Tai Seng video cover

Angel of Vengeance

1993

Director: Cheung Chung-Kwai

Stars: Yukari Oshima, Alex Fong, Chung Fat

Longtime fans of Hong Kong movies know that many times that they can seem like a bunch of different films slapped together. One scene could have comedy, another action, another romance, and so on. But yet somehow most times they manage to gel together in a way. But this movie doesn't. It isn't as bad as a Godfrey Ho or Joseph Lai mish-mash, but it comes pretty close. It's a shame, really, because Angel of Vengeance starts off well, with Yukari Oshima beating the hell out of a group of guys who she suspects have kidnapped her sister. And then the movie takes a downturn. It starts off a whole separate plot about a young reporter going undercover into brothel to get a story. These segments of the film (which include some pretty graphic rape scenes) go nowhere, and seem to be put in there only for the purposes of titillation and to pad the movie's thin running time. Yukari pops up every once in a while, but her fight scenes aren't that good. There is an attempt to join the two stories together at the end, but it is obvious and forced�and there's not even a decent fight. This one is very mildly recommended for die-hard Yukari fans only. There's a couple of okay fight scenes in here that might be worth your time, but frankly, the rest of the movie is crap. Cheap, bad B-list action movies like this are one of the reasons that the Hong Kong movie industry shot itself in the foot, by oversaturating the market.

RATING: 3

Back to Movie Review index