“Raped by an Angel” is a tawdry bit of titillation that lingers on and takes voyeuristic pleasure in the spectacle of women being raped and humiliated by a sadistic lout. The rapist videotapes some of the assaults for his own gratification and the tapes become key parts of the plot, underlining the depraved nature of the entertainment being presented to the audience of the movie.

Chingmy Yau plays the actress/law student who is the moral center of the story. She is as good as Mark Cheng, who plays Chuck, the neighbor from hell, is bad. She is in a commercial for “Fitty Milk”, a dairy product that allows one to run faster, jump higher, shoot straighter and dispose of carload lots of bad guys without breaking a sweat. At a party celebrating its first showing she first turns down another commercial gig because she has a test coming up and then repels the advances of Chuck (Cheng) with a glass of ice down his pants. She is the only person who is willing to stand by Cindy, a friend who became HIV positive from her American husband and reforms a triad underboss (Simon Yam) who falls in love with her. She is also quite handy with a broken wine bottle.

The romance between the good girl who has overcome her orphanage upbringing to become the prettiest law student and the smartest commercial actress in Hong Kong and Tat (Yam) the righteous triad guy who loves his country might as well be another movie completely. There are lots of hackneyed but updated romantic comedy images: Tat shouting to the world how much he loves her—from a speeding boat, no less; Chingmy Yau showing she is both sexually sophisticated but also almost virginal—she produces a condom at the right moment but it turns out she has been carrying it around for a couple of years. The two worlds intersect, of course, because she is the real target of the rapist, although he is willing to assault and terrorize her roommate for a while before he moves on to her.

The only character that I found completely likeable was the upright and moral cop played by Lee Sui-Kei. He is convinced that Chuck is evil and that Chingmy’s friend is his victim, even in the face of falsified evidence planted by Chuck. He arrests Tat for running a triad initiation ceremony but is much more lenient with him than he is with Chuck. Essentially Lee Sui-Kei is the guy you would like on your side during just about any type of confrontation.

There are quite a few references to triad influence in or control of Hong Kong movies—Tat mentions a few times that it is expected of a boss to run a film company. One of the movies he is thinking of producing is “Wong Fei Hong vs. Bruce Lee”, which at least sounds a lot more interesting than this turkey. He also wonders if he is as good as Jacky Cheung and that he definitely doesn’t want to be compared with Leon Lai.

“Raped by an Angel is visually very dull for long stretches—essentially it involves pointing the camera at uninteresting people doing and saying uninteresting things with occasional breaks for mayhem, sexual assault or romance, although the scene of Chingmy Yau dancing in her lacy white bra and panties set with matching garter belt and stockings was certainly worth seeing. Most of my expectations for this movie, based on reviews on this site and a few others, were fulfilled. It is a lackluster effort, even by Wong Jing’s standards, with a repellent subject matter and impossible to like characters. The sequels—or at least the next four films with the same title—not only won’t make it to the top of my list, they won’t be on the list at all.