Guard Soldier
2000; directed by Ng Kwok-Hao

Once chosen by producers to be the successor to Michelle Yeoh in the In the Line of Duty (aka Yes Madam) series, Cynthia Khan looked to have a promising career. But, for whatever reason, she and her movies never really clicked in a big way with local audiences, so while Michelle was appearing alongside Jackie Chan in Supercop, Cynthia was making a living participating in cheap knock-offs like Lady Super Cop, Super Cops, and Supercop.com.

Before switching almost completely to working on TV shows in the early 2000's, Cynthia's filmography consisted of low-budget straight-to-video entries like 2000's unfortunately titled Guard Soldier. Helmed by Ng Kwok-Hao, whose other entries sport similarly bafflingly translated titles like Godfather of Fire Alarm, Catching Murderer Overseas, and Resistless Mission, Guard Soldier has Cynthia starring as (not-so-shockingly) a hot-headed ass-kicking female cop.

This time out, the cop is named Mary, and she's after President Dao (William Ho), a corrupt real estate tycoon who uses shoddy workmanship to increase his profits. Lo and behold, Dao's top engineer, Jian (Lam Man-Gwan), is Mary's ex-boyfriend, so he agrees to help her, as long as his wife and kid are kept safe. And, ta-da, we have the "guard soldier" of the title. Wow, that's genius.

Bless her heart, Cynthia Khan really seems to be trying here, actually taking the material seriously, delivering a solid performance and looking good while doing so, despite a penchant for silly costuming that has her wearing pleather jackets and scarves. Cynthia's work is almost enough elevate Guard Soldier into a fun girls-with-guns picture, but the extremely low-budget nature of the production undercuts most of the effort she puts forth.

Namely, the toy replica guns featured here must have been bought from a Toys R Us clearance sale or (more likely) from the trunk of some dude's ratty old Iroc-Z. Every gunshot is punctuated by sparks sputtering out of the barrel, which makes the gunfights come of as silly, rather than exciting. Perhaps fittingly, the entirety of the "no good" (blooper) reel that plays over the end credits is a montage of these glorified cap guns misfiring.

RATING: 4