Pink Panther
Director: Law Chi
Year: 1993
Rating: 5.0
This is an obscure low-grade Girls with
Guns film coming near the end of that wonderful cycle of female empowerment
action movies in which there were no rules. Or safety concerns. What it
has going for it are two actresses who are as obscure as the film and nearly
forgotten in the pantheon of great action actresses in that genre. One of
them is Nadeki Fujimi (aka Takajo Fujimi) who was Japanese but never was
able to gain the roles that Yukari Oshima or Michiko Nishawaki did. Maybe
there was only room for two Japanese stars but she is quite attractive, has
some legit martial arts skills and clearly is doing most of her own stunts.
From 1989 to 1994 she appeared in ten films in this genre - all B films but
a few well-known to fans of these films such as Killer Angels, Crystal Hunt,
Mission Condor and Cheetah on Fire - but not in the starring role.
She is the star in this one but it doesn't
even rate as a B film. Along with her is To Kwai-fa, another actress with
real skills but not really gifted with looks who appeared in a number of
films but again never the star roles - some you might know are Braveful
Police, All Mighty Gambler and Big Circle Blues. Or maybe not. She is from
Taiwan with skills in Taekwondo and is a body builder. The two of them are
a good one-two punch.
They head a female vigilante group of
about a dozen who wear blue denim jackets and appealing denim shorts who
drive around on motorcycles looking for men behaving badly to women. In Hong
Kong they don't seem to have to go far. A customer is smacking around a hostess
in a nightclub and preparing to rape her as the crowd cheers him on - women
and men - when our two heroines appear and beat him up and then slice off
his penis in front of everyone. Oh, and then shoot a couple guys on the way
out. They seem to have a particular dislike for the male genitalia and later
use a running motorcycle wheel laid on a man's crotch to question him. Not
surprisingly he tells them everything.
They come to the attention of a triad
bad guy and his infinite minions willing to take a bullet for him and this
leads to two very solid shoot-em-outs where tons of people jump up and are
killed - but fortunately they eventually run out of bullets and we get some
nice physical banging each other. The problem with this is the same as with
so many of the low budget films from this genre - you have to fill the other
hour with something and it is rarely pretty - here we get way too much talking
and driving around on their cycles. When the girls go to rescue Nadeki from
being raped the film must follow them on their way from beginning to end
- just get there already!
