Movie Review: Naked Soldier/絕色武器

Andy On is wondering “How can she breathe in that outfit?”*****Having missed the Movie Night Dynasty screening of this film, I was forced to travel to Kowloon Bay to see this film.*

Con sidering my other option was Yuen Long, I feel like I got the better half of the bargain. 

I love Wong Jing movies. I always go see them, and I always enjoy them.

Well, almost always.

Watching Wong Jing movies is an exercise in allowance and willful acceptance of idiocy.

There’s also a negative side.

To wit:

Naked Soldier/絕色武器’s  opening scene takes place in Florida (which looks suspiciously like the New Territories) in 1980. A group of assassins pulls up to an isolated house.

In a 2010 Audi SUV.

This flashback gives way to 1995.

In which people all have 2010 vintage clothing, computers, and phones. And Hong Kong has a Bauhinia flag.

Then again, the narrative in a Wong Jing film is usually about the fifth thing down the list of important considerations, well below Cleavage, Product Placement, Production Cost, and Cleavage.

A recent Hong Kong standard; cleavage for film and a face for radio.

Besides, we should probably take it easy on  Naked Soldier/絕色武器”s scrīpt. It’s rather obviously been gang-raped by three rappers named Slap Dash, Ill Logic and Cheap Ploy.

Almost the entire cast of the film are dressed in outfits that would make Liberace flinch.

“Do we really have to wear that sh*t?”

“F@#$, we do.”

It looks like the designers took their cues from Lady Gaga.

這樣誕生的.

Given that this is a Wong Jing film, it’s more like a cheap Chinese knock-off of Lady Gaga.

And Lady Gaga has a penis.

Which certainly seems okay to one of these characters.

In the best (or worst) Wong Jing tradition, racism makes it de rigeur cameo, inspiring gasps of shock and outrage from the audience I sat with.  

“太噁心了!”

Speaking of disgusting, the voice dubbing in  Naked Soldier/絕色武器 is  atrocious.

But anyone who saw the English-language trailer would know that.

And that the dubbing had a lot of company in the sh*thouse.

So why would I watch this movie?

Well, let’s see…

Naked Soldier/絕色武器is written and produced by Wong Jing and it has ‘Naked’ in the title.

It’s constitutionally certain to be just as crass, exploitative, and shameless as it is cheap and silly.

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And it’s  really crass, exploitative and shameless.

He looks insulted. Not.

There are several “Oh sh*t moments,” and they are absolutely guilty pleasures.

One of them involves a grandmother and an exit wound.

Another involves a villain whose sexual orientation is portrayed in terms that make you realize how profoundly inadequate words like  outrageous,  offensive, and  embarrassing really are.

Welcome to the Fire Island Street Fair.

But that is part of what makes Wong Jing worth watching (if anything indeed does); you get the feeling that when someone says “Boss, don’t you think that’s going a little too far?”, Wong Jing looks at them and says “Of course it is, you jackass!”

“Who the f@#$ said ‘restraint’??? WHO WAS IT?!?!?!”

We don’t watch Wong Jing for subtlety, plausibility, or acting.

“我不知道她是十五年！”

We watch it because we don’t want to think for 90 minutes.

“不要以為. 行動.”

But Naked Soldier/絕色武器  isn’t all bad.

Really.

Sammo Hung is in it.

“Let’s get this BBQ started.”

He’s not the greatest actor in the world, but he is Sammo Hung, and for him to be doing the things he does at his age is still pretty impressive.

鐵胃的風格!

His action scenes in Naked Soldier/絕色武器 are good, as are some of the other cast members’.

Corey Yuen did the choreography, and that obviously helped.

It also helped that there were quite a few trained martial artists in the cast, and it brings the film up an otherwise undeserved notch.

These people made Naked Soldier/絕色武器 worth the time for me, even as they remind us just how rare such quality is these days.

Philip Ng, Ian Powers, Jiang Luxia, and the young woman who plays Sammo’s stepdaughter (I couldn’t find her name) provide a lot of the entertainment in the film.

“對話的手, 女朋友.”

Andy On continues to work his way up the martial arts film food chain, and his brief fight with Sammo reminds us just how good these scenes can be when two trained martial artists face off.

“I saw that candy bar in your pocket!”

The basic litmus test for fight scenes is fairly simple: how long is any one shot? Trained martial artists can sustain the shots longer because they have the capability to execute longer sequences of movements. People who are not trained cannot, and their scenes require a great deal more editing and much briefer individual shots.

I found myself pleasantly surprised by much of the action in Naked Soldier/絕色武器, and while it made me happy, it also made me wistful.

Considering the training Sammo and Jackie and Yuen Biao all went through is now essentially illegal to put children through, we know that the action benchmark set in the 70s, 80s, and 90s is likely to remain unchallenged.

But if we approach viewing from the standpoint of being grateful for what we do occasionally get, then there are at least a few good scenes to be found in Naked Soldier/絕色武器, and those cast members deserve the credit.

