Women fighting, specifically fighting on film; artistically, well choreographed, looking as though they can actually fight, has always held a bit of a fascination for me. women fighting in films is not a new thing. the The late sixties and seventies martial arts boom, led by Bruce Lee, whose more story and character driven films, revolving around a strong moralled, good ass-kicking lead, appealed to the Western masses, showcased, ever so briefly, a fighting woman. In Lee's worldwide hit film one of the chief exponents of females fighting on film made a brief - fighting appearance. Angela Mao (seen above as "Lady Kung Fu") plays Lee's sister in Enter the Dragon. We see her in a brief flashback as she tries to fight off some bad guys, eventually electing to take her own life rather than be taken. Possibly because of the women's movement and colourful music seen of the seventies, the empowered female made fleeting, if sometimes comical, appearances in cinema.
Generally they tended to beat up men. The prospect of two women fighting wearing more than a bikini and executing proficient high kicks at one another was not one that really took off in the seventies, or even much in the nineties. there would be a bit of wait before we saw two women squaring up in a less than obscure straight-to-video film. A big star, within martial arts circles, was Cynthia Rothrock, was the goto girl for seeing a woman kicking, punching and handing out justice the old fashioned way in the eighties and into the nineties. An accomplished practitioner of five martial arts, Rothrock made and continues to make, a career as woman who could fight without pulling hair or scratching eyes out. By no stretch of the imagination an accomplished actress and, probably due to some of the stuntmen she had to work with, alot of her better known works, the American productions, always looked sped up and fake. But as the clip below shows, she could do it the Chinese way.
More up to date, we have had Michelle Yeoh - the other woman in the clip above - and Ziyi Zhang, both of whom have a fantastic fight scene in "Hidden Dragon Crouching Tiger". On the big screen Sharon Stone and Rachel Ticotin have a brief fight in "Total Recall". Though for a great fight scene between women, the scene involving Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in "Kill Bill: Volume One" is a modern day classic. In fact every fight scene in the Kill Bill films is brilliant. Check out the Uma Thurman versus Vivaca Fox clip below.
On television women being able to hand out the odd can of "whup ass" has been evident for over a decade. Lucy Lawless' Xena was probably at the forefront of strong fighting women through the nineties. With her more demure sidekick, Gabrielle, played by Renee O'Connor, they smacked up marauding hordes across mythical lands right up to 2001. In the noughties we had Kelly Hu in the martial arts showcase that was "Martial Law" and present day we have Yvonne Strahovski in the spy drama/comedy "Chuck". For the martial arts lover there is plenty of action to be seen on our screens. The answer to the question'"can she kick it?" has to be "yes she can!"
