Reviewed by: Hyomil Date: 04/07/2011 Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: STSH Date: 01/28/2007 Summary: So-so Hard to feel anything for these remote characters, except for the wonderfully goofy Anthony Wong. Action scenes range from average to very good, with the climactic battle on bamboo scaffolding being outstanding. Very gory in places. Much of the middle of the film is a very lame attempt at comedy. OVERALL : So-so actioner. Could have been better. Reviewer Score: 4

Reviewed by: ewaffle Date: 07/31/2005 Summary: Could have been two decent movies... "Madam City Hunter" has excellent action scenes in the beginnning and end, with a poorly developed comedy clogging up things during the the middle 30 minutes or so. Cynthia Khan's character is introduced with a bang--while the opening credits roll she shows up at a stand-off between the police and a group of heavily armed gangsters. After a few thousand rounds are fired and a number of combatants from both sides are killed, Ching comes to the rescue. She sneaks around the back (a tactical move that was beyond the police brass) jumps from a nearby roof to an unguarded window and begins to slaughter the gangsters. She uses her weapons plus some she picks up there including a hand grenade. So we know from the beginning that Ching is beautiful, tough and unforgiving. But possibly not that smart, since she is very easily implicated in the execution style murder of a bunch of juvenile glue sniffers. I might have missed something, but it seemed as if she simply showed up at their glue sniffing hideout. Then they got the drop on her, knocking her out, taking her sidearm and locking her in a trunk. One of the real tough guys--a member of the ruthless Five Fingers Gang--then shows up and uses Ching's gun to kill the five glue-heads. She is put on some type of leave which gives her time to get really angry at her father who has married Siu-Hung (Kara Hui), a woman about Ching's age. Siu-Hung is out for the money and little else--she has married a number of wealthy men in Brazil and each of them died shortly after the wedding. This could have been the basis for a decent comedy but it doesn't really develop, stuck as it is in the middle of an action movie. There is a terrific fight at the end, with everyone trying to defeat the all but invincible leader of the Five Fingers Gang, which they finally do. Anthony Wong is almost credible as a private eye who knows kung fu. Sheila Chan as Blackie, his assistant, is there for not very funny comic relief, to serve as a plot point toward the end of the movie and to round out the cast so that they wind up with the appropriate number of couples. Cynthia is excellent--she looks great, acts decently and is very fit, limber and athletic. Kara Hui gets to show a few kung fu moves of her own, so the female contingent is well represented. Not bad, but it could have been two movies--one an action picture and one a comedy. With them shoe horned into each other, "Madam City Hunter" is less than the sum of its parts. Reviewer Score: 6

Reviewed by: CaptainAmerica Date: 06/07/2002 Summary: Cynthia and Kara! Who could ask for more? Even including her first movie, IN THE LINE OF DUTY 3, Cynthia Khan hasn't been known for playing multifaceted characters. In the majority of her films she would play the one-dimensional good cop reacting to bad situations and responding by kicking butt. No complaints there, but for whatever the reason (for which you'd have to ask HK filmmakers), Cynthia's natural ability -- in acting and martial arts -- were strangely underutilized. If you want proof of that and see what she could have been capable of if she was allowed to go all-out like fellow GWG travelers Yukari Oshima and Moon Lee, see FORBIDDEN ARSENAL, SEA WOLVES, ZEN OF SWORD, BLADE OF FURY...and this movie! MADAM CITY HUNTER may be an action-comedy, but like many HK films it falls under that "all things to all people" rule where sometimes genres mix and match...and sometimes the mood swings faster than Tiger Woods with a golf club! The story is easy to follow if you pay attention: after a gun-blazing opening where Cynthia as a HK police madam shows us her credentials by blasting away a house full of bad guys, she has a chance encounter with the Five Fingers Gang. She kills one of them, they get mad, and frame her for the mass murder of a gang of glue-sniffing youths. (Yes, this is a comedy!) Other plot threads converge in the form of her supervisor (Tommy Wong), who has a crush on her but keeps giving her the wrong flowers...her problematic relationship with her dad and her new stepmother (Kara Hui Ying-Hung) who (Coincidence Alert!) isn't just known as a black widow in Brazil but had a prior relationship with the leader of the Five Fingers (I'm not kidding!)...and in the funniest plot thread, she finds herself in a scrappy relationship with a wolfish P.I. (the great Anthony Wong) whose name is, believe it or not, Charlie Chan! Bonded to that last plot thread is Charlie's love-hate relationship with his tomboy assistant (Sheila Chan). Like I said, it's easy to follow! :P Seriously, the plot turns (fantastic and logical) will make you giddy trying to follow it. This is a movie you're not supposed to take seriously...there are a lot of genuinely-funny moments between the principals when there isn't any action (which there is a lot of!) going on. Kara Hui's dizzying striptease out of male drag, Anthony Wong's goofy martial moments, and Sheila Chan by turns cute and acerbic give this movie plenty of punch. But the most pleasant surprise is not only Cynthia Khan's multifaceted role as a supercop (she ain't just reacting and looking stoic this time), but the fact that Cynthia and "Auntie" Kara Hui are given free reign to show off their sex appeal! Hey, don't sit so close to the TV...aw, you fogged the screen up! French maid outfits and mini-dresses never looked better! I was lucky enough to get this film after I heard about it from World Video, and Tai Seng has it in an English Dubbed version under the shortened title of LADY HUNTER(?!?). I recommend getting the subtitled version from World Video, but I don't know if they still have it for sale, dagnabbit! And yes, one can draw the correct conclusion that this film was made in response to Jackie Chan's goofy actioner CITY HUNTER...but after seeing the two, I strongly recommend this one!

