The Huntress

The beginning is just what you expect: lots of people shooting at each other, huge explosions, a street covered with corpses – and a mysterious woman in disguise. But then the complications set in. Cat (Almen Wong) is a professional killer falling in love with John, a police investigator (Michael Wong). John feels torn between his job, his ex-wife and child, and Cat of course. You guess it: it's not one of those easy relationships. A very stylish movie using strange camera angles, weird colours (almost only yellow and blue, hardly any red or green) and distorted unnatural sounds. The story picks up familiar ideas from movies such as John Woo's ‘The Killer' or Patrick Leung's masterpiece 'Beyond Hypothermia', so maybe it won't win a prize for originality, but it is a vivid mixture, not boring for a second, and it's got beautiful Almen Wong in her best role so far. If you are looking for something bizarre (what else would you expect from the director who made 'Naked Killer'?) instead of the average assassin story, try this one.

With just about any other actress put into this average girls with guns film, full of slow parts and sappy love scenes, the movie would have been lackluster at best. Enter the striking on screen persona of Almen Wong, a talented and beautiful sight to witness. Unlike her more well known HK counterparts, Almen commands this film and for perhaps the first time since Michiko Nishiwaki, actually looks like she could get rough with the guys. Almen Plays noodle addicted master assassin Yang Ying A.K.A. Cat. She is very brutal, not afraid to get kinky either, but has the dichotomy of a tender side. She is killing evil Triad bosses, but a heady gumshoe played by a rather one dimensional Michael Wong wants her brought to justice. Yeah the plot is full of holes, but Almen's blistering performance is worth +3 points turns the film from a 4 to a 7 out of 10.

The two Wongs in question—Almen and Michael—play sexy assassin, Yin Ying, and policeman, John Cannon. Although on opposing sides of the law, the two fall in love and plan a new life together. When Yin Ying is captured by the police, she thinks she has been betrayed by John, and plans revenge. However, she soon finds out that this is not so, and goes after those really responsible—her lesbian agent and her top client.

Clarence Ford of Naked Killer fame directs this sorry mess and imbues it with all the trappings of a bad 80s music video; so many shots are out of focus and at a 45% angle that I now need my eyes tested and have a permanent crick in my neck.

After loads of sappy love scenes between John and Yin (a poor excuse for showing us Almen Wong in various states of undress, but never naked), this boring movie ends in a glut of John Woo influenced action which includes slow-mo shootouts, church based gun-play, and a Mexican standoff. The whole affair is instantly forgettable and rather tame for a Cat III movie.

*** I just realised that a third Wong helped make this mess, the writer and producer Wong Jing, but that wouldn't have made for such a great summary ***

THE HUNTRESS: HER NAME IS CAT is another oddball sex 'n' violence shocker from Hong Kong director Clarence Ford. The worst thing about the movie is the disjointed direction, which makes watching and making sense of the thing a real chore; Ford directs in one of those tiresome, hyper-stylised ways, with lots of odd camera angles, quick-fire editing, and crazy camera shots. It looks cool at first but after about five minutes it becomes overcooked.

Not that the style hides much of the story, because this is very simple stuff indeed, an assassination-style thriller clearly modelled on the likes of LEON. Almen Wong is the titular character, a top-notch killer who's sometimes overdubbed with the sound of a big cat, for some bizarre reason. She begins a relationship with family man Michael Wong (who looks faintly embarrassed to be here), and a combo of action and romance follows.

THE HUNTRESS is notable for featuring endless cheesy sex scenes that tease nudity but steadfastly refuse to reveal any (Wong clearly wasn't willing to go the whole hog, leaving the whole film pretty much a tease). The action sequences are more fun, with all of the wild over-the-top fights and shoot-outs that you'd expect to see, but the film is very cheap and slapdash throughout. Poorly-translated subtitles don't help. In the end, the only way I could enjoy this was as a so-bad-it's-good piece of entertainment.

You would think that the people behind this movie would step it up a notch after that horrible "Naked Killer 2" movie, but "The Huntress" (aka "Her Name is Cat") is a movie that aspires to achieve a lot but fail to deliver on most accounts.

The story is about mysterious female assassin Cat, from mainland China, working as an assassin in Hong Kong in order to support herself and her family back in China. Being hired to kill a politician, Cat soon finds herself in over her head, caught between loyalty to the job, her love towards a police man and having to fend off rival assassins.

I found the story to be a bit thin, but it was spiced up with some adequate action sequences. However, what I didn't fully understand or found to be downright stupid was the sounds of a growling and roaring big feline from time to time when we saw Cat, that was just ridiculous. And also the sex scene between John (played by Michael Wong) and Cat (played by Almen Wong) was just unnecessarily dragged out into being excruciating long and too much. Plus the sex scene, again, on the boat was just totally unnecessary.

Almen Wong actually did a good job in this movie. But personally I never been much fan of Michael Wong, never really fully grasped the reason why he have to participate in Hong Kong movies when he mostly only speaks English, and his Cantonese is so bad that even Hong Kong people find it unbearable to witness. But hey, it is all a matter of preference.

For a Hong Kong action movie from the late 90's, then "The Huntress" is in the lower end of the enjoyable movies. And don't get suckered in by the allure of the DVD cover! Almen Wong does not wear that outfit in the movie. I am sure that fan of Almen Wong or Michael Wong will enjoy the movie, but for the overall fan of Hong Kong cinema, then this movie is one that you watch when you have nothing better to watch and in case that you haven't already seen it. It is just not all that noteworthy, and I doubt that I will ever watch this a second time.

If you want to watch a 'femme fatale' movie from Hong Kong, you are better off with the first "Naked Killer" movie, also from Wong Jing and Clarence Ford, the people who made "The Huntress".