A lot of people raved about this movie, but I wasn't all that impressed. The movie does have a nice visual style with good cinematography, but none of the actors are really any good. Even Simon Yam (who is normally one of HK's best actors) seems to be sleepwalking through his role. Leung is particularly bad. I just didn't see her as either a cold-blooded killer or innocent girl. Her English is also pretty bad -- this normally wouldn't be a problem in a HK movie but about half her lines are in English!

There are also some glaring errors in the film. Even though the first part of the movie is supposed to be in New York, a lot of the gweilo actors have thick British accents. There is a big deal made about a bullet made out of an ice-like material that dissolves on impact, but can only be used for five seconds. When it is used in a hit, Leung holds the bullet for at least 10 seconds.

Coupled with the weak action sequences, Black Cat just wasn't all that entertaining. Stick with the original instead.

After being taken to prison (where one of the cops has a suspiciously British accent) for a few days, Catherine is hurried to court. Strangely, Catherine seems to have been changed back into the clothes she was wearing when apprehended. In the court house she is able to escape, thanks largely to a mysterious gunman who seems to be trying to kill her. Once outside, Catherine runs into another mysterious gunman, and this one shoots her dead.

Well, not completely dead. She wakes up in a white featureless room with a creepy guy named Brian (a shockingly clean-cut Simon Yam) who tells her that everyone thinks she is dead and that she has a microchip in her head. That chip is called Black Cat, and its purpose is to unlock Catherine's physical potential. Apparently the chip also frees Catherine from having to wear a bra, because she never wears one, no matter how much running she has to do.

The next portion of the film follows La Femme Nikita quite closely. Brian works for a branch of the CIA that fakes people's deaths and trains them to be super-assassins. Catherine goes through the training, and she makes the requisite little rebellions and escape attempts.

Once it has been decided that Catherine (now re-dubbed Black Cat) has completed her training, she is given her first field mission. Her orders are to infiltrate a Jewish wedding (!), kill the bride (!!), and make her getaway despite the many armed guests (!!!). As with the original movie, the getaway plan provided for her is a dud, and she must use her natural wiles to survive.

After passing this test, Black Cat, now re-dubbed Erica, moves to Hong Kong and becomes a photojournalist. This job is a cover for her assassination activities, though we don't see why she couldn't have been a professional tennis player instead. It worked for Jaime Sommers, right?

On one hit, Erica is spotted by conservationist Allen (Thomas Lam, who looks like he could be Chow Yun Fat's love child), but rather than kill this inconvenient witness, Erica shacks up with him. This leads to all sorts of complications (like when she has to duck out of a movie date with Thomas to engineer a complicated hit) and a not-so-happy ending. There's no "Cleaner" in this version, though.

Being so close to La Femme Nikita (and by association, Point of No Return), there aren't many surprises to be had. What Black Cat does have to offer is Jade Leung, and Hong Kong action scenes. Leung is certainly attractive, and her problems with the English language aside, she seems to be a passable actor. She also displays a confident physical presence in the action scenes, even if she doesn't do any martial arts.

The action scenes, while low-budget, are generally creative. Sometimes a little too creative. For one hit, Erica is supposed to kill a businessman who is visiting a construction site. For some reason, she has been given only a single small explosive charge with which to kill the man, and it must look like an accident. At first she plans to use the charge to cut an elevator cable so the man will fall to his death. But then the businessman gets a call that causes him to get back in his car. So Erica makes her way to a nearby crane, swings it's load of girders over the nearby road, shimmies out on to the crane arm (which is many stories above the ground), and all the way down to the girders. She places the charge there, shimmies back, and sets the explosive off, causing the girders to fall on the car. Perhaps Erica should talk to Scott Evil sometime. As assassination methods go, this was way too complicated. It probably would have been easier and safer to just cut the guy's brake line.

Black Cat turned out to have somewhat less than nine lives, as the sequel that was rushed into production the very next year was a bomb (which is precisely why we don't sell it).