Teresa Mak in "My Baby Shot Me Down"

Teresa Mak joined the Hong Kong police in order to catch the criminal who murdered her sister; Jade Leung is the inspector who leads the squad and Pinky Cheung is also a policewoman and Mak’s buddy. “Brush Up My Sisters”, the air-headed, estrogen fueled failed attempt at comedy directed by Martin Lau, right? No, it’s “My Baby Shot Me Down” with Teresa, Jade and Pinky reprising their roles although with a bit less romping in the shower and a bit more rolling around in bed (although not with each other). There is less lighthearted fun, more tight lipped woe. Teresa, as Mak, is a psychiatrist/police officer who wants to crack the case of Midnight Butcher Lam Kwok Keung, thinking it will help her solve the murder of her sister, a crime that may have been done by someone copying the gruesome, ritualistic method of the imprisoned Lam. Jade is Inspector Shum, her boss while Pinky is Kammy, her comrade in arms and buddy. It may be a record for cast serendipity: Candy Chiu Jing-Yee played Teresa Mak's murdered sister in both movies.

Candy Chiu Jing-Yee

Creeped out Teresa Mak

There are several pairs in the movie: one is Inspector Shum and Sin, her sister. She went missing three years ago and showed up suddenly. Shum is thrilled that her little sister has returned and brings her home where she still has Sin’s favorite ice cream ready for her. Another is Dr. Mak and her sister, the murdered Pui. Even though she is dead—or perhaps because she is dead—Pui is in Mak’s dreams and in her waking thoughts. It is when Mak is bringing flowers to Pui’s grave that the third pair forms: movie actor Wong Wai Tim is also in that part of the cemetery at his mother’s grave. They meet, Mak tells him she and her sister were huge fans when they were young girls and sparks fly.

Pinky Cheung

Sophie Wong Siu-Yin

The last pair is Wong Wai Tim and Lam Kwok Keung, overacted to disgusting perfection by Lam Suet. Lam is a cut-rate Hannibal Lecter—IQ of 192, lives in isolation, is firmly chained whenever he is moved—but he is more distasteful than dangerous. The scene in which he gets sexual satisfaction from rubbing Mak’s ankle while he is still chained and cuffed to a chair is as creepy and revolting as it was meant to be; perhaps more so since the idea of an orgasmic Lam Suet is not an appealing one. Lam has a psychic hold on Tim and has convinced him to continue the reign of terror begun by the Midnight Butcher. We don’t know how the serial killer got control of the actor, only that Tim’s father hated and feared women and passed that along to his son before he killed himself.

Women are killed and mutilated (off camera); Tim fantasizes about slitting open a female corpse (on camera); Lam bends Mak to his will and then refuses to give her the information she sought. “My Baby Shot Me Down” is a misogynist’s delight. It is a weak entry as a cop movie and isn’t really in the “girls with guns” genre—all the girls are armed but only Teresa Mak shoots anyone and has to be talked into it by the person she shoots. It is exceptional if not unique in one way: Teresa Mak acts. She does more than just hit her mark and say her lines, although that is what most acting, particularly on film, consists of. She has an extraordinarily cinematic face—the camera loves her—but it is more than that. Here she is able to inhabit a character that has more than one or two emotions and gives a real performance that might be the best of her career. That seems like damning with the faintest of praise so it might be better to say that she creates a character as well as anyone could have in her underwritten role and does a more professional and artistic job than the director and screenwriter could have expected or deserved.

Maggie Q as the new "La Femme Nikita" on the small screen.

It started with Anne Parillaud in Nikita. In truth it started for me with this poster in the lobby of one of the few art house cinemas in snow-bound industrial wasteland of southeast Michigan:

One look convinced me that La Femme Nikita, as it was renamed for U.S. release, was a must see movie.
(Source sullydog.com)

Then there was Briget Fonda in the U.S. remake, Point of No Return (or perhaps No Point For This Movie) that wasn't really bad, just a step down in every way from the original. Since one critic wrote that Nikita meant the end of French cinema since it was so obviously based on the worst of American film the remake might have at least legitimized the original since it had to be remade.

