This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This movie begins with a female Chinese assassin named "Theona Birch" (Marit Thoresen) getting out of a car at a hotel in Rome. Once she gets to her assigned hotel room she then has sex with the occupant before killing him with her bare hands. After that she also kills the guards waiting outside of the hotel room but is subsequently killed while attempting to drive off. As it so happens, the assassin worked for an Asian woman named "Madame M" (Almen Pui-Ha Wong) who recruits young girls at around the age of twelve and trains them on how to fight and kill at her own special camp on a remote island. After six years of intense training the young women are then tasked to kill each other with only three women by the names of "Charlene Ching" (Maggie Q) "Jing" (Jewel Lee), and "Catherine" (Anya) managing to survive. Afterwards, they are given one last brutal lesson by being raped and then sent on their respective missions. However, the CIA is aware of them and one specific agent named "Jack Chen" (Daniel Wu) has made it his personal mission to track down Madame M and abolish her organization--and Charlene is his main target in that regard. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film had its good points and bad points. It started off pretty well and the action definitely kept things moving along at a brisk pace. Likewise, Maggie Q, Jewel Lee and Anya certainly didn't hurt the scenery in any way. On the other hand, the script was in need of serious improvement, the acting was mediocre and some of the scenes were much too silly and far-fetched. All in all then, while I don't believe that this was a bad film necessarily, the faults were just too obvious to be ignored and because of that I have rated this movie accordingly. Average.

While I love the brand of kick-ass martial-arts action usually served up by Hong Kong producers, NAKED WEAPON is one of those movies that falls down on the strength of its (many) fight scenes. The fights incorporate the kind of flashy cross-cutting that's used to disguise the inability of the participants to fight properly; it happens in a lot of Hollywood productions but not so many Chinese, mainly because Chinese actors are better fighters on the whole. Then, to add insult to injury, the film starts to utilise the kind of wirework/CGI heavy over stylised fights of THE MATRIX and CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON in which characters stand on each other's heads and perform physically impossible movies. It doesn't look cool, it's just silly.It's a shame, because the movie kicks off with a crowd-pleasing action sequence in which a RPG is fired at a car to explosive effect. Unfortunately, from that point in, it all goes downhill. The female protagonists are whisked off to a remote island, where they're trained in the arts of death for six years before being subjected to a tournament to discover the ultimate killer (sadly, unlike AZUMI, the film doesn't follow through with its promise here). Who the people are running this island, or where they get the millions it must cost to run such an operation, is never explored.Sadly, while former model Maggie Q looks the part as the female fighter, she doesn't really amount to all that much in the action stakes, leaving a bit of a vacuum at the film's core. The ever-reliable Daniel Wu does his best to fill that void with a decent supporting performance, but his character is left stranded on the sidelines for much of the running time and the rest of the cast is populated by terrible western actors (as usual with Hong Kong films, they're mostly Australians) giving embarrassingly awful turns. Sadly, when an all-action film has such disappointing fight scenes, it doesn't leave much reason to watch

The title of this English-language, Hong Kong action flick, "Naked Weapon" (2002), may be a tad misleading. Though most of the gals in question here are undoubtedly quite dangerous customers, they nevertheless remain discreetly clothed, at least most of the time. The film, handsomely produced and directed with style to spare by Tony Ching Siu Tung, tells the story of Charlene, Katt and Jing, three kidnapped teenage girls who are the last survivors out of 40 at Madame M's six-year, private-island school for assassins. As a reward for their six years of grueling training, the girls are drugged, raped and sent out into the world to perform various hits for the good Madame, all the while being tracked by a dogged, Asian CIA agent. The film, I must say, though no John Woo thriller, does deliver the requisite goods. Thus, there are numerous over-the-top action sequences, many of them featuring spectacular swordsmanship, remarkable gunplay, and the antigravitic, bullet-timed martial-arts acrobatics that will be familiar to "Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger" fans. The film's two main characters, Charlene and Katt--played, respectively, by Maggie Q (a relative of Suzie?) and Anya--are both extremely attractive performers, and for the most part are fairly credible in their action scenes. The sisterly relationship between the two gives the film its heart; fellow captives at first, they grow to truly care for each other as they enter womanhood. The picture is constantly throwing unexpected twists at the viewer--the free-for-all melee in the barracks that Madame M (deliciously played by Almen Wong) demands, for example, is one that I surely never saw coming. So yeah, the whole flick is something of a gas. Those who have already seen it will perhaps understand me when I say that the picture's net effect is quite, uh, spine tingling...

The plot of Naked Weapon is not too bad, but the way it is ultimately presented leaves a lot to be desired. The pacing is dreadful, scenes are arranged haphazardly, and far, far more could have been done with the interesting premise. Most of the dialogue is really terrible.However, even with all the shortcomings of the script, the movie is saved by its stylism. The action is pretty good, and while the characters obviously don't actually hit each other, their moves and speed are absolutely incredible and breathtaking. The acting is pretty good, too.All in all, a highly entertaining package filled with sexy girls kicking ass. It's not as good as So Close, though.7 out of 10.