The Stunt Woman (1996)

Despite Michelle Yeoh's best efforts, this stunt fell flat

The Stunt Woman starring Michelle Yeoh started out strong giving the audience a behind the scenes look at the grueling and dangerous life of stunt women and men. Then it lost its way and stumbled down a confusing path that not even the graceful Yeoh could save it from.

Michelle played Ah Kam, a stunt woman who through determination finds a job working for Master Tung's (Sammo Hung) stunt company. She quickly becomes one of the stunt family after showing her fearlessness and skill. Paco Yick and Mang Hoi, real life stuntmen and stunt directors, were part of Tung's crew. The film touched on the Triads who were involved with movie making during this time. If the film had stayed focused on the nomadic and precarious life of the stuntmen in Hong Kong, especially before CGI and improved safety conditions, this could have been a fascinating story. Instead, Ah Kam falls in love and becomes a manager of her lover's Karaoke bar. When this falls apart she heads back to her true love, working in the movies. Tragedy awaits her and the crew. The next thing you know she's playing surrogate mother to Tung's wild child son.

Perhaps parts of the story had to be re-written after Michelle suffered a calamitous fall, injuring her back. They actually showed footage of her jump from a bridge onto a truck and her having to be tenderly carried off afterwards, which paramedics should probably have been doing. Or maybe director Ann Hui was trying to show three different traditional eras in a woman's life-singlehood, being a couple, being a mom. Whatever the motivation, the story was all over the place in the second and third acts. A major death happened practically off screen, losing much of the emotional impact. Some story elements were vague at best, others were simply dropped.

Michelle Yeoh did her best with what they gave her as did Sammo Hung. They had a nice professional chemistry together. It was fun to see numerous stuntmen have the chance to show their skills as real characters. Kent Cheng and Richard Ng made guest appearances rounding out the cast nicely. The only drawback in the acting department was the child character. Ah Long was a thoroughly unlikeable kid who only partially redeemed himself.

There were a few fight scenes, but much like some of the stunts, they were filmed from a distance or too close, making the action blurry. With Yeoh and the stunt crew, it seemed as if there should have been much better, clearer shots for us to enjoy.

The movie started out strong and ended with a whimper, a terrible waste of kung fu legendary talent. The film did cause Michelle Yeoh to reconsider some of her movie choices which led to a James Bond film and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which helped to cement her status internationally. So in the end, this uneven film was useful after all.


2/21/23

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