Naked Weapon (2002)
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Sex and a double digit body count before the opening credits; must be a Wong Jing (My Schoolmate the Barbarian, God of Gamblers*) movie! Naked Weapon is written and produced by the Sifu of slick trash himself. You can count on Wong's films to have no redeeming social value whatsoever but they are often amazingly entertaining. They always have very high production values if by production values you mean beautiful people beating the crap out of each other in fights designed by the best choreographers.
Madame M (Almen Wong, Her Name is Cat) kidnaps forty (40) twelve year old girls from all over the world. Each is already an accomplished martial artist or excels at some other sport. She is an entrepeneur of death and her goal is to train herself up a new killer as she had to "retire" the previous one abruptly. The girls are taken to a remote island. Six years of training in feminine wiles, various hand and weapon martial arts, and being shot if they try to escape pass. After the graduation exercises three survivors remain; self reliant Jing (Jewel Lee), Katt (Anya), and her bosom buddy, Charlene (Maggie Q). Madame M is back in business. The trio PG-13 lap dance bloodily around the globe.
Jack (Daniel Wu) is a CIA guy who witnessed the retirement of Wong's last assassin and suspects a tie in to the missing girls. In Hong Kong he contacts Charlene's mother (Cheng Pei-Pei, Come Drink with Me, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) who still mourns her daughter and is outraged at the very suggestion Charlene might be a hired killer. She and Jack get to witness Charlene at work at the Dragon Boat Races (An homage to The Killer?)
The ending comes so abruptly it appears Wong realized he had eighty minutes of movie and needed to wind it up. The action sequences are all style covering the actors lack of martial arts substance, until the last one which is just goofy; all of a sudden Charlene is flying. Daniel Wu gets to strut his wushu stuff in a fight with Jing and, all too briefly, looks darn good. Wu does a great job as the callow agent and Ms. Wong is cool and in control as Madame M, evil just for the money.
Images:
Charlene (Maggie Q) and Ryuichi (Andrew Lin Hoi) fighting to the death. (~33K)