NAKED HUNTRESS (1993) is a Hong Kong action movie that focuses on a handful of characters who are embroiled in a genre staple: a gang war. Classic characters such as a femme fatale, a hero cop, a gangster with a heart of gold, etc all show up to shoot, punch, and blow up the baddies. For the most part it is an effective movie with a few scenes of sleazy, CAT III goodness but there's a lot of padding that grows a touch tiresome by the end. The body count is high but the gun battles forego the wire-fu style and take a more traditional American or Filipino take:
1. Get a truck load of generic looking baddies
2. Have the hero shoot at them
3. Everyone falls over dead with sparing use of squibs
Despite these limitations the shoot out scenes start off as effective when the baddies are actually able to shoot the hero and making it feel like he is in some kind of mortal danger. Sadly, this becomes less frequent as the movie continues and the heroes simply stand there and shoot, not even opting to roll or at least try to make it look like they are trying to dodge bullets. There are a few villains who are fun but they don't have enough screen time or screen presence to really be notable and even the big baddies mostly feel like one-off henchmen from a more effective film.
Also the plot really gets bogged down in some poorly handled, romantic entanglements. While these subplots offer a few chuckles from the dialog and poorly written characters, its not enough to justify the length or frequency of these scenes.
Overall I wouldn't caution against watching it but I might reserve recommending it to anyone who isn't already a big fan of HK Action and would like a little bit of CAT III sleaze sprinkled in.
