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Madam City Hunter
Image // Unrated // June 12, 2007
List Price: $14.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Madam City Hunter" - no relation to Jackie Chan's manga-inspired action romp - is an action-comedy blend so misguided that it actually thinks we want the threat of rape to be used as a punchline, brutal murders to be bookended with slapstick, and a snooping daughter watching her aging dad have sex to become a running gag. Nyuk!
The film stars Cynthia Khan (best known as Michelle Yeoh's replacement in the "In the Line of Duty" series) as butt-kickin' supercop Yang Ching, who, after a lengthy and wholly unwatchable set-up, discovers her wealthy father's new fiancée is in cahoots with the Five Fingers gang, and besides, she's a scheming black widow whose last two hubbies wound up dead. She teams up with a bumbling private detective actually named Charlie Chan (Anthony Wong) to crack the case, whatever the case might be.
Alas, cracking the case means stumbling from plot point to plot point with a miserable inelegance, occasionally stopping to snoop through windows or evade death at the hands of a gang member. Instead of much of an actual plot, we have plenty of boneheaded sex jokes (including a miserable herbal precursor to Viagra gags), mediocre action sequences (only one fight scene is of any real interest to action fans - the rest are dull as dirt), and an uninteresting comic subplot involving Charlie's tomboy assistant (Sheila Chan) and their money troubles.
The attempts at humor are the film's greatest offenses. Wong mugs his way through a hammy, obnoxious performance, consisting mainly of reaction shots indicating how horny and/or silly he is. Khan's character, meanwhile, is stuck grimacing at the sight of her father's sexual activities (seriously, don't ask). Sleepwalking is used for one painfully overlong bit. And what to make of the scene in which stoners knock Yang unconscious, then argue about which one gets to rape her? It's played for laughs, people. Yikes.
That rape-joke scene, by the way, comes right before a criminal enters and kills everyone in the room. It's a scene of graphic violence, vicious and mean - the sort of thing that would be right at home in a gritty crime thriller, but not here, not in a goofy, anything-goes comedy. But then, "Madam City Hunter" is never sure if it wants to be a comedy. It spends so much time switching moods that it could be anything, really. Still, whatever it is, it's mostly frivolous, so why the ugly blood-soaked murders?
The constant flip-flop in tone may be a result of sloppy editing, which is this movie's burden throughout. This is a perfect example of how a movie can be broken in the editing room. The rhythms are all off for the entire picture, but pay close enough attention, and you'll see how the editing destroys even the simplest of scenes.
Example. One scene opens with lengthy shots of a villain setting a gas-leak trap for our heroes. We linger on all the details: the trick match in the door, the cut gas line, etc. Then the heroes come home, and we skip over most of the set-ups. Some key points of the trap are ignored or forgotten completely; others are dismissed with a line or two (or, in one case, an ample supply of vomit - no kidding). The heroes then find a bomb, which makes no sense considering the match and the cut gas line, but whatever. The bomb gets more consideration than anything we watched before. And then we're off to the classic "which wire do we cut?" bit.
Now, there are three shots in a row that are supposed to work together as a joke: the hero cuts the wire, someone else slams the door, and the hero jumps in reaction to the sound (thinking that the door was the bomb going off). Makes sense, right? Except here, the door gets slammed, then the wire's cut, then there's a pause - and then the hero jumps in reaction. Doesn't make any sense this way.
That's only a small taste of what's wrong with "Madam City Hunter." The whole thing's out of alignment, never hitting the right beats at the right time. The entire first act is spent leapfrogging from scene to scene with little attention paid to logic, let alone the flow of the story. The comedy is all off, never finding the right timing. Even the action scenes, which should work here due to some sharp fight choreography, wind up muddled under lousy cutting and poor staging. This movie's nothing but a gigantic mess.
The DVD
Image brings "Madam City Hunter" to DVD under its original English title. The film had been previously released on home video with the alternate title "Lady Hunter."
Video & Audio
I doubt "Madam City Hunter" ever looked any good, and here, it has that washed out/grainy look so common to Asian flicks of the early 1990s. The anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer is free of digital junk, but it's still a fairly ugly picture.
Worse off is the audio, presented here in a flat, drab Mandarin dub instead of the original Cantonese. I'm not sure why Image was unable to include the original soundtrack. While some viewers (those used to the prevalent dubbing in Chinese films) probably won't mind, it's still a sore spot. Optional English subtitles are included.
Extras
Just a large collection of trailers for other imports available through Image - the spoiler-heavy one for "Madam City Hunter" is hidden in there somewhere. These are the original Asian previews, which is of great interest, even if Image failed to include subtitles. (A few of them seem to be newly-produced trailers for classic films, but that's cool, too.)
