Last Updated on October 18, 2020 by rob
Bored of traffic duty eager young policewoman Yeung Ling (Jade Leung) volunteers for a dangerous undercover assignment to capture a cunning and extremely violent criminal named Tung (Ching Fung). But the assignment backfires spectacularly and when Tung attacks Yeung in her apartment he leaves the bruised and bloodied policewoman swearing vengeance. With Tung having fled to mainland China Yeung enlists the aid of a former pimp and associate of Tung’s named Chan Hong (Jordan Chan) to track her man down. But the hunter quickly becomes the hunted as Tung launches a series of savage attacks that have Yeung fighting for her life.
Despite the appallingly lame title (Fox Hunter, I ask you!) this is a cracking little thriller that generates interest by pitting its inexperienced, pint-sized heroine against a cunning, heavily armed adversary who is in every way her superior physically. A major close-quarters combat scene involving Yeung, Tung and Hong, an AK-47 and a couple of grenades in a tiny hotel room, is a terrific piece of action-staging and both the characters of Leung’s obsessive (or ‘principled’ as she calls it) cop and Hong’s pragmatic ex-pimp, who’s learnt the hard way that principles are there to be adjusted as circumstances demand, possess an integrity that makes them not only believable but ultimately sympathetic.
This latter point is particularly impressive given that Chan’s pimp is such an obnoxious and unpleasant character in the early stages. But by the time the climax comes around you’re really hoping he won’t end up as cannon fodder and that empathy is impressive. The action manages to stay more or less in the realm of the plausible with Yeung taking a ferocious battering during her encounters with Tung and only barely escaping with her life each time and the film rightly emphasizing the fear and exhaustion such encounters take on her. The fast-paced story still manages to pack in unexpected digressions such as a touching, bittersweet trip to Hong’s parents, and the climax – a hostage/bomb siege in a shopping mall – has the budget and the production value to deliver both the bangs and the spectacle. All in all not bad, not bad at all.