Reviewed by: danton Date: 04/04/2002 The action choreography in this film is excellent. Framed between a big opening shootout, and a final battle involving, among other things, some bamboo scaffolding, the film presents a satisfying number of above average fight scenes which are inventively staged, well executed, nicely shot and edited and which make good use of various sets and props. Both Cynthia Khan (who's doubled quite a bit) and Kara Hui are good, and even Anthony Wong manages to appear like a serious threat. But what about the rest of the movie? The stuff between the fights? Well, the filmakers didn't really care if that part made any sense (and it doesn't), as long as it allowed them to be playful and try out some different shooting techniques. So you have Flashdance-style camerawork in Kara Hui's first scene (a seductive dance on a staircase), you have almost psychedelic camera movement when Cynthia deals with some drug addicts, and more importantly, you have a script that completely abandons any semblance of logic or coherence. The fact that it still somehow resembles an actual storyline must be considered a small miracle. And not only that, it's even pretty entertaining - after all, we get to see Kara Hui wearing a French maid's outfit for no good reason (and as if that weren't enough, Sheila Chan starts wearing one too!). We also get to see Anthony Wong dressed as a girl doing some fishing (don't ask why - plus, he quickly switches from fishing to swordfighting, so no complaints from me on that front...). And we even get to see Cynthia Khan almost reciprocate to some sensual caressing during a bathroom seduction scene with a dripping-wet Anthony Wong. She quickly reverts back to being her usual genderless Girl with a Gun, however - after all, there's more bad guys (aptly named the "Five Fingers") to dispose of. Which she then indeed disposes of - with gusto. A truly bizarre movie that offers some laughs, some truly wacky moments, and excellent action - and all that on a budget that wouldn't buy you a decent lunch in Hollywood. Recommended!

Reviewed by: ksbutterbox Date: 03/25/2002 Summary: Quite different... I bought this figuring it would be a typical Cynthia flick so I had no real high expectations. This movie is a hoot..!! It goes all over the place as far as viginettes of violence and black humour.Very different film. It does drag in the middle but like everyone else says the ending action scenes redeem the wait. One of the better Khan movies out there. But..that doesn't mean much really.

