“Body Lover” is a tawdry, brutal movie full of casual misogyny and vicious sexual violence. The audience realizes how bad it will be during the very first scene in which a troupe of dancers entertains some high rollers. The choreography for the dance lies somewhere between make it up as you go along and unbelievably bad. But worse is to come—immediately, since the dancers first drop their tops and then garb their pistols and begin shooting the slavering fools in the audience. Soon everyone is firing at everyone else—there is a lot of weaponry available. One way to tell if you are in a five star hotel that deserves it rating is that the wait staff picks up carbines to return fire when the floor show becomes deadly. None of the gunfights were very good with the actual shooting especially poorly staged although there was some innovative stuff. For example emptying entire clip of an AK class carbine from very short range (about 18 inches) into a guy about to throw a grenade; a guy who just won a fight with a crunching kick is unexpectedly dispatched with a bullet. There were so many attackers that jumped into the air and landed in the swimming pool at the same time that I expected Esther Williams to show up.

The hand to hand fight scenes were well done—the only part of “Body Lover” that had any quality. The filmmakers made the most of shooting part of the movie in Thailand; Hong Kong stuntmen are justly famed for their high falls, leaps onto moving vehicles and general insouciant flashiness but when it comes to taking a lot of very convincing punishment in fights, Thai stuntmen are the gold standard. A lot of bit players smashed into concrete—they made it seem very real.

There was an example of the extreme economy shown by Hong Kong screenwriters in a quick exposition scene, particularly useful for those of us who hadn’t seen “Hong Kong Eva”. A quick meeting among three principals results in us finding out that “all the undercovers are dead or in the hospital"; “you forget this killed your wife and children” and “Kit, remember we were classmates in cadet school”.

“Body Lover” is a poorly made piece of cinematic offal and I see no reason to recommend it to anyone.