Lethal Panther

My respects go out to the actors and actresses for their commitment to the hard physical and mental work they put into this 1990 movie. The movie is beyond doubt, an intense action based work of filmography. Criticism comes to mind for the need of more suspense, or of a greater hidden complexity of the story line. If movies are about portraits, landscapes, and persona, then these attributes could have become more developed. I especially send my best wishes to Yoko Miyamoto, to Maria Jo, and to Sibelle Hui for their courage to reflect upon these persona. Also, my best wishes go out to them for their future work in filmography.

Except a good time is not really what you will find when you sit down to watch the 1990 movie "Lethal Panther" (aka "Jing tian long hu bao").

I remember watching this movie on VHS back in the 1990s, and I was given the chance to sit down and watch it again here late in 2020. I couldn't remember the movie really, so I took the time to sit down and watch it once again. And it turns out that the movie was not particularly great. Perhaps that is why I had completely wiped it from my memory.

The storyline told in "Lethal Panther" was so random and almost not coherent at all. It seemed like director Godfrey Ho just made up things as he had an idea and as the filming of the movie progressed. There was just almost no existing red thread throughout the course of the movie. Needless to say that there was a lot of random fillers that served no purpose to the storyline, and the movie had some of the most cringeworthy sex scenes I have ever seen in a movie. I am seriously hard pressed to figure out just exactly what writers Simon Fong and Charles Ng were thinking when they concocted the script and storyline for "Lethal Panther".

The acting in the movie was dubious at best. So you are not going to be in for any particular grand Shakespearian experience when you sit down to watch "Lethal Panther". But then again, just looking at the movie's cover, who would be expecting such a thing. And it requires little imagination to figure out why the female leads were hired for the movie.

One thing that works well enough for the movie is the sheer amount of action sequences in the movie. Sure, many of them were corny and haven't withstood the test of time all that well. And the sound effects for the fighting, well, let's just say they tried.

I enjoy Asian action movies and martial arts movies, "Lethal Panther", however, is not a movie that ranks up high on the list of impressive action or martial arts movies. In fact, it was rather difficult enduring it again and making it through the course of the movie.

My rating of "Lethal Panther" ultimately has to land on a generous three out of ten stars. If you enjoy Asian action movies, skip on this one and put something else on. God knows, there are an abundance of readily more interesting and entertaining Asian action movies out there.

(1990) Lethal Panther/ Deadly China Dolls (In Chinese with English subtitles) ACTION

Co-produced and directed by Godfrey Ho, also called "Deadly China Dolls" in the UK actioner starring Sibelle Hue in a very low budget female version of John Woo's "The Killer" using a Philippine cast with so-called 'killers' pitting against one another. And Sibelle Hue as a CIA operative hardly doing nothing but talk with the main "killer" a little. Besides the bad acting, the action is also quite bad whereas the action scenes don't connect like theirs no rhythm or flow with many ridiculous shooting move stances.

From the opening scene of CIA agent Sibelle Hu telling a counterfeiter that she will let him go if he can beat her in a fight (!) to the scene of a prostitute comparing her job with that of a hired killer and coming to the conclusion that "my job is safer, unless the men have AIDS" (!), "Deadly China Dolls" is a ludicrous mess. Nothing here is original, nothing is believable, and nothing makes sense (the bad guys want to kill the killers so that there are no witnesses, and where do they try to do it? In supermarkets and strip clubs, among other places!). The action is sub-John Woo, and most of the villains are pathetically lousy shots. Maria Jo and Miyamoto Yoko do a fair job, but they are not interesting or engaging. And I don't know what's wrong with Sibelle Hu, but she looks awful in this movie. (**)

This is far from great filmmaking, but it may well represent the pinnacle of femme fatale, or "girls with guns", action cinema. What it lacks in production value, it more than makes up for in attitude and content. The three female leads are superb in their unflinching no-nonsense roles, with Filipino beauty queen Maria Jo leading the pack with her sizzling intensity. Despite the low production value, poor continuity, and music score cannibalized from a dozen other films, this violent and bloody John Woo inspired actioner features impressive camera work, exciting gunplay, and energetic fight choreography. Apart from a handful of sleazy and gratuitous sex scenes, I would highly recommend this film to anyone interested in the genre.