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Black Cat

Black Cat

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Features:
  • Color
  • AC-3
  • Widescreen


Description:

If you thought La Femme Nikita was tough, then you haven't seen Black Cat in action. Shamelessly and aggressively ripped off from the sleek French action classic, this outrageous Hong Kong action melodrama stars Jade Leung as a surly, hot-headed Chinese drifter in New York (actually Vancouver, Canada, subbing for the U.S. location). After killing a couple of macho trucker slimeballs and a cop in a brutal, bloody fight at a roadside diner, she's "killed" by a mystery man and reborn as a stealth assassin for a super-secret high-tech government agency. Director Stephen Shin goes for broke in a series of bizarre action scenes, but none tops the protagonist's graduation exercise, an outrageous assassination at a Jewish wedding that explodes into gang warfare when every guest suddenly pops up armed with semiautomatic weapons. That kind of logic guides the entire film: Leung's character is never told why, only who, and she slickly takes out her heavily guarded targets with everything from ice bullets to steel girders. Leung pouts and sneers her way through her film debut, all attitude and sass even when she falls in love with gentle environmentalist Thomas Lam (who wins her heart with his syrupy harmonica playing). Simon Yam (the suave assassin of Bullet in the Head) plays her sensitive but steely mentor, secretly in love with the woman he plunges into heady mind games. Leung returns in Black Cat II: The Assassination of President Yeltsin, an even more insane action logic-bomb. --Sean Axmaker
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