"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.