Beauty Investigator (1992)
A serial killer is loose in Hong Kong, murdering hostesses from high class night clubs. As punishment for their flaky style and lack of discipline, two young policewomen are assigned to work undercover as hostesses to catch the sadist. While solving that crime, they discover who's behind some of the city's drug trade. In trying to halt this enterprise, which they undertake without orders, they must face the crime lord's Japanese hit woman.
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A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Oh how we miss the days of Hong Kong's golden age when the girls kicked butt and pulled of some amazing stunt work that even shamed the very best of Hollywood!Beauty Investigator is just one of those. From crazed director Lee Tso- Nam (Kung Fu Wondechild) comes this nut-job of a film that is packed with daft comedy, plenty of action, and 3 of the finest women ever to grace the action screen.Its always nice to see Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima fight each other, but I also love it when they team up. And in Beauty Investigator you get a bit of both!Its the usual plot nonsense of bad guys and undercover cops, but thankfully the hard hitting fight scenes keep you gripped and with an end battle that is just raw and fantastic.It may not be a classic, but Beauty Investigator is well worth the watch!
Moon Lee and another cute Chinese girl as bickering police partners, Yukari Oshima as a mysterious and highly efficient Japanese hitwoman, Sophia Crawford as the main villain's assistant / mistress. Sounds great, but it's only OK. The main problem is the jarring shift in tone, from lighthearted to grim: it's like watching parts of "The Inspector Wears Skirts" and "In The Line Of Duty" in the same film. The big plot twist near the end is equally jarring and rather nonsensical. The fight scenes are pretty good, but unfortunately some of them are poorly lit (or maybe the poor DVD transfer is more to blame). The most unexpected bonus in watching "Beauty Investigator" comes from Sophia Crawford's shower scene: this woman's body is the perfect combination of power and femininity. (**1/2)
Two young and inexperienced female police inspectors are instructed to find a killer in a nightclub. Grace (Kim Je Kee) and Ellen (Moon Lee) succeed in doing that, but at the same time get into much more serious trouble with organized crime. When Grace is killed, Ellen wants to avenge her, but who would help her against the gangsters? And whose side is the mysterious Japanese assassin (Cynthia Luster) really on?The script seems to rely a bit too much on well-known ingredients, including a sometimes silly touch of comic relief: Grace and Ellen are constantly accusing each other of mistakes and are worried about their looks more than any loaded guns. Lots of fights and a larger-than-life Cynthia Luster kept me awake, one amazing motorbike stunt by the way, so I voted 5 of 10 for this one - there's better and worse movies in the girls-with-guns genre.