She Shoots Straight Blu-ray Review

88 Films

Blu-ray Release: February 25, 2026

Video: 1.85:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Cantonese LPCM 2.0 mono; English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 92:28

Director: Corey Yuen

Inspector Mina (Joyce Godenzi) is a career-focused officer who has just married her supervisor (Tony Leung Ka-fai), who himself comes from a family of dedicated police officers. Her new sisters-in-law are a little jealous that Mina outranks them, but, when a gang of violent Vietnamese criminals target the family, the sisters unite into a lethal force of vengeance. (From 88 Films’ official synopsis)

During the 1980s, Hong Kong studios began the search for a female equivalent to rising cinema idols, like Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, in keeping with the tradition of King Hu’s Come Drink with Me (1966), Huang Feng’s Hapkido (aka: Lady Kung Fu, 1972), and Lau Kar-leung’s My Young Auntie (1981). This led to a series of full-throttle action classics affectionately known as Girls with Guns movies. The Girls with Guns genre really kicked off with the In the Line of Duty films, a franchise consisting of (at least) Corey Yuen’s Yes, Madam (1985), David Chung’s Royal Warriors (1986), Arthur Wong & Brandy Yuen’s In the Line of Duty III (1988), Yuen Woo-ping’s In the Line of Duty IV: Witness (1989), Cha Chuen-Yee’s In the Line of Duty 5: Middle Man (1990), Cheng Siu-Keung & Yuen Chun-Man’s Forbidden Arsenal (1991), and Cheng’s Sea Wolves (1991). 

Yes, Madam was only Yuen’s second feature as lead director following years of acting, stunt performances, and action choreography. Born Ying Gang-ming, he was trained in the Peking Opera alongside Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, and Yuen Wah as a member of the famed Seven Little Fortunes. Yes, Madam set the stage for the rest of his career as a director, establishing his intense, yet playful combination of violence & comedy, lightning fast fisticuffs, colorful photography, and affection for no-nonsense female leads. 1986’s Righting Wrongs reteamed him with American fighting star Cynthia Rothrock, but She Shoots Straight (1990) is the real spiritual follow-up to the In the Line of Duty films. 

Yuen, Barry Wong, and Yuen Kai-chi’s script is a stealth adaptation of the Yang Family (or Yang Generals) saga – a somewhat historical story that was largely mythologized over a thousand years and became the basis of countless books, operas, television shows, and films, including Cheng Kang’s The 14 Amazons (1972), Lau Kar-leung’s The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (aka: The Invincible Pole Fighters, 1984), and Frankie Chan’s The Legendary Amazons (2011)*. Casting Vietnamese gangsters as the story’s rival clan might not have been the most sensitive storytelling option, but the straight-forward, familiar plot and volatile melodrama effectively set the stage for nearly wall-to-wall action set-pieces. 

The stunts – coordinated by Yuen himself, Mang Hoi, and Yuen Tak – are all extremely irresponsible in the Seven Little Fortunes tradition, including bone-crunching car crashes, dizzying high falls, and breathtaking acrobatics. The early shootouts and vehicular mayhem are worthy of John Woo and Ringo Lam, but the main course is the jaw-dropping climax, in which our heroines brutalize the bad guys with dual machettes, lead pipes, and a sledge hammer, followed by another dangerous motorcycle chase and a beautifully choreographed womano-a-womano showdown between star Joyce Godenzi and American-born Filipina bodybuilder Agnes Aurelio. The absolute highlight, however, is co-lead Carina Lau’s hallway brawl, which I’d put up against anything from the celebrated Daredevil TV series (2015).

The In the Line of Duty series introduced audiences to the aforementioned Rothrock, Michelle Yeoh, and Cynthia Khan (Yeung Lai-Ching). She Shoots Straight takes a different approach by building itself around Godenzi, an established star, who had already collaborated with her future husband, producer, and co-star Sammo Hung on several occasions. She’s surrounded by other established stars, including the aforementioned Lau, Tang Bik-wan, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Yuen Wah, and Sandra Ng – herself a regular in the comedic Girls with Guns franchise The Inspector Wears Skirts. Thankfully, Yuen and company largely avoid the tedious humor of that series.

* Thanks to my friend and former Genre Grinder co-host Stefan Hammond for pointing out the plot’s connections to the Yang saga. I would’ve never arrived at that conclusion on my own and might have missed the brief mention of it in this disc’s extras.

Bibliography

• Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition by Stephen Teo (Edinburgh University Press, 2009)

Video

She Shoots Straight never found its way onto official stateside VHS tape or DVD. Fans had to seek out bootlegs or import R2 and R3 discs from the UK or Hong Kong. It made its Blu-ray debut in the UK via Eureka in 2023. 88 Films’ advertising states that their 1080p, 1.85:1 transfer was taken from a 2K scan of the original camera negative, as was Eureka’s. I don’t know if they’re the same 2K scan, but I assume they are at least comparable.

There’s room for improvement here, assuming any other studio gets their hands on the material, specifically in terms of slightly mushy wide-angle details, thin edge haloes, and occasional line doubling (possibly a film strip issue, rather than a compression problem). Overall, though, this is more of an issue of cinematographers Moon-Tong Lau & Leung Chi-ming’s smoke-filled, purposefully diffused, and grainy photography. The plush neon and pastel colors are bright and clean, despite the gritty film quality.

Audio

She Shoots Straight includes its original Cantonese mono in uncompressed LPCM 2.0, Cantonese stereo in DTS-HD Master Audio, and a 5.1 remixed English dub, also in DTS-HD MA, presumably from the UK DVD. The English dubbing is more than acceptable, but the early-’00s remix is a little flat and the stereo mix is a bit too echoey, so I mostly stuck to the Cantonese track for most of my review. Dialogue is clear, gunshots are poppy, and car crashes are lively. Composer Lowell Lo’s schmaltzy and thoroughly early-’90s synth score sounds slightly richer on the stereo and 5.1 tracks, but is mixed more evenly in mono, so, again, I’d recommend sticking with that track.

Extras

• Commentary with Frank Djeng – The always-reliable Djeng fills this track with behind-the-scenes factoids and discusses the cast & crew’s larger careers, connections between She Shoots Straight and television soap operas (this apparently, explains the extremely melodramatic nature of some scenes), the various Hong Kong locations, and fills us in on the Cantonese wordplay.

• Straight to the Heart (15:46, HD) – Co-screenwriter Yuen Kai-Chi chats about his collaborations with Hung and Barry Wong, struggling to make ends meet as a writer, working with Corey Yuen, and using the Yang Family saga as a basis for the story.

• Alternate English credits

• Image gallery

• Hong Kong trailer

The images on this page are taken from the BDs and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.