Final Thoughts
A mostly bare-bones disc for a completely useless movie. Skip It.
The film stars Cynthia Khan (best known as Michelle Yeoh's replacement in the "In the Line of Duty" series) as butt-kickin' supercop Yang Ching, who, after a lengthy and wholly unwatchable set-up, discovers her wealthy father's new fiancée is in cahoots with the Five Fingers gang, and besides, she's a scheming black widow whose last two hubbies wound up dead. She teams up with a bumbling private detective actually named Charlie Chan (Anthony Wong) to crack the case, whatever the case might be.
Alas, cracking the case means stumbling from plot point to plot point with a miserable inelegance, occasionally stopping to snoop through windows or evade death at the hands of a gang member. Instead of much of an actual plot, we have plenty of boneheaded sex jokes (including a miserable herbal precursor to Viagra gags), mediocre action sequences (only one fight scene is of any real interest to action fans - the rest are dull as dirt), and an uninteresting comic subplot involving Charlie's tomboy assistant (Sheila Chan) and their money troubles.
The attempts at humor are the film's greatest offenses. Wong mugs his way through a hammy, obnoxious performance, consisting mainly of reaction shots indicating how horny and/or silly he is. Khan's character, meanwhile, is stuck grimacing at the sight of her father's sexual activities (seriously, don't ask). Sleepwalking is used for one painfully overlong bit. And what to make of the scene in which stoners knock Yang unconscious, then argue about which one gets to rape her? It's played for laughs, people. Yikes.
That rape-joke scene, by the way, comes right before a criminal enters and kills everyone in the room. It's a scene of graphic violence, vicious and mean - the sort of thing that would be right at home in a gritty crime thriller, but not here, not in a goofy, anything-goes comedy. But then, "Madam City Hunter" is never sure if it wants to be a comedy. It spends so much time switching moods that it could be anything, really. Still, whatever it is, it's mostly frivolous, so why the ugly blood-soaked murders?
The constant flip-flop in tone may be a result of sloppy editing, which is this movie's burden throughout. This is a perfect example of how a movie can be broken in the editing room. The rhythms are all off for the entire picture, but pay close enough attention, and you'll see how the editing destroys even the simplest of scenes.
Example. One scene opens with lengthy shots of a villain setting a gas-leak trap for our heroes. We linger on all the details: the trick match in the door, the cut gas line, etc. Then the heroes come home, and we skip over most of the set-ups. Some key points of the trap are ignored or forgotten completely; others are dismissed with a line or two (or, in one case, an ample supply of vomit - no kidding). The heroes then find a bomb, which makes no sense considering the match and the cut gas line, but whatever. The bomb gets more consideration than anything we watched before. And then we're off to the classic "which wire do we cut?" bit.
Now, there are three shots in a row that are supposed to work together as a joke: the hero cuts the wire, someone else slams the door, and the hero jumps in reaction to the sound (thinking that the door was the bomb going off). Makes sense, right? Except here, the door gets slammed, then the wire's cut, then there's a pause - and then the hero jumps in reaction. Doesn't make any sense this way.
That's only a small taste of what's wrong with "Madam City Hunter." The whole thing's out of alignment, never hitting the right beats at the right time. The entire first act is spent leapfrogging from scene to scene with little attention paid to logic, let alone the flow of the story. The comedy is all off, never finding the right timing. Even the action scenes, which should work here due to some sharp fight choreography, wind up muddled under lousy cutting and poor staging. This movie's nothing but a gigantic mess.
The DVD
Image brings "Madam City Hunter" to DVD under its original English title. The film had been previously released on home video with the alternate title "Lady Hunter."
Video & Audio
I doubt "Madam City Hunter" ever looked any good, and here, it has that washed out/grainy look so common to Asian flicks of the early 1990s. The anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer is free of digital junk, but it's still a fairly ugly picture.
Worse off is the audio, presented here in a flat, drab Mandarin dub instead of the original Cantonese. I'm not sure why Image was unable to include the original soundtrack. While some viewers (those used to the prevalent dubbing in Chinese films) probably won't mind, it's still a sore spot. Optional English subtitles are included.
Extras
Just a large collection of trailers for other imports available through Image - the spoiler-heavy one for "Madam City Hunter" is hidden in there somewhere. These are the original Asian previews, which is of great interest, even if Image failed to include subtitles. (A few of them seem to be newly-produced trailers for classic films, but that's cool, too.)
Final Thoughts
A mostly bare-bones disc for a completely useless movie. Skip It.
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