kong
Year: 1990
Length: 86 minutes
This 1990 “Girls with Guns” flick has some
great talent onboard, but never utilizes them as well as it should have.
From the mid-1980’s to the early 90’s low budget production companies were
spitting out these types of films by the handful but the vast majority
of them had extremely generic storylines that were in place simply to support
the action set pieces. In truth “Girls with Guns” fans could generally
care less about plot and not much more about characterization – and forget
about sets or design – just find a warehouse and have a fight. Action is
what mattered and this is what these types of films are judged on – how
many fights and how good was the action choreography. This one falls into
mid-range territory with a number of decent fights but they tend to be
shorter than one would like and the camera placement is surprisingly weak
often showing the punches and kicks missing their intended targets by a
good margin.
Through different paths four women find themselves
banding together to take down the bad guys. Hong (Margaret Lee Tin-long)
is part of a brother/sister robbery duo who have sneaked in from China
and need money to pay for their mother’s treatment. In an attempted robbery
the brother is killed by the police and Hong goes on the run. Li (Jo Jo
Ngan Lai-yue) has just returned from school and dear mom (Pak Yan) and
pop (Gam Bui) want her to make some money by becoming a hostess. Due to
their gambling problem they are deeply in hock to Cheng Gai (Shing Fui-on).
Cheng Gai is a nasty piece of work who runs girls, lends money and deals
in drugs. When the girls cross him he doesn’t hesitate to punch them in
the face or force them to drink urine (which his men happily supply). Li
also goes on the run where she crosses paths and helps Hong avoid capture
by the cops. She stays with her grandfather (veteran actor Cheung Hei),
but her parents track her down and drag her back to work at a club run
by Cheng Gai and his girlfriend (Betty Chan Pooi-kei). Hong eventually
also begins working for Cheng Gai as a chicken in a one-woman brothel.
Another prostitute Jenny (Ha Chi-chun) is a tough cookie who helps Li escape
from the clutches of a horny client one night.
Into this social drama comes a Japanese female
cop who is working with the HK cops to bring down Cheng Gai and his boss
Reng Ga (Leung Kar-yan). This cop of course is played by the great Yukari
Oshima. She doesn’t show up till the 45-minute mark but does so with an
immediate fight with Cheng Gai and his gang and besides the pleasure of
watching Yukari and her great kicks, the viewer is given the opportunity
to see her fight Shing Fui-on – I don’t recall too many films showing his
kung fu skills – for good reason! Yukari later enlists the brave young
girls to work undercover for her – but they are soon captured and tied
up. Yukari shows up to save the day and has a solid though much too quick
fight with Dan Mintz and then a better one with Leung Kar-yan.
There are a couple other smaller fights along
the way – one that opens the film but has no women involved. In a pointless
but much appreciated cameo Kara Hui Ying-hung shows up to kick lots of
butt and then walks off never to be seen again! I wanted more Kara! It
is a solid fight though. One poorly used action actress is Ha Chi-chun
who was a terrific but little known player – one of her best known roles
is as a Viet Cong in Eastern Condors – she has great skills but only gets
to use them in a small fight near the end. The action choreography is from
James Ha who also plays one of the thugs who gets beaten up a few times.
It is decent though clearly quickly shot film and Yukari has a few real
good moments of acrobatic flips and falls and her trademark kick over her
head move. All in all not a bad addition to this genre but it could have
been lots better.
My rating for this film: 6.0