Screening: Mrs. K

Watch the trailer.

Kara Wai, a special guest at last year’s Made in Hong Kong Film Festival, is the star of this Tarantino-esque action movie. Director Ho Yuhang previously helped revive Wai’s career with the revenge drama At the End of Daybreak. In a “cracking return to the action-movie roots that propelled her to fame in the 1970s and 1980s” (Clarence Tsui, Hollywood Reporter), Wai plays a retired assassin now living comfortably as a housewife. When her past comes back to haunt her in the form of a former criminal associate (Simon Yam), Mrs. K must dust off her martial arts skills to dispatch a parade of baddies. “With its colorful cast, highly eventful plot and contrastingly rueful, often low-key tone, the film balances flamboyance and realism with tricky assurance” (Dennis Harvey, Variety). (Dir.: Ho Yuhang, Malyasia/Hong Kong, 2016, 97 min., DCP, Cantonese, Mandarin and Malay with [Chinese and] English subtitles)