NAKED SOLDIER (绝色武器) DVD (2012)

SYNOPSIS: Fifteen years ago, drug cartel mistress Madame Rose had a billion-dollar deal that was busted by Interpol. In revenge, she kills the entire family of chief investigator CK Long. Long himself survives, and believes his young daughter is still alive. In fact, for these fifteen years, the girl has been kidnapped by Madame Rose, brainwashed and trained into beautiful, sexy killer Phoenix. Phoenix has now become the top-ranked killer in Madame Rose’s organization. She is skilled in combat, and always completes her missions. Thanks to her band of killers, Madame Rose has expanded her criminal organization, and now assigns missions in many parts of the world. CK Long has never imagined that he would one day become the target of his own daughter’s mission.

MOVIE REVIEW:

“Naked Soldier” actually has a long history starting with “Naked Killer” that stars Chingmy Yau in 1992. Written and produced by Wong Jing, it has since becomes a cult hit with its madcap action sequences and heavy sexual overtones. In 2002, Wong Jing teamed up with famed action choreographer Tony Ching for “Naked Weapon” and launched the career of now international superstar Maggie Q.

The ever prolific Wong Jing never let his old ideas go away and he is one infamous filmmaker who is known for searching hot new babes for his movies. And here he is attempting to launch “Naked Soldier” as a starring vehicle for up-and-coming actress Jennifer Tse (sister of Nicholas) and model actress Ankie Beilke.

Despite the numerous new faces, the storyline from Wong fares like a recycled movie from the eighties and nineties. Tse plays Phoenix, a young girl who was brainwashed by a drug cartel led by Madam Rose (Ellen Chen) to become a deadly assassin. Phoenix in fact is the long-lost daughter of detective Long (Sammo Hung) whose family was killed by Rose after Long has busted her lucrative drug deal. Years later, the Interpol is hot on the trail of Rose and Long is engaged by Interpol agent, Sam (Jennifer’s real-life beau, Andy On) to assist them in the mission. Of course, you can sniff out a tale of revenge and reunion yards away without me delving any further.

Whereas the original has lots of exploitative content and “Naked Weapon” has a steamy scene with Maggie Q and Daniel Wu, “Naked Soldier” merely capitalised on the use of non-stop cheesy CG carnage which kind of defeat the purpose of having the word Naked in the title. Without the inclusion of Wong’s expert usage of eroticism, the end product becomes a run-out-of-mill action movie filled with unimaginative fighting scenes that laughingly features a remarkably amount of CG glass shattering. It’s kind of disappointing to see veteran action choreographers Corey Yuen and Yuen Tak sleeping on the job. I guess old age has certainly caught up with them.  

Editor turned director Marco Mak probably cut and watched too many movies in his long-spanning career that he tried to mimic some John Woo’s style slow-mo sequence in addition one dining scene that is directly lifted out of the DreamWorks’ animation “Kung Fu Panda”. Sammo might be oversize but he is not a panda.

The only fun part in this otherwise horrendous production is watching Anthony Wong and his henchmen turning up for the finale with their over-the-top expressions, costumes and hairdos. It’s such a shoddy job that the only actor being all serious is Sammo. Her brother took years to see his movie career take off, Jennifer seriously needs more meaty roles to overcome her stiff performance though to be fair, most of the actresses on the whole did a fair job accomplishing all the deadly moves.  

It’s obvious that the once creative HK filmmakers including Wong Jing have to settle for a safe production in order to receive a general screening in Mainland. With all the funds and box-office potential lying there, we are not getting back the heydays for sure.  

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Just a Trailer and Photo Gallery

AUDIO/VISUAL:

Visual transfer is good for the relatively new production and the Dolby Digital 2.0 offers lots of loud gunfire just not in a 5.1 mix.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee