Sharp Guns
2001
Director: Billy Tang
Stars: Alex Fong, Ken Chang, Anya, Ken Wong, Moses Chan, Eric Wan, Serena, Cheung Tat Ming
There seems to be a trend in Hong Kong back towards the "girls-with-guns" genre that was so popular in the early 1990's, with several high-profile movies like Martial Angels featuring ass-kicking females. While Sharp Guns doesn't totally capture the feel of those films, it is a step in the right direction for fans of the genre. The plot is pretty simple here: Alex Fong is hired by a crime lord to rescue his daughter from a rival boss. However, the job turns out to be a double-cross, and so Fong and his team of "sharp guns" set out to turn the tables on the gangsters, which of course results in all sorts of fun bloodshed and mayhem.
Even though Alex Fong (one of my favorite HK actors) is the de facto star of this movie, it is really Anya (one of the "sharp guns") who is the film's centerpiece. Like Chingmy Yau in Naked Killer and Almen Wong in Her Name is Cat, Anya's performance masterfully combines both sex and violence into a mesmerizing role and she steals the show every time she is on screen (which is thankfully a lot). Without her character and performance, Sharp Guns would be your fairly typical Triad revenge movie. The plot is by the numbers, and the action is done well, but it's nothing special.
This restrained (at least for HK movies) approach is suprising coming from Billy Tang, the director nicknamed "Bloody Billy" for his movies like Dr. Lamb. I wish Tang would have used more of the "punch" we have come to expect from his films (especially during the ending, which is much too upbeat for one of his movies) to make it stand out a bit more from the pack of similarly-themed films. At rate, Sharp Guns is a solid action movie that's worth a look, especially if you're into the femme fatales.
RATING: 7
A review of the VCD for this movie can be found here
Click here to view my picture page for Anya from this movie
This DVD is available for purchase at www.hkflix.com
