Kickboxer's Tears (1992)
This week’s pick for the Fridays of Fury Action Club was Hong Kong actioner Kickboxer’s Tears (1992). It is the only directing credit on imdb or letterboxd for Da Wei Shen/Sam Daat-wai. This is fully a Chicks with Kicks flick, gunplay is limited to the climax and the leading ladies never pick up a piece. Li Feng (Moon Lee) visits her kickboxer brother Lung before a match he refuses to throw for Mr. Wong (Lung Fong). Feng watches as her brother’s neck gets snapped in the ring. Unbeknownst to her the opponent cheated, rubbing what we eventually learned was red peppers on his gloves to blind Lung. Other than the viewer, the only witness to this is the world's worst thief. This guy keeps trying to steal things from Feng and then realizing they are bad luck or have sentimental value so he keeps returning them out of guilt. Feng’s friends recognizes him as a bullshit artist, but since they constantly chase him away every time he follows Feng around (often with weapons), it takes fucking forever for him to reveal his important plot information (and not until AFTER Feng gets peppered also!). This character and unnecessarily protracted subplot are the most frustrating part of the movie. That and the LONG kickboxing match that is most of the first act make this movie a mixed bag.
During that first match, we see Mr. Wong and his wife Mrs. Wong (Yukari Oshima) watching from the crowd. For Mr. Wong this is business, fixing matches and bets. For Mrs. Wong this is pleasure, as she seems way too excited by the fight. Later, we see that she is banging their prize fighter, who is also her brother. Gross!
Thirty five minutes into the movie, Moon Lee finally throws hands (and feet), as Feng takes out a gang of muggers with machetes. Meanwhile, the thief gets the absolute dog shit beat out of him and then shoved in a box.
Things finally start to pick up here. In a great scene Feng crashes Mr. Wong’s birthday party at a restaurant. She starts beating the hell out of his prize fighter to prove she deserves a match against him. Mrs. Wong loses it watching her brother-lover get wrecked and leaps into the fight herself. Eventually Mr. Wong agrees to set up an underground match between his fighter and Feng. During that fight, Feng gets peppered and finally told what was done to her and her brother. She overcomes it and wins.
Mrs. Wong is pissed that her brother is paralyzed after the fight. They kidnap Feng’s friend and a death match is organized between the ladies. They have a solid fight and Mrs. Wong gets impaled. Mr. Wong doesn’t seem at all perturbed by this, and proceeds into clean up mode trying to kill Feng and her surviving friends. There is lots of chasing and fighting through a decrepit building, with ‘splosions, shootings, and stabbings (does EVERYBODY carry a machete?). Things end in typically brutal fashion for Hong Kong action. Shout out to little dude Quy (Gabriel Wong Yat-Shan) for going harder than expected.
This is the fifth movie I have watched that pairs up Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima. This is not one of the best. It didn’t actively piss me off like Mission of Justice, which I still haven’t finished writing up. Like Dreaming the Reality this features an excessively long kickboxing match that drags on the pacing. I was more prepared for excessive kickboxing this time based on the title/plot, unlike Dreaming the Reality where it felt like an out of nowhere tangent in the middle of the movie. That doesn’t make it any more fun to watch for nearly an entire act, though. The next match with Feng’s friend isn’t as bad, it is much quicker and by that time we at least have some investment in the characters/story. All that is still time spent not watching Moon Lee kick ass, though. The action in Kickboxer’s Tears is fun after the first act, but it doesn’t hit the highs of Dreaming the Reality’s best scenes. I enjoy these actresses enough that I mostly had a good time, but this is definitely only recommended for my fellow Moon/Yukari completists who have already seen Angel Terminators 2, Iron Angels, and Dreaming the Reality.
Comments