Remains of a Woman (1993)
Reviewed by: MilesC on 2000-07-20
Summary: Not bad.
Not a great movie by any means; like many of the "true crime" Cat. IIIs, it suffers from the lack of a real story that often occurs when a script it simply written around the goriest murder the production company could dig up. The frequent (pre)-sex scenes are sort of silly and pointless, and set to cheesy soft-porn music. Still, Billy Chan is a thoroughly detestable and sleazy character, and his two-timing antics get you through. But the real praise should go to Carrie Ng; she is effective throughout, but does a GREAT job of selling the "true" version of the incident in question, shown, as is the custom, at the end. It's a classic fifteen minutes of drugs, screaming, dismemberment and depravity that could easily have come off as embarrassing without Ng. It strikes a good balance; it's a happy medium between "horrific" and "vomit-inducing" that I can handle. This isn't my thing at all, and even I thought it worked well; if you're a big fan of the early '90s true crime wave, the final act of this film makes it a must.