Released in 1992, the erotic girls-with-guns thriller “Naked Killer”, written and produced by Wong Jing, the crowd-pleasing, prolific filmmaker and starring Chingmy Yau and Carrie Ng later reached a cult status. A decade later, he's back with “Naked Weapon” but with a different director and filmed in English in order to attract the international audience.
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The movie kicks off in Rome; a beautiful lady arrives at a hotel, goes to a room and kills a man with her bare hands after performing some sort of erotic dance moves first . More dead bodies start to pile up while she makes her escape and her car is finally blown up leaving her fatally injured. Her boss, Madame M (Almen Wong) promptly shows up and kills her in cold blood, while two CIA agents on surveillance also meet the same fate. But agent Jack Chen (Daniel Wu) manages to escape without a scratch.
Now that her last assassin is dead, Madame M has to start anew; this leads to the kidnapping of forty young girls from all over the world, after which she relocates them to a desert island to train as professional killers. Six years of intensive training go by and she's down to only three surviving highly skilled and deadly trainees. Her new assassins Charlene (Maggie Q), Katherine (Anya Wu) and Jing (Jewel Lee) are now ready to leave the island and start killing for her. Meanwhile, CIA Agent Chen is keeping a very close watch on all of them.
Being raised up in the West, both Maggie Q and Daniel Wu naturally speak very fluent English, but unfortunately, their interchange here is a total let down, due to Wong's terrible script and atrocious dialogue. However, Daniel does get to show off his kicking skill in a very brief fight but his character is that of a clumsy looser. Furthermore, there's the lack of chemistry between them that makes their screen romance unconvincing especially during their encounter firstly in an ice cream truck and the predictable love scene on a beach of all places.
Usually clad in wet, tight skimpy clothes while training or doing their killings, the main leads Maggie, Anya, Jewel plus all the ladies are never filmed in complete nudity. Very much exploited like some soft porn stars, it's a pity that these gorgeous women with equally beautiful bodies are not able to shine otherwise. In the end, they're just eye candy with very little display of any acting skills.
However, in a small supporting role as a concerned mother of assassin Charlene, Shaw Brothers veteran Cheng Pei Pei is the exception. But her dialogue is so badly written and most likely dubbed in English, that her appearance seems over the top and laughable at times. Ryuichi, a Yakuza boss played by Andrew Lin, is another strange character that only pops up at the very end so he can have a final fight with Charlene. Anyhow, he seems to be a fun character that almost steals the show and a delight to watch. That goes for Almen Wong's mysterious Madam M character too.
Besides being the director, Tony Ching also choreographs the numerous fight sequences and he sure makes them look convincing, considering not all the actors are actually martial artists. Nevertheless, as the movie progresses, the action becomes more fantasized and wire assisted which involves fast, tight close-up hand to hand battles, with weapons like knives. Strangely, some fight sequences don't seem to connect at all or have any impact to the combatants, rendering them to be just posturing with the wind in their hair and waiting for the next move. Overall, the fights are only decent but less memorable and unrealistic, compared to most Hong Kong actioners.
“Naked Weapon” moves at a fast pace, if viewers can tolerate the exploitation, the terrible plot and squirming dialogue there's some mild mindless entertainment there. The idea of making this an English production is most likely to appeal to the main Hollywood players, but it's probably the soft porn industry that pays any attention at all.
