Men are largely an irrelevance in So Close, Corey Yuen’s “girls with guns” actioner made in 2002 just as Hong Kong was exiting its glory period.
I prompted Google in AI mode to list the key characteristics of the “girls with guns” genre were. It said – Hong Kong, female protagonists, gunplay and stunts, challenging norms and exploitation v agency.
We get all of those in the opening sequence, in which assassin Shu Qi’s Lynn, dressed all in white, enters the HQ of a shady Hong Kong megacorporation posing as a techy “angel” specialising in malware attacks. Only to exit shortly afterwards at speed, pursued by scores of security men, many of them bleeding. Co-ordinated back at base by her sister Sue (Zhao Wei), Lynn leaves as she entered, hair unmussed, skin hydrated and glowing, her lip gloss accentuating a smirk, as cool as milk. On her headset Lynn is listening to Close to You, the easy-listening Carpenters song (source of the film’s title).
What neither Lynn nor Sue realise is that the person who hired them to kill the company CEO was the dead man’s own brother. Now that he’s achieved that aim, Chow Nung (Deric Wan) sets out to annihilate anyone involved in the killing – which means Lynn and Sue. In another part of town, a supersmart forensics cop, Kong Yat Hung (Karen Mok), is assigned to the case. A Sherlock Holmes in her ability to deduce the big picture from the smallest detail, Kong is entirely ignored by her male superiors – too junior, too female – but is soon in pursuit of both the bad girls and the bad guys.
It’s probably more convoluted than necessary but the tangled plot does give director Corey Yuen space to do his thing. And for Shu Qi, Zhao Wei and Karen Mok to do theirs, dressed in tiny shorts, or lolling in bathtubs full of bubbles, or being glimpsed teasingly through gauzy curtains, or dressing in skirts split up the thigh and in tops with their zips slid well down. Deric Wan gets a bit of a look-in but no one is really here for him.
The girls look good with their guns and Yuen’s action sequences emphasise their assets. The big set pieces are beautifully choreographed but it’s often at its quietest that the film is most impressive. One of the women will effortlessly lift a leg, as if it were nothing, to kick a man in the head, cancan style. Swatted like he was a fly.
Eventually, to return to the plot, Sue and the cop form an uneasy alliance, trade some “we’re not so different you and I” dialogue and enter into a lipstick lesbian … dalliance rather than romance, more to please the intended audience than to satisfy plot requirements.
Again, it’s irrelevant and unnecessary. As is the entirety of the plot, in fact. This film lives and dies by its action sequences, which are interesting because they rely so much on tech for their edge. Yuen and his writer Jeffrey Lau have spotted that the world is in the process of entering its connected phase – of surveillance, avatars, deepfakes and so on – when tech shall speak unto tech. They work that seam for all its worth.
There’s a car chase about midway through that illustrates this. It starts out as just another car chase, a bit half-hearted, but really picks up energy once Lynn grabs hold of a headset and starts directing Sue, who is driving blind, through the city streets.
Yuen also gives us the traditional stuff. Wire work, gunplay, energetic fights in confined spaces, impossible physicality, audacious scenarios, it’s all here, along with a samurai sword for the traditionalists and a kick in the balls for those who like it real.
The music is about as useless as film music gets, which is a disappointment, and the evidence of The Matrix looms fairly large in the characters’ deadpan attitudes and Yuen’s use of stylish slo-mo.
Sexy, knowing, smirking, kick-ass fun.
So Close – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
