Yuen chi mo hei

YUEN CHI MIU HEI (or BODY WEAPON) contains such humiliating and extremely degrading depictions of rape that it makes the rape scenes in the Charles Bronson movies of the 1980's appear to be innocent Charlie Brown cartoons by comparison.

It seems that Hong Kong police officers are trained to arrest perpetrators by standing close to them face-to-face and holding out a gun in easy reach. It seems that Hong Kong police officers are not allowed to use weapons in their homes. It seems that Hong Kong police officers are trained to not use weapons when they are outnumbered by the bad guys. Sick rape scenes are mixed together with light comedy. The plot is confused and muddy. Very little makes sense.

Misleadingly (but cannily) titled and packaged as an action thriller with a tough female lead (she only gets to use her body as a "weapon" twice in the entire film, and even then not in the way you probably imagine), "Body Weapon" is a total disappointment. I wonder if the filmmakers knew what they were going for, because they try lots of different things, none of them done well; the movie is by turns hokey (those sound effects!), sleazy, plodding and sentimental, never finding its tone. The heroine says at one point that she wants to transform herself into "a woman that any man would die for"; she never gets there. (**)

BODY WEAPON is a bizarre mix of the incredibly perverse and sleazy with the kind of dumb, slapstick humour better known from Hong Kong productions like the Lucky Stars series. It's a real oddity, and anything but an entertaining film. Sadly, Hong Kong Legends saw fit to release it under the pretence of it being a martial arts film, but action fans will be disappointed as the movie contains hardly any fight scenes.

Things kick off with an awful rape/murder sequence which was heavily cut by UK censors (having read about it, I can understand the thinking behind this piece of censorship). The villain is a sadistic guy in a gimp outfit, heavily indebted to that infamous scene in Tarantino's PULP FICTION, no doubt. Right away the film cuts from that to some light comedy among the police officers who make up the movie's leads, and half an hour goes by with the same kind of useless shenanigans and pointless drivel.

Then the film realises it's meant to be a thriller and throws in another rape scene, along with lots of unnecessary sex clearly designed for the purposes of titillation. By this stage, I was ready to turn it off, but as a completionist I waited out till the end. I wish I hadn't bothered: there are a few fight scenes thrown into the mix, but they're largely pointless and they certainly don't make up for the film's many deficits.

Chiu Man Chuh is heavily featured on the UK release but it soon becomes apparent that his role in the film is relatively minor, with much of the running time given over to newcomer Angie Cheung, whose acting is nothing to write home about. One unintentionally hilarious aspect of the film is the whodunit angle involving the main villain, which will be immediately obvious to all and sundry as soon as the guy is introduced without his suit on. The film also manages to be completely offensive to gay people in the process. Nope, nothing's going to get me to like this useless movie, a truly silly attempt to create something unsavoury which falls flat on its face from the outset.

I was hoping for some great displays of Wu Shu from Chiu Man Chuk - I was sadly disappointed. This is a shame because although there were glimpses of his talents, he was severely restricted by this material.

This "material" involves an opening gang-rape scene which leaves an unpleasant aftertaste in the mouth. This refuses to go away throughout the film.

I could go into further depth about why this film is crude, nasty, voyeuristic and exploitative (in an amateurish way), but due to the shallowness of its premise and its flimsy plot, it doesn't deserve a fuller review.

This is a sub-standard HK Category III film and should be avoided by martial arts fans at all costs.

Aman Chang's Body Weapon (1999) stars Angie Cheung as an attractive and incredibly sexy police woman, who gets married with one of her colleagues only to find herself almost beaten to death and her husband killed on their wedding night. She becomes remorseless vigilante chick with the help of a homosexual freak (played memorably by film maker Clarence Ford, the director of many classics like Naked Killer and Iceman Cometh), who teaches her the secrets of "the body as a weapon", and another cop in the station, who was also a close friend with the killed cop and likes Angie very much, too. What follows is violence, revenge and murder with huge speed, but in the end, it all means nothing.

The moral of this film seems to be that revenge if you have been wronged and revenge good. No more about this film's philosophical levels since this is just exploitation in the form of sex and violence. The plot and script are often very bad and almost amateurish, as things just happen without any explanation (i.e. the girl finds the killers by just going to the street etc.) and it is all there just to show many fight scenes and action packed chases. The sex/rape scenes are pretty explicit and also S/M oriented and this film is pretty full of sleaze all the way. The UK video release has been cut over 3 minutes to tone down the sex and rape scenes, but I watched the uncut Hong Kong version which has these scenes intact. Some even say that the cut UK version makes the film actually more enjoyable and noteworthy compared to the uncut version!

The film is pretty close to Naked Killer in its tone and style, but Naked Killer is much more "restrained" and enjoyable and all the camera angles are there for purpose and are used more cleverly than in Body Weapon, which sow them all the time everywhere so they become totally gratuitous and lose their impact. There aren't any segments or images in this film that camera would be in normal position and not twisted or behind some glass, filter etc. Still this technique creates pretty bizarre atmosphere with the very dark lightning of the film. Especially the breath takingly fast last segment in the store house and the chase before it is very dark and without any real light, and so pretty nightmarish. The ending is also very manic and almost unbelievable in its rage and speed. Forget the plot, story or some deeper level in the film and screenplay, just try to enjoy and understand the visual sides and stylish elements of the film, but still this isn't as "cool" as it wanted to be.

Body Weapon gets 5/10 from me and the director could probably do better. He definitely can MOVE and use camera; if he only had better screenplay and sense of real stylish cinema, which doesn't mean that camera is twisted and moving all the time; he could ask Clarence for help for the start I think. For fans of Asian hyper insane cinema only.