Verdict
Summary
Similar in a lot of ways to the much goofier The Inspector Wears Skirts movies, but with a hard line tone with some unintentionally awkward comedy, no thanks to the heavy handed treatment of the matriarch character that grounds all the women in the movie, She Shoots Straight works best when it’s just delivering the goods with jaw-dropping stunts, lots of gunplay and a slam-bang finale fight between Godenzi and bodybuilder Agnes Aurelio, who plays the female antagonist. That scene alone makes the whole movie worth watching, and director Corey Yuen’s penchant for violence and choreography is the highlight of the film, which is otherwise interchangeable with a dozen other Hong Kong action films from the era.
Plot:
An entire squad of female cops is all related, and when one of the women’s husbands (also a cop) is killed, the team goes out for revenge.
Review:
A family and a police department celebrates the marriage of two fellow police task force members between Mina (Joyce Godenzi) and Huang (Tony Ka Leung) who was the most eligible bachelor in the department. Now Mina is part of the family, but also resented by other women and Huang’s sisters, namely Chia-Ling (Carina Lau), who never got along with Mina. When the police squad disrupts a meeting at a nightclub between some gunrunners and a Vietnamese New World Order gang, led by Nguyen (Wah Yuen), the squad kills some of Ngugen’s men, which puts the police squad on their hit list. After the Vietnamese kill Huang in a super violent ambush (he’s impaled by bamboo poles), Mina and Chia-Ling bury the hatchet to lay their kindred to rest, but the Vietnamese have no respect for the dead and bomb the funeral (!), which is the last straw for the squad. They go on the warpath and lay siege to the Vietnamese and have a final confrontation at a dockyard and aboard a cargo ship where they end this thing once and for all.
Similar in a lot of ways to the much goofier The Inspector Wears Skirts movies, but with a hard line tone with some unintentionally awkward comedy, no thanks to the heavy handed treatment of the matriarch character that grounds all the women in the movie, She Shoots Straight works best when it’s just delivering the goods with jaw-dropping stunts, lots of gunplay and a slam-bang finale fight between Godenzi and bodybuilder Agnes Aurelio, who plays the female antagonist. That scene alone makes the whole movie worth watching, and director Corey Yuen’s penchant for violence and choreography is the highlight of the film, which is otherwise interchangeable with a dozen other Hong Kong action films from the era. Sammo Hung appears in a small supporting role.
88 Films brings She Shoots Straight to Blu-ray in a brand new 2K restoration, offering the film in a vibrant transfer that outshines all previous releases, and it comes with an audio commentary, an interview, alternate artwork, and the limited edition comes with a slipcover.