Body Weapon
12/30/00
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Chiu Man Cheuk, Sam Wong, Stephen Au, Angie Cheung

After his friend's death (Stephen Au), Chiu Man Cheuk must help Au's wife (Angie Cheung) revenge him, which means learning how to seduce a man and then beat the hell out of him, basically.

Yea it sounds like a corny plot, and it is really, but it's original in its own way I suppose. I got this and Fist Power together at the same time, expecting the former to be much better. Well, what are the odds of that happening? Fist Power is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. So this had a good chance after that one. In fact, it's far superior, perhaps due to the cast. If you didn't know, Sam Wong is one of HK's best fighters. If you've ever seen him, you'd know a fight between him and Man Cheuk would certainly be interesting. But I'm giving too much away right now.

The first scene of action is a sparring match between Chiu and Stephen Au, whom I had never seen before. It's mostly a boxing thing, but both of their kicks look really good. Au does some good arm moves and his kicks are convincing. Chiu, though, still looks better and outperforms Au easily at the end with an low right airtrack kick after some chained kicks. Lots of the fight is like those in Gorgeous where they just try to nail eachother with punches, but the camera cuts are long enough for you to see transitions between the moves. Good beginning fight.



Sam Wong and someone who looks like Rocky Lai (but I'm not sure) come into Au's house and attack him. Sam Wong's skills are apparent, while Au doesn't seem to be as hot here as he was with Chiu. He's slow with his weird looking spin moves like backhands and such, but Sam has his kicks down and good hand movements. It's a dark scene but still clear, which was appreciated. After that there is a mild rape scene with no nudity, which gave the scene a really dark tone that I didn't really like since I'm not much into that kind of stuff.



Ah, Sam Wong has been waiting for Chiu, and his wait has been worth it. Easily the high point of the movie, their match is 53 seconds long, which is interrupted by Rocky Lai (or whoever) trying to rape Angie Cheung yet again. But when I cut out this stuff, their match was 53 seconds long. It's extremely well filmed, with some style too, but good style, not the kind of style from Fist Power. There's even some Donnie Yenish slomo here when there are interesting moves, much like in Shanghai Affairs, and in fact the choreography, which I really enjoyed, was similar as well. They're both extremely fast too, which makes it a viewing pleasure.



Chiu fights Sam Wong a second time. Though it gets into the Mr. Nice Guy slomo that Sammo likes to use, it's not too bad because it's in slow motion anyways, so you can still see what's happening. Plus, there's some kind of searchlight going on outside and it's coming through the windows, so the lighting really, uh, highlights it. And Chiu can do one hell of a whirlwind kick. It's so because he keeps his legs TOTALLY straight, while his non kicking leg is straight outward. More of the same but very good choreography. Fast stuff. 48 seconds.



And then Chiu fights his teacher, which is a lame way to end the movie. The guy can't fight, obviously. Chiu, of course, looks great and performs as though it's a serious ordeal, with some airtracks and good looking kicks. The teacher does BS hits with his entire arms by just flailing them all over the place. Then they get into real BS when Chiu gets behind the dead and hanged Sam Wong and uses him as a Shaolin Ooden Man against the teacher. Angie Cheung seduces the teacher after Chiu is sucker punched.



So, not much here, but most of it is good. Chiu's fight with Au was good, Sam Wong was great and brooding as the main villian who said almost nothing, and the battles between Wong and Chiu were both excellent. Too bad there wasn't more than this. I'm glad to see Sam Wong used more, and I'm also glad to see Chiu used properly, if not a briefly. Another thing I liked about this was the murmur they used during the fights, again much like Shanghai Affairs. Very effective. But a different plot, something that wasn't ENTIRELY about sex, could have been used and probably would have led to more fighting.

Now, you might wonder why I gave this 3/5, while Red Wolf got a 5/5. Well, Red Wolf has action throughout, not just fights, but good stunts, shootouts, and tension. This, however, has fights, but that's it, and no action in between, but mainly sex stuff. If you like that, then great, you'll like it, because it's actually got insight as to where the male's G spot is, but otherwise,

3/5

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