(Source impawards.com)

Peta Wilson made a name for herself in the many seasons of La Femme Nikita which we watched back in the days when we still watched TV. There were many decent stories spread over three or four episodes and some excellent single shows. Plus more than a few duds but it showed that the formula worked.

(Source dvdnear.com)

One of what I assume to be many "re-imaginings" of the concept was the Hong Kong movie starring the all but divine Jade Leung, Black Cat plus its remakes.

Any action movie with Jade Leung is worth watching--or at least worth watching her in it.
(Source HKMDB)

Now The New York Times announces that Nikita will star the actress Maggie Q "in the title role as a spy and assassin for a top secret U.S. government agency," the CW said in a news release. It is something of a reboot for the La Femme Nikita film, television and book franchise.

(Source deamonstv)

This picture from Live Free or Die Hard could well be the kind of action we will see Maggie Q in on the new Nikita 

Reviews and Reviewers

Last month my friend Chick Young, proprietor of the blog Trash-Aesthetics a person who knows more about film, criticism and theory than I will if I live to be 100 and who really loves movies, posted a short and scathing discussion of movie reviewers based on the published reactions to “Watchman”. While six weeks ago is a century or so in blog time it is still well worth reading (as his entire blog) and can be found here.

There are many examples of sloppy thinking/writing/viewing among both the waning number of reviewers for newspapers and the explosive growth of online reviews there have been some excellent reviewers. Paul Fonoroff, when he wrote for the "South China Morning Post" was one of them. Like everyone else in daily or weekly film coverage he wrote under deadline pressure, wrote about whatever opened that week and had a specific amount of space allotted to him. His audience were the Anglophone residents of the then Crown Colony. His reviews were published in At the Hong Kong Movies: 600 Reviews from 1988 till the Handover.

While Fonoroff was very tough on screenwriters and directors it is the writers get the brunt of his scorn. Almost invariably when he doesn’t like a movie he faults the script. Fonoroff loves actors, none more than Chow Yun Fat and Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, and he is generally at least supportive of the efforts of those in front of the camera. He knows good action scenes when he sees them and describes them well. A civil libertarian, he was very critical of movies in which the police show "a sneering attitude toward human rights" (from a review of Organized Crime and Triad Bureau) and wrote that "human rights in Hong Kong would be all but extinct if life ever imitated the 'art' of Twist in his article on that movie. It must have been a long decade for him since it seemed that there was a new "Danny Lee will beat you into submission" movie every month on the Jade screen.

His reviews were full of short and wonderfully descriptive allusions. In writing about True Love, Fonoroff mentions Sandra Ng and her "special brand of inelegance", as good description of her look and style as any I have seen. He wrote that "Robotrix looks like a Chinese Robocop invested with the spirit of Russ Meyer" and that in Point of No Return Jacky Chueng and Patrick Tam "are so unconvincing that one feels like putting out a contract on them. And I don't mean a movie contract".
With undergraduate studies in Chinese and a Master’s degree in cinema, knowledge of both Mandarin and Cantonese and long residence in Hong Kong, Fonoroff has the local lore, theoretical background and linguistic ability to cover Hong Kong movies in great depth. Most importantly he really loves the cinematic output of the former Crown Colony. This shines through in many reviews, not least in the Jade Leung vehicle Fox Hunter where he writes: "The finale set in a Guangdong department store s deftly choreographed. It’s unlike anything seen outside the Cantonese screen, as realistic as a Fred Astaire dance number and nearly as much fun."

From Fox Hunter, as is the image at the top of this post:

Another movie that Foronoff really liked (as did I) was Green Snake. He wrote that "The story outline is familiar to Chinese audiences from Singapore to Shanghai. Green Snake (Maggie Cheung) and White Snake (Joey Wong) are reptilian sisters who assume human form to seduce any hapless mortals who catch their fancy. Looking as they do like Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong, these human snakes are pretty hard to resist".

"What distinguishes Green Snake from its predecessors is both its imagination and humor. This is no museum piece rendering of a Chinese classic. The sight of the elegantly gowned Green Snake sticking out her tongue to nab a tasty fly, or her efforts to engage in the most unsnakely activity of shedding tears lightens up the proceedings considerably."

Three images from Green Snake