Part of what makes these scenes shine is the relative awfulness of the rest of the action. It is painfully obvious in Naked Soldier/絕色武器  who has training and who doesn’t.

Winner gets a new hairdo. Loser has to keep theirs.

Anthony Wong has a great cameo, but half of what makes it so fun is that it is pointless, random, and clumsy. Chances are he stumbled onto the set during a week-long drunk and, like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, got tossed in front of the camera.

“Look! Up there! In the smog! Is that… 零化子???”

The other half of the fun is in watching Anthony gleefully ham it up and even bring a little wit and style to his lines.

“Ralph Macchio ain’t got sh*t on me!”

But not his action scenes.

A fight to the death for the last chicken wing.

Whoever was his body double in the fight scenes had a lot of work to do.

The only reason I don’t think it was the actress who played  Sammo’s stepdaughter is because she was in the same scene:

Look in the background. Wong Jingrules .

There were other reasons for me to watch Naked Soldier/絕色武器 . In a film about a trio of deadly female assassins with the word Naked in the title, one might readily assume that there is going to be some eye candy.

But the use of the year 1995 indicates to us that this film has been tailored for the Big Red Market.

Because ever since 1997, Hong Kong has been a socialist paradise with no corruption, violence, crime or anything else that would make China look bad and therefore hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

So there’s nobody gonna get naked in this movie.

The only person who got topless was Sammo Hung, and I nearly puked in my popcorn.

Of course, not everyone sees beauty the same way.

I was personally ecstatic to see not one but two women with short hair in Naked Soldier/絕色武器 .

“你希望看到的睾丸肉串嗎？”

Even I can laugh at my tomboy proclivity, but that doesn’t mean I want to overcome it.

There may be something wrong with me, but I am obviously not the only one.

It was also nice to see Ellen Chan back on the big screen, even if she wasn’t naked. She’s been naked in other movies before, so it was okay.  

“Stop thinking aboutEternal Evil of Asia !!”

It wasn’t (really) a disappointment that she stayed clothed.

I mean, other than the clothes themselves.

Ellen Chan and Pepe Le Pew star in  Naked Soldier/絕色武器 .

  Naked Soldier/絕色武器 is Jennifer Tse’s debut as a leading actress. She plays a young woman who was kidnapped as a child, brainwashed, and trained as a deadly and single-minded assassin.

Then, probably because Wong Jing wrote this scrīpt, she goes to college in Taiwan.

 ”Yeah, my paper’s late. You got a f@#$in’ problem with that?”

Don’t ask me (or Naked Soldier/絕色武器 ) why she went to college in Taiwan, because you will never find out.

Don’t even think about it. 

If you do any thinking whatsoever during  Naked Soldier/絕色武器, your brain will turn around 180 degrees inside your skull and you’ll bleed from the eyes, ears, and nose.

It made me feel like I had been brainwashed, just like Jennifer’s character.

Though to be honest, it seems they did a little too good of a job on her.

Her performance is absolutely flat, and while occasionally it called for a sort of unblinking indifference, there were other times when more emotion was needed.   

“If I have to go through another metal detector with you…”

Even her scenes with Andy On lacked any kind of spark, which is odd considering that in real life they are a couple.

This is how Andy remembers the premiere.

This is how Jennifer remembers it.

I’ve seen better performances, to be sure.

Just not in this movie.

As I said, if  anyone pulled off a good performance in this howler, it would be a miracle just shy of curing cancer.

So when placed within the context (and confines) of the whole film, it is not especially deserving of criticism.

Nobody’s going to put this one at the top of their resume.

Her action scenes aren’t very good either, but as I already noted, she is surrounded by people who are much better at that sort of thing.

“You try kicking in pants so tight you can’t breathe…”

If her fight scenes weren’t the greatest, so what? In the broad scheme of things, we knew she would be the winner, just because of the way the (painfully obvious) story arc was going.

Ian Powers’ character wasn’t the first fruit she’s crushed.

And she certainly seems to have tried her best (something that can’t be said of several of her colleagues).

“I know he’s not talking about me.”

We’ve all got to start somewhere, and in that sense Naked Soldier/絕色武器 leaves Jennifer Tse a lot of room for improvement.

Besides, it’s not as though she wasn’t entertaining.

What  is she looking at?

What made  Naked Soldier/絕色武器 fun for me was a lot of the smaller details. Most of which, I readily concede, are totally coincidental.

Like Philip Ng’s expression in this shot.

Or this one:

The story at least makes it clear why he has that look on his face.

“That’s whatyou think.”

Ian Powers better be careful, or he may end up being typecast as a gay [sic].

Even some of the overacting was entertaining. The actress who played Sammo’s stepdaughter seems to have been afraid that this would be her only movie ever, so she (over)acted as much as possible.

But there was something about the character and the way it was portrayed that made me nostalgic for older HK movies.

I’m not saying it was good.

It was just entertaining.

Maybe it was just the haircut.

Yeah, I need help. But I don’t want it.