The Ghost - Julie Lee Wah-yuet (2001) - Victoria Harbour

Welcome to the wonderful world of dodgy B-movies, not that I have ever really strayed too far from there. This one is utterly bizarre because despite its obvious low budget, it has a plethora of well-known actors who were already quite well known at the time including Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Michael Madsen, Brad Dourif, James Hong, George Chung, and Michael Paul Chan (I was a big The Closer fan). I suspect someone was calling in some favours somewhere. Oh, and of course no US movie with Asian gangsters is complete without the amazing and ubiquitous, Al Leong!

The premise is that a gang war is taking place in Hong Kong and a female Triad assassin, Jing (played by Hong Kong Cat III star, Julie Lee Wah-yuet), is tasked with putting a rival gang boss, who also happens to be Chief of Police, Chang (Tagawa), in his place. Chang wreaks his revenge and Jing has to flee to the US to escape his wrath.

What follows is a pretty awful movie to be honest, although the choreographed fight scenes and stunts actually show some potential. What is fairly hilarious though is that Hong Kong is shown via stock footage, but the film makers also threw in what looks like some stock footage of Shanghai showing trolley buses and the distinctive green uniform outfit of the mainland Chinese national police force, which they then have to stick on their US-based actors for continuity purposes. Oh boy.

The Chinese title for this movie (I guess it was released here because of the main star being local) is 霹靂女殺手 (aka Thunderbolt Female Killer). Oh, and I forgot to mention the double leg amputee kung fu master (no, not joking) played by someone called Henry Smalls. That bit reminded me a little of The Crippled Masters. 

You can watch the whole film here: https://youtu.be/yYcQ2VV8Rtg?si=dsuPDH-NjlCGt7Wp

Anyway, despite not being actually filmed in Hong Kong, I figured it was worth including the few shots of stock footage for completeness. The opening shot is this panning shot of the harbour.