Review of Body Weapon

Introduction

Body weapon is a `kung fu thriller`, starring Hong Kong star Chiu Man Chuk. I’d never heard of this film before, but as it was out on the Hong Kong Legends label and has the tagline “A beautiful body, a killing instinct…she knows how to use them both!” I was looking forward to watching this!

Video

The picture is very good, much better than the reputation the majority of Hong Kong films have made for themselves, although this can be mostly attributed to the fact that this movie is only a couple of years old. The picture is anamorphic and widescreen, with only a little grain and bold colours.

Audio

Only stereo I’m afraid, but it does its job well. A comically poor English dub is provided by default, but also the original Cantonese track. As always with foreign films, go with the original language track.

Features

I cannot see what makes would make this a Special Edition, nor a Collector’s Edition, and certainly not a Special Collector’s Edition. No commentary, no featurette, no deleted scenes. Just an interview with the star, which is only a few minutes long, and is of terribly poor quality. The picture is really soft, and the camera shakes so much you’d think the cameraman had hemorrhoids. The ‘Wu Shu showcase’ is an excerpt of this interview where Chiu Man Chuk does his stuff, pretty unimpressively I thought. I would have preferred if he had cut down on the flowery, gesticulating movements of Wu Shu and instead broke out the nunchuks!

The other space-fillers on this disc include a trailer so long (as most Hong Kong trailers are) that it tells you the whole film already, a shorter trailer, a photo gallery and a couple of biographies.

Conclusion

Body Weapon is a really bad film. It’s main theme is of sex and sexuality, but this is soooo cornily done that it becomes embarrassing. It is exploitative of women, almost perverted in the depiction of violence and rape shown here. The ending is blantantly rushed, as if the director could wait to run out and commit this to Alna Smithee land ( he would have been wise to).

The fight scenes are unspectacular, and are filmed in an MTV, techno style – most recently shown in Jet Li’s Romeo Must Die. They could have been much better, if it were not for the gratuitous use of slow-mo and speed-up that detracts forom the fighters` natural skills.

In the end this is a very stupid movie, it is very mixed up and confused. The plot is contrived and this is a definite case of style over substance. The target market was obviously North America (as shown in the dubbed trailer) and anyone who might want to look at Angie Cheung’s fabulous body - Ok, so maybe that`s most of DVD owners already - but still stay away from this movie. I have no idea what it’s doing in the Hong Kong Legends catalogue.