FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION (2008) ** ½

Female Convict Scorpion is director Joe Ma’s moderately entertaining, but frustratingly uneven updating of the classic Female Prisoner Scorpion series.  Anyone unfamiliar with the old films should be able to accept and enjoy it at face value.  However, for die-hard Female Prisoner Scorpion (and Meiko Kaji) fans, it’s a bit of a disappointment.    

Nami (Miki Mizuno) is forced into killing her boyfriend’s family in front of him and is sent to a hellhole prison.  There, she is routinely beaten and degraded by the warden, not to mention the deranged inmate Dieyou (Nana Natsume).  She eventually trains herself to fight, gains the upper hand, and is able to defeat Dieyou and her minions.  As punishment, she is tortured and left for dead by the guards.  Nami is eventually found in the woods and nursed back to health by a Kung Fu teacher (an extended guest appearance by a grizzled looking Simon Yam) who gives her the tools she needs to exact revenge on the people who wronged her.  

The structure of the film is solid.  The bare bones for a terrific revenge thriller are there.  However, Ma’s style often gets in the way of the fun.  He relies too heavily on a lot of unnecessary cinematic gymnastics, and all the quick-cut editing, dissolves, and slow motion (even during the simplest of scenes) detract from the overall impact.  

Ma seems to take more inspiration from the revenge thrillers of the early aughts than the grindhouse foundations of the original series.  You can definitely feel the influence of Oldboy and Kill Bill at work here (which is fitting since Kill Bill took so much inspiration from the original Female Prisoner Scorpion films).  It’s also a little lax when it comes to delivering the goods on the traditional Women in Prison scenes.  We don’t get any cavity searches or shower scenes, but we do get to-the-death mud wrestling matches where the winner receives a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, so that at least is novel.  The ever-escalating shower fight between Nami and Dieyou is a real showstopper too.

It's hard to top Meiko Kaji from the original movies.  (Likewise, the new version of Kaji’s classic theme song, “Urami Bushi” isn’t a patch on Kaji’s version.)  Mizuno doesn’t even try, which works to her advantage.  Whereas Kaji was brooding, sexy, and savage, Mizuno is quieter, and more reserved.  Although she suffers from comparison to Kaji, Mizuno makes the role her own and her take on the character suits this new version nicely.  It was also fun seeing ‘70s Bruce Lee imitator Bruce (The Clones of Bruce Lee) Liang popping up as one of the villain’s henchmen, who gets a solid swordfight with Mizuno on top of a speeding truck.  The bloodletting is copious too, which certainly helps.

Some of the fights feature excessive wirework, which makes some of the battles look needlessly cartoony.  The third act subplot involving Nami’s boyfriend being hypnotized to forget his memories of her, and their subsequent rekindled romance doesn’t really work either.  Despite never reaching the heights of its original inspiration, Female Convict Scorpion is nevertheless a decent (if flawed) Kung Fu revenge saga.

Yam gets the best line of the movie when he tells Mizuno:  “This sword hasn’t tasted blood in a while.  Feed it well.”

AKA:  Sasori.  AKA:  Prisoner 701:  Sasori.