Girl With a Gun is a remake of Abel Ferrera's 1981 film Ms. 45, right down to the cover art. If you can forgive the fact that there's really not a shred of originality in this movie, it actually turns out that this is a very solid picture. It doesn't go as over-the-top as you might expect from a Hong Kong movie of this genre, but that actually ends up being one of the film's biggest strengths.

The story centers on Pi-Ho (Ying Hsia), a young woman who has gone mute after her parents are killed. One night, while walking home from work, she is raped in an alleyway. After Pi-Ho returns to her apartment, a man attempts to attack her, and so she fights back and kills him. The murder sets Pi-Ho off, and she beings stalking the streets and killing men she deems to be problems for women, regardless if they actually are or not.

There really isn't much depth to the story, but this is a case where there doesn't need to be a whole lot going on beneath the surface. Through her performance, Ying Hsia brings enough to the table to create a compelling character. It's too bad most of the cast doesn't seem able to follow her lead, most notably Alan Tam, who despite his top billing, only has a (thankfully) smaller role as Pi-Ho's boss. The acting isn't bad enough to totally de-rail the picture, but it definitely hurts it at points.

A big part of the reason the acting doesn't hurt this movie too much is its' style. Since I'm not well-versed in director Richard Chen's movies, I'm not sure if it was intentional or accidental. But the somewhat amateurish techniques Chen and his editor, Chiu Hung-Shing, employ give Girl With a Gun a stark grittiness and toughness reminiscent of Ringo Lam's better work. The synth-heavy score composed by Hiu Gam and Shut Git-Wing is also extremely solid, with the one big caveat being a song sung by Ying Hsia (who was a minorly popular singer in her native Taiwan) that is repeated in parts over a dozen times during the course of the movie.

Overall, despite the inherent pitfall in doing remakes (not-so-boldly going where someone just went), some flat acting, and the technical flaws in the production, Girl With a Gun ends up being a pretty satisfying take on the "female revenge" film. Fans of the genre would be well-served to hunt this little-known movie down, pop a couple of tops, and press play.

RATING: 7

Note: the only legitimate version of this film currently available is a VCD released by Ocean Shores. Like many of their releases, the picture has been center-framed and the company's logo appears on-screen at times during the movie. The subtitles are absent for approximately half the movie, and when they are on, there's lots of grammatical and spelling errors. There also appears to be a couple of hard edits during a scene where Pi-Ho is dismembering a body. This sort of tactic is often done by home video companies to avoid a Category III/OAT II rating, yet both the front and back covers carry large warnings to not to sell the VCD to someone under the age of eighteen. Finally, the Cantonese language track appears to have been altered from the theatrical release, swapping out some of the score with circa-1984 US pop hits, including "Ghostbusters" and "Like a Virgin".