We should not be overly surprised that, given the long tradition of female warriors in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we find modern-day women among the ranks of killers. Yet, given this very tradition, it is perhaps a bit surprising that we do not find more of them. In a global context we note that on a typical web-based fan site of the ‘The Top 100 Hitman/Assassin Films of All Time’, only thirteen movies feature women assassins and in a couple of them they are part of an ensemble. However, we find enough of them spread throughout the modern-day filmic jianghu to make it worth our while to examine this image.

What we will also see is the inherently transnational character of the female assassin films. This is not just to chalk this up to distribution demands – the need for Hong Kong cinema to have overseas markets. While that is certainly the case for many films produced with the obvious intention of garnering overseas appeal, other films manage to do this by trading on Hong Kong itself – its own image, its own cinema – as a globalised site. To say that there is a clearly staked-out Hong Kong ‘brand’ is to state what is by now well known. To state also that this brand has become somewhat diluted by influence and imitation, not to mention the exchange of personnel between Hong Kong and overseas cinemas, is also to note that Hong Kong cinema has long participated in a chain of transnational borrowings and has always had the need to reinvent itself to account for its own success. The female assassin, then, should be seen in the context of such films made within other globalised cinematic sites: Hollywood, Japan, France. And thus we have the need to trace this fascinating figure through its many incarnations, keeping a watchful eye on Hong Kong in the process.

It is likely that the figure of the woman assassin first appears in the James Bond films. She is, of course, merely a supporting player, a temporary obstacle in Bond's quest to eradicate the latest global threat. Many Bond villainesses attempt to seduce Bond into a trap; they are not, however, the actual assassins (for example, Bonita in Goldfinger [Guy Hamilton, 1964], Fiona Volpe in Th underball [Terence Young, 1965]).