It's Now Or Never (HK 1992)

Rating: ***
Cast: Cheung Man, Rain Lau, Cynthia Khan, Ng Man Tat, Alfred Cheung

This is different. What starts off as a black comedy quickly turns into a mean spirited, dark, bleak, and violent tragedy. Rose (amazing Cheung Man) heads up a gang of be-bopping teddy girls who are constantly getting into trouble with the law. A nice cop (Alfred Cheung) falls for her and by the end of the film goes to prison to save her life. The action is vicious and brutal, but not overly graphic, and all of the girls are nasty, manipulating, back stabbing bitches. All of the actresses are excellent and look fantastic, but Cheung Man is utterly spectacular! She is tough and sexy, all attitude, and owns every scene she's in. She's also keenly aware of this fact, which she uses to devastating effect. Quite possibly the performance of her career. Her sister (Rain Lau) is a short tempered, foul mouthed, pill pushing brat, and their father (Ng Man Tat) is wonderful as a sleazy low rent gigolo. Rose's best friend is "Little Bun", or "Bitchy Bun", played by a cute and sexy Cynthia Khan. She constantly boasts about her eagle's claw kung fu only to get her butt kicked repeatedly. It's refreshing to see her as a bad girl and in a film outside of the female cop genre (and it's nice to see her in a skirt as well!). Extremely well made and entertaining for a while, but it just gets too depressing towards the end. It's also infuriating not knowing how everything turns out because the epilogue isn't subtitled.

Memorable quote:
Shing - "If I'd known you were a virgin, I would have taken it more slowly."
Rose - "If I'd known you were so anxious, I would have taken my underwear off first."