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Deadly Target

AKA: Fatal Target

1994

Director: Godfrey Ho

Action director: Philip Ko

Stars: John Cheung, Sharon Yeung, Yukari Oshima, Philip Ko

Despite being an extremely talented martial artist, Hong Kong audiences never seemed to warm up to Yukari Oshima. Though part of this might be attributed to the fact that local audiences do not generally like "girls with guns" movies (even though Western fans eat them up) and the fact that Yukari is Japanese, most of it probably comes from the way Yukari refused (seemingly) to adopt a "feminine" role in any of her films.

For better of worse, every successful female action actress in Hong Kong has displayed some form of feminity in their career, whether expressing more "female" emotions such as love ala Michelle Yeoh in Wing Chun or just showing skin ala Chingmy Yau in Naked Killer. In fact, it probably says a lot that former models like Hsu Chi are finding work in action movies. At any rate, Yukari always seemed to play against gender stereotypes, especially in relation to the action genre. In fact, in some of her most notable roles (such as the transexual/eunuch in The Story of Ricky) she manages to drop gender roles almost completely. Even though Yukari's "tough" traits made her more popular with her cult Western following, there have been several attempts to "feminize" her roles, and Deadly Target is probably the most obvious of these -- something which hurts the movie as a whole.

The plot is standard Godfrey Ho B-movie stuff. Yukari and Sharon Yueng are two cops who take a vacation to visit Yuakri's cousin, who just happens to be the biggest arms dealer in Thailand. You should know the drill here -- eventually Yukari must take on her own cousin, aided by Sharon and another cop (John Cheung). However, Yuakri's character is much different here than in almost all of her other movies. She actually makes her first appearance in the movie wearing a short skirt. This might not seem like much, but for someone who made most of her screen appearances wearing workout clothes or other genrder-neutral outfits, it's a major change. Yukari seems to be uncomfortable in the clothes -- she even looks like she has problems walking around in heels -- and this hurts her on-screen presence. The differences also carry on to Yukari's character. Most of her movies have her as a very tough cookie, but Deadly Target almost seems to reduce her to comic relief, even going as far as to putting her in a clown suit for one scene. Yukari, again, does not seem comfortable with this, and it hurts her performance, and the film as a whole.

Despite the problems I had with Yukari's performance, she does pretty well in the action scenes. Even though there might be too much wirework for some, she does look suitably tough during these bits. There is also a decent amount of gunplay, which is staged well and manages to make the other actors look good. Overall, Deadly Target is a alright B-movie. It doesn't really do much besides deliver some good action, but that's a hell of a lot more than most other Godfrey Ho movies bring to the table (this being one of the few films he shot all-original footage for, instead of using stock stuff or parts from other movies), and if you're looking to kill ninety minutes while watching people beat up each other, it's not a bad choice on a rainy day when you don't have anything better to watch.

RATING: 5

Note: some sources list Philip Ko as the director for this movie, but the version I saw (Tai Seng's Fatal Target VHS, which looks to be a European English-dubbed version) had Godfrey Ho listed as the director.

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