Gu ling jing guai nu sha xing

Yes that is Chia Ling and Tung Li starring. Sometimes you just need a paycheck. The movie is also known as "Gril Named Iron Phoenix" so that should be a clue as to how awful it is. It runs a thankfully short 75 minutes and probably took 150 minutes to plan and put on film. The only reason to watch this movie is with beer soaked buddies so you can laugh at how bad it is. Every attempt at comedy falls flat and the martial arts is pathetic. Action director Leung Siu-Chung (father of Bruce Leung) certainly showed up on set drunk that day. The plot is people getting murdered so the bad guys can collect insurance money. I have no idea how that is supposed to be funny. It is also not funny when someone who can't do martial arts tries to do martial arts and fails. The overwhelming stupidity of everything in this comedy is also not funny. Perhaps I need a few more beers or perhaps there just isn't enough beer in the world.

The comic relief bits are, as the other two reviewers (to date) have mentioned, truly lame. And stale. And no incentive to stick around for the predictable ending. But if you approach it as a Judy Lee vehicle, tolerating the flaws along the way, it's not a bad showcase for her skills and personality.

She's an undercover cop assigned to bust the honchos running the docks for their insurance scam of killing off workers in "industrial accidents" and keeping most of the payouts. Perhaps their company's mission statement was "get a piece of the wok". Bad pun, but still funnier than the script.

Back to Judy. The fight scenes are barebones. Few weapons. No wires, and only one gimmicked part of a mob encounter (big burlap bags flying like they shouldn't hadda oughta) in a scene that is otherwise all human-scale kicks and punches, augmented by the usual excessive sound effects on impact. Her character is clearly the Alpha, and she knows it, showing confidence ala Donnie Yen's yet-to-come Ip Man outings, with occasional glimpses of Bruce Lee's cockiness.

It ain't great art, but it adds up to a better package than many of its competitors from that era.