Review | Film review: Mrs K – Kara Wai revisits her martial arts past in absurd revenge thriller
A slow burner that sputters to a cartoonish conclusion, Ho Yuhang’s contrived and illogical homage to the spaghetti western squeezes the last ounce of cool from its ageing star, who obliges with a mix of ferocity and vulnerability
2.5/5 stars
Revenge plots don’t get more contrived and illogical than they do in this stylish yet unashamedly superficial homage to the spaghetti western subgenre by the Malaysian art-house director Ho Yuhang. Featuring an intense lead performance by Kara Wai Ying-hung in her last action role, Mrs K is a slow-burning mystery thriller which ends up looking very naked in the emperor’s new clothes.
Wai plays a gentle housewife – unnamed throughout but identified as “Mrs K” in the credits – leading a stable life with her doctor husband (Taiwanese rock star Wu Bai) and a teenage daughter (Siow Lixuan) in a quiet neighbourhood. So likeable are these three actors, and so delicate is Ho’s direction in these peaceful scenes, that I would sign up to watch them in a violence-free family drama in a heartbeat.
But the menace is close. An amusing early scene in which Mrs K makes light work of a couple of inept burglars offers a glimpse of her combat skills, while a brief opening segment showing the murder by an unidentified man of three characters – played by idiosyncratic filmmakers Fruit Chan Gor, Kirk Wong Chi-keung and Dain Iskandar Said – hints at the criminal past that will soon catch up with her.
After a shady ex-cop (Tony Lau Wing, another martial arts veteran) shows up briefly to extort Mrs K for money, her history of violence comes back in full force when Simon Yam Tat-wah’s psychotic avenger takes her daughter hostage. It transpires that a Macau casino robbery 15 years earlier links Mrs K, her nemesis and the three murder victims – although possibly not in the way you’d imagine.
