Released in America with the title Beyond Hypothermia, 1996 Korean gangster flick Sip si 32 doe faces off an emotionless female assassin (Wu Chin Lin) and a passionate Korean mobster (Han Sang Woo), with a seemingly witless noodle vendor caught in the middle. The American title apparently refers to the assassin’s barely alluded to subnormal body temperature though there’s also the opening scene in which she does the business from inside an icehouse fortuitously located above and across the street from the location of a hit.
The theme here is human connection–she has none, not even with her ‘mother’; he is consumed by his, determined to avenge the killing of the boss he failed to protect; and the noodle man has lost all human warmth and then is drawn into her stuttering romantic (sexual?) awakening. Plot is minimal: the assassin does several jobs, one is killing the triad boss, and after each job she returns at closing time saying nary a word but nonetheless enchanting the noodle man. She was seen and chased after the triad killing, gets away, and yet (we’re never told how) word gets back to him on how to contact her handler. From there the explosive collision is inevitable.
But that isn’t really a criticism because Sip si 32 doe is all about visual imagery and violent interaction as a modern mode of ballet. Perhaps such an assessment is old hat by now but director Patrick Leung really does an excellent job with it. Even the final gun battle has sensibility different from what Americans first came to know through the work of Leung’s mentor John Woo; there’s very little evidence of such Woo trademarks as a gunman, preferably the protagonist, jumping across an opening between shielded spots blazing away with two big handguns.
All in all this is a worthwhile film for genre fans though I might have enjoyed it more with the original Korean (or Chinese?) dialog instead of the dubbed English.
recommended
BillSaysThis 