This is not a rip-off of Luc Besson’s highly influential La Femme Nikita but it clearly derives some inspiration from that source. Black Cat is another Hong Kong movie made about the same time that really is a La Femme Nikita rip-off albeit a very good one. The influence of Besson’s movie can also be seen in the superb 2001 anime TV series Noir.
What’s great about Hong Kong cinema is that even gritty urban crime thrillers contain elements that you normally expect in other types of Hong Kong movies. For example there’s a lot of kung fu in Naked Killer.
The movie opens with a killing. The killer is a naked woman.
There have been a number of killings with a similar MO. The Hong Kong cops do not believe a woman could have carried out such a killing but detective Tinam (Simon Yam) disagrees. He is certain that the killer was a woman.
Tinam has personal problems. He killed his brother. His brother was a cop. Tinam shot him accidentally. It was a complete accident and nobody blames Tinam, except that naturally he blames himself. Now he’s impotent and he also can’t even hold a gun steady much less shoot it. But he’s still a good cop.
Mayhem breaks out in the police station. Which is how Tinam meets Kitty (Chingmy Yau). He doesn’t know what she does for a living, which is just as well.
Kitty has met Sister Cindy (Wei Yao). She’s the top hitman (or hitwoman) in the Colony. Sister Cindy is going to teach Kitty to be a top assassin. Kitty is already a pretty dangerous killer.
Kitty will have to change her identity. She becomes Vivian Shang.
Sister Cindy and Kitty/Vivian develop a complex emotional mentor/pupil relationship (a bit along the lines of the 1972 hitman classic The Mechanic).
Sister Cindy’s previous pupil, Princess (Carrie Ng), is going to be a problem. Princess is the number two assassin in the business. She aims to be number one. That means that she has to dispose of Sister Cindy. Princess is a lesbian. She has a new girlfriend/protégé, Baby (Madoka Sugawara).
Tinam encounters Kitty again. At least he’s almost certain it’s Kitty but now she says she’s Vivian.
The cops, in a desultory kind of way, are hunting the female assassins. Sister Cindy has always been a hunter but now she’s finding out what it’s like to be the hunted. But those who are hunting her might also be about to find out how it feels to be the hunted.
All the cast members are good. Simon Yam is excellent as Tinam, a hero with some huge weaknesses but basically decent guy. But this movie belongs to Chingmy Yau. She’s amazing.
Although it’s a Category III movie there’s not a huge amount of gore. It’s more that it deals with gruesome ideas. There’s no graphic sex and not a great deal of nudity, but the lesbianism and the unhealthy nature of some of the sexual obsessions probably bumped it into Category III. And the eroticism does get a bit steamy.
There’s an abundance of action and relentless mayhem. There’s also comedy, some if it pretty broad and some it pretty dark.
You have to accept that this film adheres to some of the conventions of Hong Kong action cinema. The good guys carry automatic pistols that appear to be equipped with 200 round magazines. A few dozen goons with machine-guns are no match for a feisty heroine with a handgun. The good guys can leap through the air as if they’re in a kung fu movie because this is a kung fu movie as well as being lots of other things. Hong Kong filmmakers did not stress too much about genre.
Director Clarence Fok adopts a wildly flamboyant visual style and the movie is supercharged with energy. Jing Wong’s script (he also produced) isn’t especially coherent but he knows how to pack his story with audience-pleasing ingredients and if things get confusing then that to some extent reflects the fact that the protagonist, Tinam, has no clear idea what is going on most of the time.
Naked Killer powers along and it has as much style and panache as any reasonable person could ask for. This is a wild ride and it’s highly recommended.
Naked Killer has not had a Blu-Ray release which is scandalous. It is still available on DVD.
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