Black Cat (1991) Review

“Black Cat” Theatrical Poster

Director: Stephen Shin
Cast: Jade Leung Ching, Simon Yam Tat-Wah, Thomas Lam Cho Fai, Louis Roth, Gregory Charles Rivers, Lauro Chartrand, Lee Diy-Yue, Tam Kon-Chung
Running Time: 91 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Luc Besson’s 1990 action thriller La Femme Nikita has remained one of the most enduringly influential movies throughout the years. The action thriller, which saw Anne Parillaud’s presumed dead felon become a trained assassin for a secret government agency, has spawned its fair share of remakes. In 1992 Hollywood got in on the action with Point of No Return, which cast Bridget Fonda in the lead. From 1997 to 2001 we got a small screen adaption, with Peta Wilson stepping into the role of the titular La Femme Nikita for a US series that maintained the originals title and lasted 5 seasons. Close to a decade later the concept would be revisited again on the small screen, this time simply titled Nikita, which saw Maggie Q take on the role from 2010 to 2013 in another US series that made it to a 4^th season. Before any of those though, Hong Kong was first out of the gates to remake the material, with 1991’s Black Cat.

The debut of model turned actress Jade Leung, Black Cat would be the role that defined her career, and one that she’d frequently return to. 1992 gave us Black Cat II, 2000 offered up Black Cat in Jail, and in 2003 we delved into The Black Cat Agent Files. When we first meet Leung she’s a lazy waitress working in a New York truck stop diner, and as Hong Kong cinema has a tendency to do, it doesn’t take long before things go from 0 to 60. After being harassed by a customer she finds herself being viciously thrown around thanks to conning him with the promise of a sexual favour, eventually leaving him lying in a pool of his own blood after being stabbed to death. Still traumatised, when the cops enter the scene she shoots one officer dead, and quickly gets packed off to jail where she finds herself getting beaten up again by the sister (who’s also a cop) of the officer she killed.

Ultimately Leung makes a run for it, only to be shot and hauled off to a shady government compound by Simon Yam (Burning Ambition, Bullet in the Head) where she’ll be trained to be a killer. All of the above happens in the first 10 mins. Helmed by Stephen Shin, with the exception of 1986’s Brotherhood and 1987’s Easy Money, as a director Shin was mostly known for romantic comedies and dramas prior to making Black Cat (he’d notably also direct the sequel). His experience in making dramas feels prominent throughout, with a large number of scenes dedicated to Leung’s mental anguish and subsequent budding relationships with Simon Yam and a mild mannered nature park manager (don’t ask) played by Thomas Lam (Two of a Kind, Midnight Caller). The biggest problem with Black Cat though is that none of it really makes much sense if you think about it for more than 2 seconds, which I was unfortunate enough to do.

Simon Yam plays the CIA operative tasked with overseeing Leung’s training, which seems to consist of spending a few minutes at a shooting range, kicking a martial arts instructor in the crotch, and getting dragged through a swimming pool. It’s not long before Yam takes a liking to Leung, perhaps for no other reason than she’s the only other Asian in the facility, and is stealing flowers for her from the canteen in-between offering comforting hugs. In one of the biggest passing of time fails in cinematic history, it seems like she’s only been there for a week, however when Yam asks her the question she answers, “it must be about a year.” Huh? It seems Shin was too preoccupied with filming Leung in various states of moderate undress than to actually put any effort into making her look like a legitimately dangerous assassin.

Despite having a microchip placed in her brain to give her enhanced abilities, we don’t get to see any of them (for the entire runtime), and it’s fair to say that apart from resulting in the occasional head clutching migraine, the microchip plot device is a non-starter. Instead Black Cat looks to get by on its location shooting in the likes of the US, Japan, and Hong Kong, all supplemented by Leung’s willingness to throw herself around and do her own stunt work. Indeed with no martial arts skills so to speak, Leung’s selling point was always the appeal of a beautiful model who was willing to take the knocks and falls with a reckless level of bravado. That alone etched her into any conversation around Hong Kong femme fatale’s from the golden era, and was a willingness she got to increasingly show off outside of her Black Cat entries in lower budget but more entertaining productions like Satin Steel and Fox Hunter.

Once fully trained up she’s sent out into the world (with Yam never lingering too far away) to do what assassins do best, and first on the menu is a bride who requires a bullet in the head. The scene involves plenty of bullets being sprayed everywhere and bodies flying over tables to take cover, and if anything feels closer to a Hollywood style action aesthetic rather than the high-risk action style that Hong Kong was known for at the time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and frequent action director collaborators Benz Kong and Poon Kin-Wan prove that Leung can look good with a gun in her hands, before she finally escapes a group of gun totting bodyguards by throwing herself into white water rapids (by this point I’d lost count of how many scenes involve her being soaked to the skin).

Inconsistency once again rears its head though when she disguises herself as a photographer to pull off an assassination in a nature park (yes, the same one she falls for the manager of). The narrative makes a point of explaining the ice bullet during her training, revealing that it leaves no trace, but comes with the caveat of needing to be shot within 5 seconds. Said bullet comes into use in the nature park assassination scene, however just as she’s about to pull the trigger on her target, another character gets in the way. With the 5 seconds elapsed, I was looking forward to what ingenuity would be required to complete the job, but instead when the other character moves out of the way she still takes the shot and kills her target with no issue. It’s almost as if they took a break from filming just before Leung was due to pull the trigger, then when they came back everyone had forgotten what the point was of a character blocking it. 

It’s sloppy filmmaking, which is further exasperated by the same scene also introducing us to Thomas Lam’s nature park manager character, whose infatuation with Leung is shown through his taking photos of her, and then covering the wall of his home with them. I’d assumed considering the genre that such behaviour was an indicator of his character being a rival assassin, but no, he really does just have the hots for her. What’s more when Leung follows him home and sees them for herself, instead of being freaked out she sticks around to watch him undress and take a shower, which seems to make her think he’s harmless. Kudos to director Shin though, if he thought too much attention was being paid to Leung in various states of undress, seeing Lam’s bare backside certainly balances things out. The path to true love – one stalks the other taking photos of them, one secretly watches the other undress and shower. Singles take note!

When they’re not going to the cinema to watch other D&B Films productions like An Autumn’s Tale, Leung convinces Yam to let her boyfriend tag along to Japan for her next hit. Bizarrely, he agrees. By this point I confess I was looking forward to the introduction of a bigger picture – the emergence of a super villain that Leung has to kill. Perhaps a revenge seeking associate of one of her former victims? Instead though, much like her bridal assassination and ice bullet misdemeanour, Leung assassinates her latest target with ease (which, naturally, involves her getting wet in a Japanese hot spring). Then, a few minutes later, the credits roll. While fans of Hong Kong cinema are no strangers to abrupt endings, the one here can only be described as equal parts inconclusive and anticlimactic. There’s no character arc, no grand finale, not even a money shot final freeze frame, meaning Black Cat ends as a mildly frustrating experience.

It’s a shame, as the cinematography in Black Cat is frequently pleasing, and the first half contains a surprising lack of dialogue, instead allowing the visuals to tell the story. However ultimately the plot, characters, and action (which translate to everything that’s important in a movie like this!) fail to deliver, making the final product feel half baked. They say that a black cat crossing your path is bad luck, and while I’m not very superstitious, as the end credits rolled I can kind of see why.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 4.5/10