#lethal panther

Yôko Miyamoto, my love

This review contains mild spoilers.

If there's one thing I took away from Godfrey Ho's Lethal Panther, it's that John Woo's mix of moody gazes and balletic slow motion gunfights takes some actual talent and artistry to imbue with any emotional resonance. Because those things are in this movie in ample supply, but I rarely found myself more than mildly diverted by the proceedings. I do not know what the secret sauce is, but I'd wager it's a combination of Woo willing to invest the performances of his actors (and having better actors on hand; I don't think I have to make a case for the talents of Chow Yun-Fat, Danny Lee, Ti Lung or Tony Leung here), and just stronger technical prowess and a better eye for striking images. There are plenty of fast paced shootouts here, but they didn't feel as visually coherent as even Ho's other action scenes. I found myself struggling at times to follow the action, which is not a problem I usually have with Hong Kong action movies.

This is a fully original movie by Ho, but might as well be one of his cut-and-paste joints given how loosely the story hangs together. You get two assassins, one of whom has a backstory involving the Vietnam War, and a CIA agent trying to crack a counterfeiting ring. The stories eventually converge, but not really, as the CIA agent crosses paths with the assassins briefly and then more or less leaves them alone until the ending. My guess is that Ho and co. thought up a bunch of cool scenes first, slowed them the fuck down when shooting, and then racked their brains for excuses for the characters to meet after. Which would be fine were the CIA agent not played by Sibelle Hu, who has a much stronger screen presence than the actresses playing the assassins.

One of the things I like about these girls with guns movies is that you get a different set of female archetypes than you often do in other action subgenres. In that sense, I was a little disappointed that we got two moody assassins, as we're losing out on another archetype. There is however a prostitute who, despite the presence of softcore-tinged sex scenes involving other characters (which for some reason were pixelated on the YouTube upload I watched), isn't used for titillation, but she also gets a pretty demeaning death scene (raped and then shot repeatedly at point blank range), so I guess it's a wash. I don't remember Princess Madam, another non-cut-and-paste girls with guns feature by Ho, necessarily being narratively sturdier, but I do remember it having much more forward momentum and making better use of its stars. Give that a look if you haven't already.