The Lady Professional (HK 1971)

Rating: **
Review Date: 2/25/12
Cast: Lily Ho

Considered by many to be the ultimate Lily Ho film, but I found it lacking and woefully executed. Ge Tianli (Lily Ho) has had a rash of bad luck. After her father is killed by gangsters, she gets revenge by killing the gang leader. Unfortunately, she's identified by another gangster at the scene of the crime and he blackmails her into taking an assassination job. Naturally, he double-crosses her so there will be no loose ends. She somehow manages to survive his betrayal and goes all the way up the food chain to find out why everyone wants her dead.

While it's always fun to watch female assassin films, Tianli is neither interesting as a character or convincing as a killer. Lily Ho is pretty, but her hair is a mess and her lifeless delivery robs the film of any energy. Perhaps her stone-faced performance was intentional to show how far gone she was, but I found it dull and uninspired. The action scenes are pretty awful, and the severely undercranked car chase at the beginning of the film is laughably bad. Things finally wander into bizarre territory towards the end when a trio of "super killers" are hired to take her out. They are all extremely silly, and the highlight of the film is watching Tianli throw one of them into a cement mixer. Sadly, the film isn't what I was hoping for, and I have a hard time recommending it to anyone other than Lily Ho completists.