Lethal Panther (1990) User Reviews

Godfrey Ho is no John Woo.

[BA_Harrison · 5/10 · 16 May 2007]

A routine girls 'n' guns Hong Kong action flick from the 80s, Godfrey Ho's Deadly China Dolls has all of the right ingredients: sexy female assassins, machine gun toting bad guys, and faceless goons in suits and sunglasses ripe for the killing. Unfortunately, the unremarkable story and Ho's sub-par direction (think John Woo, but with barely a fraction of the panache and originality) mean that the film is, for the most part, rather tedious. However, the inclusion of several scenes of gratuitous nudity, some bloody battles, and the occasional martial arts moment makes it just about watchable for fans of bullets and babes mayhem.

The messy story revolves around the greedy nephew of a crime lord, who has his uncle bumped off so that he can take over the business. There are several silly plot threads which include his wish to also bump off the stepson of his dead uncle, and eliminate the assassins he hired (in order to tie up loose ends). Meanwhile, a cop (Sibelle Hu), is out to arrest any or all of the bad guys.

Ho litters his film with splattery squib spurting gunfights in which nearly everyone gets shot at least ten times, pausing occasionally to include a sleazy sex scene (featuring full frontal female nudity) to spice things up, but the result is a so-so addition to the genre which adds nothing new.

Two Assassins and a CIA Agent Caught in the Middle of a Gang War

[Uriah43 · 4/10 · 14 September 2019]

This film begins with an agent for the CIA by the name of "Betty Lee" (Sibelle Hu) investigating a counterfeit operation in the United States and discovering that it originates somewhere in the Philippines. The scene then shifts to Japan where an attractive woman named "Amy" (Yoko Miyamoto) is in the process of seducing a high-ranking mob boss and then assassinates him while he is sleeping in bed. Around the same time, another beautiful assassin by the name of "Ilene" (Maria Jo) is equally busy killing a number of mobsters who are in the process of conducting a business meeting in Hong Kong. What essentially follows is that, unknown to each other, both assassins have been hired to kill a man by the name of "Charles Wong" (Chung Lam) who controls both the drug trade and the same counterfeiting ring that Betty Lee is currently investigating. But what neither Amy nor her unknown fellow assassin Ilene realize is that once their target has been eliminated their orders will be to kill one another so that there will be nobody left to identify the person who ordered the hit on Charles Wong. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a confusing low-budget action film which featured plenty of shooting and acrobatics but was rather weak in both character development and dialogue. To be sure both Yoko Miyamoto and Maria Jo were pleasing to the eye but the constant action became rather tedious at times. That being said, while this wasn't necessarily a bad film for the most part, it could have used a certain amount of fine-tuning here and there and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Unoriginal, unbelievable, and doesn't make any sense

[gridoon · 5/10 · 18 April 2006]

From the opening scene of CIA agent Sibelle Hu telling a counterfeiter that she will let him go if he can beat her in a fight (!) to the scene of a prostitute comparing her job with that of a hired killer and coming to the conclusion that "my job is safer, unless the men have AIDS" (!), "Deadly China Dolls" is a ludicrous mess. Nothing here is original, nothing is believable, and nothing makes sense (the bad guys want to kill the killers so that there are no witnesses, and where do they try to do it? In supermarkets and strip clubs, among other places!). The action is sub-John Woo, and most of the villains are pathetically lousy shots. Maria Jo and Miyamoto Yoko do a fair job, but they are not interesting or engaging. And I don't know what's wrong with Sibelle Hu, but she looks awful in this movie. (**)

Guns, guns, guns, I'm looking for a good time...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 30 December 2020]

Except a good time is not really what you will find when you sit down to watch the 1990 movie "Lethal Panther" (aka "Jing tian long hu bao").

I remember watching this movie on VHS back in the 1990s, and I was given the chance to sit down and watch it again here late in 2020. I couldn't remember the movie really, so I took the time to sit down and watch it once again. And it turns out that the movie was not particularly great. Perhaps that is why I had completely wiped it from my memory.

The storyline told in "Lethal Panther" was so random and almost not coherent at all. It seemed like director Godfrey Ho just made up things as he had an idea and as the filming of the movie progressed. There was just almost no existing red thread throughout the course of the movie. Needless to say that there was a lot of random fillers that served no purpose to the storyline, and the movie had some of the most cringeworthy sex scenes I have ever seen in a movie. I am seriously hard pressed to figure out just exactly what writers Simon Fong and Charles Ng were thinking when they concocted the script and storyline for "Lethal Panther".

The acting in the movie was dubious at best. So you are not going to be in for any particular grand Shakespearian experience when you sit down to watch "Lethal Panther". But then again, just looking at the movie's cover, who would be expecting such a thing. And it requires little imagination to figure out why the female leads were hired for the movie.

