Remembering Corey Yuen #5 – She Shoots Straight 皇家女將 (1990) Review
Five years after Corey Yuen popularised the girls-with-guns subgenre, he returns with another similarly-themed action thriller, She Shoots Straight. But instead of Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock in Yes, Madam!, this movie has Joyce Godenzi and Carina Lau playing the tough policewomen. Unlike Yuen’s 1985 movie overflowing with goofy comedy moments, he plays it straight (no pun intended) with a mix of gritty action and melodrama.
Written by Yuen Kai-Chi, who previously penned the little-seen In the Blood alongside Righting Wrongs‘ Barry Wong (Ping-Yiu), the story modernises Du Mingxin’s Peking Opera classic The Female Generals of the Yang Family about the military family from the Song Dynasty era.
Replacing the Yangs’ military background is the Huang family of predominantly female cops (Carina Lau’s Huang Chia-Ling, Sarah Lee’s Huang Chia-Lai, Anglie Leung’s Huang Chia-Jui and Sandra Ng’s Huang Chia-Ju). Huang Tsung-Pao (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) is the only male cop with the rank of inspector in the family. His sisters, particularly Huang Chia-Ling, aren’t fond of Huang marrying a mixed-heritage Mina Kao (Joyce Godenzi), who also works as a police inspector.
When a sting operation goes wrong, resulting in the death of many people including one of Yuen Hua’s (Yuen Wah) Vietnamese gang members trying to commit robbery in a nightclub, he is determined to seek vengeance against the cops. A tragedy ensues after one of the cops from the Huang family is brutally killed. Mina and particularly, Chia-Ling set aside their differences and agree to work together to take down Yuen Hua and his gang at all costs.
She Shoots Straight boasts better production values with Yuen, who is also in charge of the martial arts direction alongside Mang Hoi and Yuen Tak pulls no punches in the action sequences. Earlier in the movie, Joyce Godenzi showcases her impressive agility in her first leading action role, leaping from the building to a moving car and later, riding a motorcycle to save a kidnapped princess. Her years of martial arts training and hard work under the mentorship of Sammo Hung, where the latter first cast her as the Cambodian guerrilla leader in Eastern Condors (1987) paid off well in She Shoots Straight. The two subsequently married in real life and at the peak of Godenzi’s career, she only acted in four more movies in 1990 and 1991 before retiring early. She did, however, return in a cameo appearance in Sammo Hung’s Mr. Nice Guy starring Jackie Chan in 1997.
Back to the movie, Godenzi’s magnetic beauty coupled with her no-nonsense cop role is convincing enough as the next Hong Kong female action star at the time after Michelle Yeoh. She puts her martial arts training to great use in her role, particularly during the climactic third act as she fights against Yuen Wah and his men. But it was the final fight against the Filipino-American bodybuilder Agnes Aurelio as they beat the crap out of each other.
Although Godenzi steals the show here, the movie is also best remembered for Carina Lau’s dedicated turn as the hot-headed policewoman who has a fair share of convincingly performed martial arts scenes and gunfights. Tang Pik-Wan, best known as “Ma-Da” (means “mother” in Cantonese) in the long-running TVB series The Seasons in the late 1980s, delivers strong support as the steadfast Huang family matriarch. Her best scene comes from the moment she learns about the devastating news during her birthday celebration in a restaurant. It was also sadly one of her final acting roles in 1990 before she passed away the following year in March at the age of 66.
At the time of its release, She Shoots Straight failed to set the box office on fire, raking only HK$9.9 million. By comparison, Jeffrey Lau and Corey Yuen’s gambling comedy All for the Winner, which was released in the same year made significantly more money and even topped the 1990 Hong Kong box office at a whopping HK$41.3 million.
