Ada-10

I love female assassins as much as the next cinemaphile, and Hong Kong action has gotten such a lot of press because of that John Woo fellow, that I went out and picked this box off the rental shelf and wantonly plugged it into my VCR. Boy is this a load of weird hooey. Maybe it's just the way they do things in other countries. I don't know. But it was an abominable meld of soft-core porn--going under the "it is okay as long as we do not show any genitals or nipples" rule--and John Woo "homage"--read "ripoff"--including the requisite shadowy mob conferences in cathedrals, and the acrobatic ending gunplay in that very holy space, where sourceless fluff seems to fly about suddenly in slow motion as everybody stops, drops, and rolls. The heroine, Cat, is a ninja-style booty-kicker strong woman with a passion for Cup-O-Noodles and a distrust of men that stems from her evil former boyfriend who punched her in the gut until she miscarried when she said she was having his baby. Curiously, she turns out to be just a head case who needs to have cheesy bondage sex with a cop and fantasize about a normal life with kids and marriage. Fat chance, sister. She films herself in the tub a lot--wearing a bikini to toe the censorship line--with her digital camera, and most of the camera work is handheld DV, with some off-kilter angles and fishlens stuff for no good reason except the director watches too much MTV. The cop in question is supposed to be an Englishman--the whole thing takes place in Hong Kong--but his English sounded like Bill Clinton, which was eerie enough, and his Cantonese was so atrocious that Chinese characters asked him not to speak it. He gets to feel up the assassin while a lite FM track rolls. When they're not making out, a "modern" vaguely techno-like music rules, but it's techno for your grandma. It was more fun to watch than eating a whole package of Rollos really fast. I recommend seeing it with someone you love.

As you've seen, this film is a James Bond spoof with the kind of star-studded over-crammed list of credits that lets you know it could either be pure genius...or an abysmal failure. Curiously, this film manages to be both. The first part of the film has plenty of comedy, as long as you're willing to let go of certain expectations you may have of plot coherence. Main characters come and go; David Niven, the original James Bond according to the film's plot, gives way to Peter Sellers' James Bond, and surrenders time for a while to his daughter Mata Bond, and then everybody gives way to Chaos. Chaos is not as Zany or Fun as the makers of this film probably wanted it to be, unfortunately.

However, if you insist on seeing it, look for the usually staid Deborah Kerr's hysterical performance as a spy posing as a lusty widow, the expected brilliant turn by Peter Sellers, and the ever-charismatic Orson Welles wearing a fetching pair of rhinestone glasses.