88 Films: She Shoots Straight (1990) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of 88 Films

While Arrow Video continues to devote most of their attention to the Shaw Scope library, Eureka Entertainment and particularly 88 Films have been picking up the pieces for other Hong Kong related companies such as Golden Harvest and publishing a number of titles in the UK and US in lavish limited edition packages, sometimes including a collector’s booklet in the process.  

Sometime in 2024, 88 Films started getting into the works of action film director as well as choreographer Corey Yuen starting with his 1985 Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock starring Yes, Madam!  Working within the comedy as well as action subgenres in tandem, making his English language debut with the JCVD starring No Retreat, No Surrender, Yuen’s recurring right hand man was screenwriter Barry Wong who co-wrote Yes, Madam! and Righting Wrongs and in 1990 they joined forces on the female undercover cop ensemble thriller She Shoots Straight. 
 
Coproduced by and costarring Sammo Hung in a supporting role as Superintendent Hung, She Shoots Straight could well have gone the screwball action-comedy route of The Inspector Wears Skirts series ala the Hong Kong answer to the Police Academy movies.  But in Corey Yuen’s hands, this cop thriller unexpectedly hits hard where you least expect it and at times it leans towards being a funereal tearjerker when it isn’t enmeshed in white-knuckled gun and hand-to-hand combat fights.  

Focused on Inspector Mina Kao (Joyce Godenzi) fresh off of her wedding to her superior ranking officer Inspector Huang Tsung-Pao (Tony Leung Ka-Fai), consternation arises over colleagues and particularly her sister-in-law Chia-Ling (Carina Lau) expressing jealousies over her higher ranking due to perceived favoritism.  Meanwhile a Vietnamese gang vengeful after a police raid thwarts a robbery sets out to strike back at the officers resulting in unexpected tragedy that ignites an all-out war between the gang and officers, culminating in an epic battle between Mina and the gang leader’s musclebound sister that remains one of the more extraordinary hand-to-hand combat exchanges.

 
Startling for how emotional it gets in certain passages, hitting a lot harder than other Hong Kong cop thrillers like Hard Boiled that seem to brush over the tragic aspects of losing a fellow police officer partner, Corey Yuen’s She Shoots Straight is at times melodramatic but still manages to be a tearjerking white-knuckled actioner.  Anchored by three powerful leading performances with Joyce Godenzi and Carina Lau sparring off of each other over her marriage to her brother Inspector Huang while Pik-Wan Tang as Mother Huang is the fierce and strong matriarch holding this police family together, the film essentially boils down to these three main characters while Sammo Hung and Chi-Wing Lau clash over how to conduct the police force.  Wah Yuen as the villain is a good sniveling and conniving weasel archetype though the real muscle of his operation involves his sister Yuen Ying played by Agnes Aurelio.  Carved and oversized, she’s the kind of larger than life adversary you can picture beating up men twice her size and seeing her go toe to toe with Joyce Godenzi can be pretty scary for our leading heroine. 

 
With an appropriately moody and occasionally somber score by Lowell Lo, crisp but sometimes foggy yet dynamically agile cinematography by Moon-Tong Lau and Leung Chi-ming edited like a razor by Peter Cheung and Keung Cheun-tak, the Golden Harvest production She Shoots Straight opened in Hong Kong cinemas in the summer of 1990.  Making its worldwide Blu-ray premiere via 88 Films in a new 2K restoration from the original camera negative, the disc includes several sound mixes including the native Cantonese mono track, a stereo remix, an English dub and a 5.1 English remix.  

Also included is a running audio commentary with Hong Kong action cinema expert Frank Djeng and there’s also an interview with co-screenwriter Yuen Kai-Chi.  First buyers have a shot at nabbing the limited slipcover edition featuring reversible sleeve art.  When I saw some of the cast and crew involved, I expected it to be a lot goofier and nowhere near as hard hitting as it turned out to be.  While again perhaps leaning a little too heavily on the melodramatic aspects, She Shoots Straight is a good female led cop thriller unafraid to immerse its characters into some pretty intense action scenarios.  Fans of Hong Kong action from the 1990s will not be disappointed!

--Andrew Kotwicki