2003, Action
Director: Corey Yuen
Cast: Shu Qi, Vicki Zhao, Karen Mok

So Close is the movie that Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle should have been. It’s slick, it’s cool, it’s three girls kicking ***censored*** and – and this is the big difference – it’s not braying-donkey annoying.

Shu Qi (The Transporter) and Zhao Wei (Shaolin Soccer) are two sisters who have been working as an assassin-for-hire team ever since their parents were brutally murdered. Wei sits at home with a super-decked-out eye-in-the-sky satellite-linked computer spy system, feeding Qi info as she carries out the actual hits. The opening sequence is a stunner, with Qi carrying out a hit on a wealthy computer CEO and shooting her way through the enormous office building as a Carpenters-soundalike version of Burt Bacharach’s “Close to You” plays over the structure’s PA system. If this doesn’t suck you in to the film’s offbeat charms, nothing will.

Hot on their trail is cop Karen Mok (Black Mask), which results in a couple of great chase scenes. But to further complicate matters, Qi’s falling in love and Wei’s taking a liking to pulling triggers, something her big sister does not want her to do.

Directed by Hong Kong choreographer Cory Yuen (The Transporter), the high-tech flick takes some surprising turns and doesn’t follow the usual formula that your standard Hollywood action movie – especially one with a female-led cast – would. The three leads are all engaging – particularly the sister team of Qi and Wei – proving that sometimes, women can do these things better than the
men.

For those who usually gripe about American video releases of HK films, Columbia’s anamorphic widescreen print is crystal-clear, plus its language default is the original Mandarin track with Chinese subtitles. So all you lazy Americans will have to switch one or the other from the get-go if you care to follow the plot. The disc also sports trailers for this, the markedly inferior Charlie’s Angels franchise and other Eastern-born actioners like Returner, Black Mask 2, Double Vision and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Rod Lott writes about pop culture, annoying celebrities and life’s other absurdities every day at Hitch Daily and he also publishes the long-running Hitch:The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity which is actually made out of paper.