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黑海霸王花 (1990)
Brave Young Girls


Reviewed by: Frank Lakatos
Date: 09/28/2005
Summary: Just watch the final 20 minutes when Leung Kar Yan wipes the floor with Yukari Oshima.

Brave Young Girls(1990) Forget about the first hour, it's a real bore
about the Thai prostitution ring. Just watch the final 20 minutes when
Leung Kar Yan wipes the floor with Yukari Oshima. Not the best, not even
good, but an excellent time waster when you have nothing to watch.
**1/2(just for the Leung Kar Yan vs Yukari Oshima fight)/*****


Reviewed by: CaptainAmerica
Date: 06/10/2002
Summary: Yukari strikes again!

Made a year after the exploitation-actioner ANGEL MISSION, which also starred Yukari Oshima and Ha Chi-Chun, BRAVE YOUNG GIRLS follows similar subject matter -- working girls in the service of a triad gang -- but does so much more seriously. Except for a couple of nasty elements, for the most part this action-thriller plays it straight. Unfortunately for fans of Yukari, she doesn't make her presence known and felt until halfway through the film!

The story opens with Shianhong (Margaret Lee Tin-long), a former Chinese soldier who with her brother has illegally immigrated to HK to get foreign money for their mother back in the Mainland...it's revealed later that their mom has a serious kidney ailment. They try to accomplish this the ill-gotten way by holding up a jewelry merchant, but the police show up at the wrong time and it hits the fan. Hong's brother gets killed in the resultant shootout and she's on the run, her face plastered across HK newspapers.

Meanwhile in another plot thread, a young lady named Li (May Lo Mei-mei) has just graduated from high school and has returned home to discover that her father is deep in debt to a local triad gangster, Cheng Ga ("Big Sillyhead" himself, Shing Fui-On)...worse, her parents have decided to discharge the debt by having Li work for him whether she likes it or not! She briefly escapes and by coincidence runs into Hong. Li helps Hong through a police checkpoint, and they part company. Li finds refuge with her grandfather, but her parents find and kidnap her anyway to take her to Cheng Ga! (Obviously her parents went to the Bill Clinton School of Family Values.) Things don't get much better for Hong...trying to find a job in spite of her illegal status, she runs into Cheng Ga. In return for sending her mother twenty thousand dollars, Hong reluctantly agrees to work for the gangster for a year. Hong grudgingly accepts her lot...

...which is more than can be said for Li, who refuses to sleep with anyone. Unfortunately, this opens her up to all manner of degradations and eventually outright brutality from Cheng Ga himself. Along the way she meets a more seasoned prostitute, Jenny (Ha Chi-Chun), and has a surprising (and fortunate) reunion with Hong.

Halfway through all of this, Yukari enters the picture. She's a Japanese Interpol officer in HK investigating the drug smuggling of Cheng Ga and his boss, Reng Ga (chop socky vet Leung Kar Yan!), whose base is in the Land of the Rising Sun. Circumstances permit Yukari to recruit Jenny to get some incriminating evidence from the gang. Jenny's keen on the idea and decides to recruit Li and Hong to help. But then the brave young girls get caught, and Yukari sets off as a one-woman calvary to rescue them.

In spite of Yukari's absence up to the 45-minute mark, the movie works very well by involving us with the predicament of Hong, Li and Jenny, and how the triads have a way of making the world of prostitution more like one of slavery. The movie isn't perfect, but the climax of this film and some great performances by everyone involved makes this film not only worthwhile viewing, seeing Yukari kick butt in two solid action scenes (one of them the climax) makes this film almost required viewing! In fact, some of her fighting is as brutal as it gets. It's also great to see Ha Chi-Chun get into the action...she gets more exercise in this film than she did in FINAL RUN and ANGEL MISSION combined!

And if that's not enough to pique your interest, there's an all-action cameo from "Auntie" herself, Kara Hui Ying-Hung! She plays an unnamed character who defends her dad from one of Cheng Ga's extortion squads...of course, she knocks the crap out of them!


Reviewed by: hkcinema
Date: 12/21/1999

A classic gangster actioner featuring YUKARI OSHIMA (aka CYNTHIALUSTER)I as Lady Overlord, a high-kicking, gun-wheeling cop on the look out for evil mob leader Brother Yan played by LEUNG KA YAN.

[Reviewed by Tai Seng Catalog]


Reviewed by: hokazak
Date: 12/09/1999

How could you go wrong with a GWG film featuring Yukari Oshima, Kara Hui Ying Hung and Hsia Chi Ling - right? Well, not exactly. This is unfortunately a pretty disappointing film about a prostitute, a robber and a Japanese detective who team up to put a stop to an international ring of traffickers in women. It's not as good as it sounds.