Feng (top) telling Madam Wong (bottom) to Bring It in the final battle.
Kickboxer's Tears is a 1992 Hong Kong movie starring Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima.
Loosely inspired by the first Kickboxer movie, Kickboxer's Tears is pretty much a Gender Flipped Foreign Remake, with Moon Lee as Li Feng, a budding fighter who witnessed her brother being killed in a rigged kickboxing tournament. Swearing revenge, Li Feng decides to train herself to be stronger, better, and avenge her brother's defeat, only to bring the ire of Madam Wong (Oshima), wife of the champion, who wants Li to be dead as well.
Kickboxer's Tears provides examples of:
- Action Prologue: The opening fight between Moon’s brother and the champion, Wong.
- Advertised Extra: Granted, the brawl between Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima is what makes Hong Kong film enthusiasts want to even watch this movie in the first place, but considering how 90% of promotional materials, posters, trailers and DVD covers would hype up both ladies’ presence – despite Oshima being in this movie for less than 10 minutes, with her fight scene against Moon Lee lasting for around five minutes…
- Some DVD covers goes the extra mile by putting Oshima on its front and center
, with Lee shoved in a corner.
- Some DVD covers goes the extra mile by putting Oshima on its front and center
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted, Li Feng gets herself badly beaten up and completely bruised, with visible injuries, lumps, swollen cheeks, cuts and all sorts of injuries. Which are STILL visible on her after the match has ended.
- Bulletproof Vest: On Rocky, the Big Bad, in the final confrontation. Which Quy finds out after shooting Rocky several times in the chest.
- By the Hair: In their penultimate fight, Madam Wong tries to subdue Li Feng by grabbing her hair and smashing her into a piece of pointed metal jutting out of a wall.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: When the champion boxer, Wong, decides to play dirty by applying chili oil on his boxing gloves and beat Li Feng repeatedly on her face, Li Feng responds with a series of consecutive kicks, lashes and jabs, culminating in Wong being knocked against a corner and Li landing her kneecap on the back of Wong’s neck, snapping his spine and turning Wong into a complete vegetable for the rest of his life.
- Designated Girl Fight: Between Li Feng and Madam Wong. Being played respectively by Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima, the entire movie is pretty much a set-up to see two of the most lethal Action Girls in Hong Kong cinema pummel each other to bits.
- Eye Scream: Invoked in the fight between Li Feng and Wong, the champion brawler. When Li is close to winning and both combatants had a time-out, Wong purposely orders his assistants to spread hot chili oil on his boxing gloves by the fist, then aims his punches on Li going for her eye. Later her eyes are both sore and visibly turning red from the oil.
- Groin Attack: Happens a few times, especially the ending battle against Rocky and his goons where Li Feng manage to take out one of them by stabbing him in the nuts.
- Implacable Man: Rocky, the final opponent of the movie. Granted, he wears a bulletproof vest, but later Quy whacks him in the back of his head with a wooden plank, breaking the plank but leaving him unfazed…
- It gets even more ridiculous later on, when Li Feng ambushed Rocky and kicks his head through a pillar. The pillar breaks, but Rocky didn’t even flinch!
- Kick Chick: Li Feng, when realizing she is outmatched by Wong, start using kicks, which turns the tide of battle around. Later on when fighting Madam Wong, it turns out Madam Wong is a kicker as well.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Madam Wong attempts to cripple Li Feng in their final fight, resorting to playing dirty and even trying to kill Li. Eventually Li Feng retaliates by kicking Madam Wong into a pointed piece of metal in the wall, where Madam Wong lands spine-first, effectively becoming reduced to a cripple like her husband.
- Moral Myopia: After Wong, the champion, gets brutally defeated and is reduced to a cripple, his wife, Madam Wong swears to avenge him by crippling Li Feng, despite knowing fully well that her husband did in fact cheat in battle, and later tried to do worse to Li Feng in the rematch.
- Sickening "Crunch!":
- When Wong ends up being paralyzed after Li Feng lands her kneecap on the back of his neck and spine.
- When Madam Wong gets kicked backwards onto a pointed piece of metal, embedding itself through her spine.
- Taking You with Me: Quy, in a last-ditch attempt to defeat the otherwise invulnerable Rocky, snags a length of chain around Rocky’s neck and managed to hang Rocky… but not for long. As Rocky tries to break loose, Quy decides to jump off a tall ledge while holding the other side of the chain, using himself as a counterweight as the chain slowly chokes Rocky to death. Quy eventually falls to his death, but not before strangling Rocky dead as well.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Fittingly enough, to the Jean-Claude Van Damme film, Kickboxer which came out three years earlier. Li Feng had to train herself to avenge her older brother’s defeat in a kickboxing ring thanks to the champion who is a cheater, and both movies reveals that the champ turns out to be connected to the mob.