One thing that works well enough for the movie is the sheer amount of action sequences in the movie. Sure, many of them were corny and haven't withstood the test of time all that well. And the sound effects for the fighting, well, let's just say they tried.

I enjoy Asian action movies and martial arts movies, "Lethal Panther", however, is not a movie that ranks up high on the list of impressive action or martial arts movies. In fact, it was rather difficult enduring it again and making it through the course of the movie.

My rating of "Lethal Panther" ultimately has to land on a generous three out of ten stars. If you enjoy Asian action movies, skip on this one and put something else on. God knows, there are an abundance of readily more interesting and entertaining Asian action movies out there.

A guilty pleasure for girls 'n' guns fans.

[AlxSmits · 13 January 1999]

This is far from great filmmaking, but it may well represent the pinnacle of femme fatale, or "girls with guns", action cinema. What it lacks in production value, it more than makes up for in attitude and content. The three female leads are superb in their unflinching no-nonsense roles, with Filipino beauty queen Maria Jo leading the pack with her sizzling intensity. Despite the low production value, poor continuity, and music score cannibalized from a dozen other films, this violent and bloody John Woo inspired actioner features impressive camera work, exciting gunplay, and energetic fight choreography. Apart from a handful of sleazy and gratuitous sex scenes, I would highly recommend this film to anyone interested in the genre.

More class than you'd expect

[unbrokenmetal · 7/10 · 21 January 2003]

This movie belongs to the bunch of those who owe a lot to Luc Besson's `Nikita'. Two tough-as-hell female killers are fighting against each other, but have a common enemy in Albert, a young gangster played by Lawrence Ng, who had his uncle killed to become the new big boss himself - and he doesn't want witnesses afterwards. If Peckinpah got a copyright on gunfights filmed in slow motion, he'd have been rich after this movie ;-). "Lethal Panther" is stylish, it's got more class than you'd expect (watch more movies from the same director, and you see what I mean), and I'd rank it among the top 20, yet not top 10 Asian thrillers I've seen. Too many fights following each other give this movie tremendous speed, but it is dangerously close sometimes to become irritating because characters do not get explained enough - they are just firing bullets every time they get on the screen. Did I already mention one of the 2 ladies is proud owner of a rocket thrower? Apparently she doesn't just want to kill the villain, she's out for total annihilation. "Lethal Panther" goes over the top in respect of violence, using more than required for the narration, but that's what happens in the B pictures every so often. The occasional sex scenes I didn't mind, sleazy or not, because as we all know since "Basic Instinct", they don't take the suspense away. One quiet scene at the shore uses John Carpenter's Halloween theme on the soundtrack - which is totally out of place in broad daylight.

Guns.... Girls..... Gang wars and a Goofy script

[sauravjoshi85 · 3/10 · 1 June 2019]

The movie is about two female assassins who got the job to kill each other.

This movie is typical Southeast Asia's movie from 90s which use to have lots of violence, killings, gang wars, double crossing, Erotic scenes but lacks good plot and script.

The characters have done the required hard work and some what did justice to their job.

Plot and script is the weakest part of the movie and so as the screenplay.

The movie has nothing to watch for apart from some erotic scenes.

A light novel onscreen for adults

[ivan_dmitriev · 7/10 · 18 August 2019]

Mostly unrealistic levels of violence and some very cheesy CIA and gangsters fun. Terminator-level precision, mastery of heavy weapons and resistance to bullets from the 3 woman protagonists, as expected, and as it should be in a vicarious violence and cheese romp like this one. With some sex scenes in the middle, including the (first) one, which made me laugh out loud, and will certainly amuse fellow viewers.

Cheapie vartiation of 1989 The Killer

[jordondave-28085 · 5/10 · 15 June 2023]

(1990) Lethal Panther/ Deadly China Dolls (In Chinese with English subtitles) ACTION

Co-produced and directed by Godfrey Ho, also called "Deadly China Dolls" in the UK actioner starring Sibelle Hue in a very low budget female version of John Woo's "The Killer" using a Philippine cast with so-called 'killers' pitting against one another. And Sibelle Hue as a CIA operative hardly doing nothing but talk with the main "killer" a little. Besides the bad acting, the action is also quite bad whereas the action scenes don't connect like theirs no rhythm or flow with many ridiculous shooting move stances.

Respects for the actors & actresses

[grahamrichmond · 29 December 2006]

My respects go out to the actors and actresses for their commitment to the hard physical and mental work they put into this 1990 movie. The movie is beyond doubt, an intense action based work of filmography. Criticism comes to mind for the need of more suspense, or of a greater hidden complexity of the story line. If movies are about portraits, landscapes, and persona, then these attributes could have become more developed. I especially send my best wishes to Yoko Miyamoto, to Maria Jo, and to Sibelle Hui for their courage to reflect upon these persona. Also, my best wishes go out to them for their future work in filmography.