The Godfather's Daughter Mafia Blues DVD Region All

Japanese actress, Yukari Oshima, plays a young Chinese woman whose pampered lifestyle has softened her brain until the only joy she gets is kicking people in the back of the head. This is another installment in the Chinese vs. Japanese sweepstakes which has given birth to such supersagas as Chinese Super Ninjas, Hitman, Magnificent Warriors and Duel to the Death. Here the Chinese and Japanese are virtually interchangeable, save that the Japanese are a lot sneakier and a lot of the Chinese have bad perms.

Ken Lo plays the brash young head of the Japanese Kuyama Gumi crime family out to turn a simple nightclub joint venture with triad boss, Mr. Li, into a scorched earth takeover deal. The problem with burning Mr. Li is that he is a mafia godfather. Whose daughter is Yukari Oshima, who's got the blues. The mafia blues. These blues require her to team up with new recruits to pa's gang, Mark Cheng (in a really ugly wig) and Benny Lai (the swift-kicking mute fromPolice Story II). Cheng is in the movie because he and Yukari Oshima had just gotten married (since divorced). Lai is there to join up with the ranks of martial artists on display: Dick Wei, Ken Lo, and director Fung Hak-on.

One would expect a stunt a minute, but the movie sticks to straight drama for its first half, albeit underscoring the emotional interplay with brief outbreaks of hitting and kicking. The second half of the movie is when the stuntmen hit the fan (and the walls, and the windows, and the concrete abutments. Head first. On a motorcycle.)

A sporadically kinetic movie, this is the girls with guns genre at its "8" setting (Foxhunter would be a 10; She Shoots Straight would be an 11). By the time the movie ends you'll realize that you've just licked the tip of the iceberg, and now your tongue's stuck and you've got to keep on licking. Or, to dispense with metaphors: girls with guns - you can't watch just one.

by Grady Hendrix