Reviewed by: MrBooth Date: 03/23/2002 Summary: Mad City Hunter, I think they meant ;-) A good film-maker knows his limits. He knows what he can do with the budget available - and that when the budget is low, something has to give. Many a movie has failed from over-stretching its means... better to focus your resources, trim the fat etc. In the case of Madam City Hunter, they evidently decided that the thing to go should be making any sense whatsoever. This proves to be quite a commendable decision, IMO. There is a plot to the movie, and I followed it. It's quite simple in fact. But it goes no way towards explaining the movie, or 90% of what happens. The scenes all kind of tie together somehow, but seem mainly to have been chosen for their individual merit rather than coherence as a whole. The movie starts off well - within the first 3 minutes I think more bullets are fired than in all of John Woo's movies total. This between a small group of bad guys and some cops who are stood about 20 yards apart... and they don't even manage to smash the windows of the police cars they're vaguely hiding behind. Realising that bullets are mysteriously not working that day, they send in their killer weapon - Cynthia Khan. She quickly penetrates the bad guys lair and despatches of them with acrobatic kung-fu Girls With Guns power. And then the rest of the movie happens. The bulk of the run-time is not actually spent on the gang of killers who are after Cynthia's life, but rather on the fact that her widowed dad is now shagging a nymphomaniac not much older than Cynthia herself. One of her colleagues also has the hots for her, and drafts in private eyes Anthony Wong and Sheila Chan to look after her, or something. This whole set up leads to a bunch of comedy scenes that are actually very funny. Sheila is particularly insane and amusing here, and Anthony Wong gives one of his better performances too. Kara Hui is probably the greatest presence of the movie though, as Cynthia's new stepmom. She has a couple of action scenes in which she is excellent (and doubled less than Cynthia), but it's her shockingly seductive "nympho wife" side that is particularly memorable. That French Maid's outfit... yum! Every so often the killer thing rears its head and an action scene breaks out, and these seem to be the raison de etre for the movie - they are almost all excellently staged and filmed. Even Anthony Wong looks like a great fighter here! Cynthia is heavily doubled (by men) throughout, but the scenes that her character is involved with still come off as pretty intense and exciting stuff. I'd love to know who choreographed the movie to - Yuen Wo Ping is credited as producer, but it seems like a rather a low profile movie for him to have action directed. The final set-piece which runs up down and around a set of bamboo scaffolding is particularly tremendous - easily the match of Rush Hour 2's similar scene. Very refreshing to see good old HK style action scenes immediately after watching Blade 2, and being reminded how these things are meant to be shot & edited! I really loved this movie, even though I couldn't convincingly argue that it was a "quality" movie in any real sense. These low budget "anything goes" movies that Hong Kong used to make without being self-conscious about it are a treasure trove of charm and uniqueness though. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for a woman who knows kung fu :D Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: mrblue Date: 03/01/2002 Summary: Good GWG movie Cynthia Khan plays a cop who is sent on "vacation" after being implicated in a murder case, and so spends her days trying to find out more about her mysterious stepmother, who may have a connection to a powerful gang. Like most low-budget action movies produced during this period, the script and expostion are pretty bad, and the acting is just lousy in parts. The movie really drags during the middle, where lame comedy replaces fisticuffs, but the bookend action sequences are spectacular stuff. Even Anthony Wong looks impressive busting out kung-fu moves (even though he was obviously doubled for some of the more acrobatic stuff), and of course, Cynthia shines during the action bits. One notable sequence has Cynthia fighting a guy on bamboo scaffolding, which is much more powerful than a similar scene in Rush Hour 2. More casual or "arty" viewers may be bored silly by Madam City Hunter, but action fans will find a lot to like in here. Note: I am not sure if this movie really has any relation to City Hunter. The logos for the movie are similar, and City Hunter's theme plays in the film, but no characters from City Hunter make an appearance here. [review from www.hkfilm.net]

Reviewed by: jfierro Date: 12/21/1999 Comedy/action piece featuring Cynthia Khan and Anthony Wong as acop and private detective who team up to stop a ruthless team of assassins from taking revenge on Cynthia's family. Although the action is watchable, it is the all-out comic performance of Sheila Chan as Anthony's goofy assistant that really gives this movie its spark.

Reviewed by: hkcinema Date: 12/08/1999 This one starts off with a bang from the start with Cynthia Khan engaged in a shoot-out. From then on, this comedy/ action finds Cynthia as a police officer Ching pairing with private detective Charlie Chan (Anthony Wong, with leftover perm from Full Contact) to go after the members of 'Five Fingers'. There's also a minor subplot involving Ching's father and his relationship with a suspected money grubbing hussy. Overall, by the end, everything rounds out to a nice little ball. Cynthia is not one of the best actresses so it's up to the fight choreographer to spice up this movie. The other fortunate element(s) are Anthony and Sheila who seem to be having a grand ole time. He plays a somewhat (mentally and physically) scarred individual, seemingly impervious to injury, and Sheila is his loopy sidekick. This is basically a fun movie with good action to hold the interest. [Reviewed by Jennie Tam]

Reviewed by: spinali Date: 12/08/1999 Summary: NULL Fun, cartoonish comedy with cop Cynthia Khan being chased by members of the "Five Fingers Group," while her dad is being seduced by a black widow temptress -- among other complications. Some great martial arts action, cleverly staged, including one thrilling kung-fu/swordfight scene on bamboo scaffolding. Three cute babes. (2.5/4) [Reviewed by Steve Spinali] Reviewer Score: 6