Submitted by Lurple on 08/17/08
A dark and brutal rape/revenge movie, Hong Kong style. Directed by Ngai Kai Lam (of Story of Ricky fame) this is a tense and disturbing thriller with a truly savage final reel.
An unassuming hostess runs afoul of a group of drunken robbers and thugs at her club, and the incident ends in them being ejected. They wait for her to leave work and then viciously beat and gang rape her in cemetary. Laughing, they leave her battered and bleeding.
This scene isn't pleasant to watch. You'd probably expect that, but it's filmed in a merciless style, intensely lit, and it isn't glossed over in a few seconds. It's not so much exploitative as it is unpleasantly honest.
Kit-Ying soon decides she'll have her revenge no matter what the cost. She moves to Hong Kong and asks her wheelchair bound uncle Hsiung for help. He counsels her to give up and move on but gives her a job. As much as he wants to stay out of her troubles, her quest for revenge and the resulting downward spiral eventually drag him and the other innocent people around her in.
Pauline Wong is quite good as Kit-Ying; breaking down occasionally, but generally empty as she hunts down the men who raped her. The late Ching-Ying Lam is great as Hsiung. It's unlikely you've ever seen a wheelchair used quite the way he uses it towards the end.
The rapists are brutish thugs but not completely stupid; after Kit-Ying eliminates one or two of them they start to figure things out. They're tough guys and they're not about to go down easily. The film is fairly taut revenge thriller up until the final showdown and then things go completely over the edge. That's not to say that it plays out unrealistically; it's a bizarre but completely primal display of savagery and the will to survive.
See Her Vengeance if you've got a strong stomach for extreme content and violence. It's a raw and effective piece of work with some fine cinematography, and it's smarter than most other films in its genre. It's a shame Ngai Kai Lam didn't direct more films.
Looks like my comments do come through...
I was worried my comments were not coming through. I live in China and can have issues and often have to use proxies to see some sites. I know enough Chinese read the characters on this movies and it says Blood Rose Monster (xue mei gui). Xi Xue Giu is vampire (suck blood monster).
Okay, enough low brow Chinese lessons. Good to have you here. There are some cool posters here and if you look on my sidebar you can find some links to to them and RSS feeds. They all work hard and are laid back, not egos that I have encountered yet.
Please drop by sometimes and say hi and I will do the same. I am lonely here and China and America being so far behind in the gold does not help.
The comments on the site wait
The comments on the site wait for me to approve them before they show up so I can weed out the spam. I've considered installing something like reCAPTCHA (which is pretty cool in that it cuts down on some spam and helps digitize books at the same time) instead, but I think it might also cut down on comments. Hard to tell. Maybe I'll put up a poll sometime.
Interesting about the title translation; I like little bits of information like that. We're bound to have more Chinese movies showing up here for review, be interesting to hear your comments on them.
That sounds highly
That sounds highly interesting. I will have to watch it, too, it seems.
There were two versions put
There were two versions put out on VCD, one cut and one uncut. The uncut version is obviously the way to go, assuming you can find it.
I haven't seen any signs of this coming out on DVD, unfortunately. Hopefully that will change at some point.
Uncut
The CATIII version is actually shorter than the extended version. Violence was cut out and replaced with dialogue. Check IMDB.
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