Customer Reviews

Beauty Investigator

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Beauty Investigator is a classic film in the genre of martial arts skilled girls with guns. The stars of this film are Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima. Hong Kong film fans should be familiar with both of them. For the uninitiated, Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima are two of the best female HK action film actresses who ever did HK films. They are both very good at martial arts, and they can handle their fight scenes very well. Moon Lee was a dancer who was trained by HK film stunt men in the ways of martial arts film fighting, and she is excellent. She uses good form and technique in all of her movements. Yukari Oshima is classically trained in Karate, and she is also extremely good, utilizing good form and technique as well. And in this film, the two square off for some very satisfying fight sequences.
(Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima also square off again in Kickboxer's Tears, and the fighting in that film is also good, but the full screen format crops off a good deal of the action, making it not as enjoyable to watch as it could've been.)

So for fans of the girls with guns HK film genre, this movie is great fun to watch. The only down side to this film is that it's dubbed, but the dubbing isn't too bad, and the video quality is poor. An earlier review of this film explains this very well. But the saving grace of this film is the content itself, the stars, and the fact that it's in widescreen allows the viewer to fully appreciate the beauty of the action sequences.

I highly recommend this film to fans of Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima, and to fans of HK action films in general. And for those who are unfamiliar with HK action films and the HK girls with guns genre, if you're looking for a different flavor to your action films, give this one a try, you won't be disappointed. And with the very low price tag of this dvd, you'll be getting a great deal. Even if you don't like it, you wonn't have wasted too much of your money, and if you do like it, you'll have gotten a great bargain on a great film!

This sub genre never took until ang lee put out Crouching tiger. But I guarantee you that moon lee(iron angels) and yukari Oshima( teh story of Riki-Oh) are better than michelle yeoh and ziyi zhang, it is just a shame they only made poorly shot low budget movies. But just like jet or bruce these 2 make any movie watchable.

The movie itself is pretty freaking dumb, but much more enjoyable storywise than Kickboxer's Tears. They take the more straight up "girls with guns" approach. Not bad, but stupid and funny only at times.

The fights are really the ONLY thing going for it. A VERY good one on one fight between men is it for us guys. The women rule the world in this. The comedy doesn't really appear in any of the fights but worth a rental at least. I would watch it again but only once or twice at the most.

The dvd quality is the same as kickboxer's tear's(more than watchable) but unlike KB T, it is in a widescreened format, nto perefct but you are not really missing anything. Which brings me to my next piont, don't buy this only for billy chow. He has only ONE spectacular battle but it can't even be seen becasue of teh darkness, the rest of the movie you can at least see everything. I have the tai seng english dubbed budget release of this.

Two policewomen go undercover as club hostesses to catch a serial rapist, but soon find there's more to this case than they've bargained for. Fast-paced, funny, with incredible fight scenes between Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima make this actioner a must see. Once you see Moon Lee you'll be hooked. Not only beautiful but she can also kick butt!

A side note for those who've never heard of Moon Lee or seen any of her movies, Beauty Investigator is a great place to start. It has everything and once you see this hopefully you'll become a fan and want to see more of her work.

Not any kind of an Oscar winning material or an epic like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"....far from from it. A production that is more comparable to the likes of "Robot Monster", this is absolutely one of the most goofiest movies I ever seen come out of Hong Kong and it is one of the two reasons that "Beauty Investigator" will be one of my all-time favorites from that region. The other reason is that it is always a pleasure watching the beautiful and talented Yukari Oshima, whom I am in love with. But to sum it up.......Moon Lee is playing a female cop who is a major airhead that is partnered with another female cop who herself is a bigger airhead, their boss has a constant case of at-his-wit's-end-itess with them just a peg below Herbert Lom's most famous character, Commissioner Dreyfess from "the Pink Panther" series (and I say "a peg below" given the fact that Dreyfess has tried numerous times to actually frag his subordinate, great job at making audiences sympathetic to the boss for a change but you all get the picture), then throw in the old-school bad dubbing that makes these old Hong Kong movies so fun to watch and it's guaranteed laughs. The scene in which Moon Lee finds herself up against a dude who only gets aroused when she whoops his ass ("Oh, my God......you're a masochist!!!!") and her partner is up against the other dude who dresses up like a Chinese Barney Rubble are just priceless. My only complaint against "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is that they never tapped the Hong Kong market. This movie who would be a perfect place to start. What's there not to love about it, unless you're a raging FemiNazi or some Politically-Correct liberal card-carry Democrat Party control freak who would ban guns, disband the Nra, and have people like Joe Bob Briggs and Rush Limbaugh put in concentration camps? "Beauty Investigator" is really 5 stars plus in my book. My only complaint is the same I have on all Yukari Oshima movies, which is the lack of Yukari Oshima nude. I recommend this with no reservations.

Beauty Investigator is a movie about two female police detectives who go under cover to find rapist/murderer. They soon get caught up in the main plot of this movie which involves Hong Kong gangsters and Japanese Yakuza. The ganster plot is fairly typical and not terribly interesting. In fact, there is not much about this movie that is all that interesting. The female stars are all attractive, and there are a couple good actin scenes (including some unnecessary, but appreciated explosions).

This whole movie smacked of cheap production. The plastic DVD case is warped (it won't lay flat or close properly), and the plot summary on the back is wrong.

The video quality is poor. It is widescreen, but not animorphic. It looks like a copy of a cheap VHS tape. The picture is very muddy, and at times the color seems to go out of the picture (yes, it is on the DVD, not a problem with cables). Other times the colors bleed all over the place -- in the final fight, one of the female villians is wearing a red shirt that seems to glow. Did they do the transfer by pointing a camcorder at a TV screen?

There is another problem with the video, or more specifically with the fact that half of the movie seems to have been shot in the dark. There are a lot of scenes where you can't see much of anything other than a few unidentifiable blobs moving around. Maybe!

On the plus side, the dubbing was pretty well done.

You can definately better elsewhere. If you want to see attractive female crime action, try Heroic Trio. If you want to see awesome Hong Kong gangster action, look for Hard Boiled. I cannot recommend this movie.