Black Morning Glory

1993

Director: Casey Chan

Stars: Michelle Reis, Waise Lee, Lau Sek Ming, Lester Chan, Matthew Chow

Usually I am a pretty big fan of "female assassin" movies, but Black Morning Glory is so boring that I had a hard time watching it, much less having a good time while doing so. Michelle Reis plays two roles; one is a fashion designer whose boyfriend also happens to be a counterfeiter. She finds out about this and takes a video game that has the schematics for a printing press hidden on it. The boyfriend (who is played by some joker who makes Michael Wong's Chinglish look good by comparision) sends an assassin -- Michelle's long-lost adopted "sister", who happens to look just like her -- to get the game. When the "bad" Michelle finds out who she has killed, she goes back to her childhood home to hide out and ends up rekindling a romance with her "brother" (one billion people in that country and you have to "keep it in the family"?). Of course, complications arise as the cops and the crooks draw their nets tighter.

This normally wouldn't be bad B-movie stuff, but the main problem is that the film-makers forgot to put any action in here, instead concentrating on the romance. I really didn't buy Michelle as the goody-two-shoes designer or the assassin (the other actors don't fare much better), and this hurts the film as a whole. The exposition goes so slowly, it's almost painful to watch. I kept expecting something, anything to happen, but nothing does, except a lot of talk about flowers and some hammy romance. There are a few (and I mean few) action bits sprinkled throughout the movie, but if this film was trying to be a female version of The Killer (or just a good movie in general), it failed miserably. Black Morning Glory is just mind-numbingly dull from beginning to end, and not really worth anyone's time or money.

RATING: 2

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