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Girl Fight:
Entertainment Weekly picks
"the 15 all-time best butt-kicking babes"
By Gary Susman

Here's the article in question, which makes its way up the list, for each describing their skills, battle gear, male admirer, drop-dead dialogue and where you can see the actress in more action. But to save you the bother of going through all fifteen pages, this is the list, with links to our reviews, where applicable:

As lists go, it's relatively credible - with very little tweaking, the top five would probably be largely the same as my personal choices. I do think Ms's Hamilton, Blackman and Pfeiffer are too high for what are, more or less, supporting roles. Blackman was, true, decades ahead of her time, but there have subsequently been far more "butt-kicking" Bond girls: Famke Janssen, Michelle Yeoh or, hell, even Halle Berry probably qualify.

I haven't yet seen Million-Dollar Baby, so can't really comment; I was going to watch it to go with the Girlfight review, but time ran out. Maybe next week. ;-) [Note: took a little longer, but it did get seen!] Johnny Guitar was a genuine surprise to see listed, and I now feel obliged to check it out. And I can only presume Domino was listed as a token gesture to justify the article: at time of writing, the film appears to have tanked badly, and I suspect that it won't rank even at #15 by the time it hits DVD. Full review to follow here - though my chances of getting Chris to see it declined sharply, when our son's review consisted largely of praise for Keira Knightley's breasts. [Note: I ended up not inflicting that one on Chris at all...]

Probably not surprisingly, it's a very Anglo-centric selection, with Crouching Tiger and Nikita, token nods to the rest of the world. Any list I created would rectify that: Cynthia Khan and Michiko Nishiwaki (In the Line of Duty III), Yeoh, Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui (Heroic Trio), Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock (Yes, Madam), Aya Ueto (Azumi) and Olivia Bonamy (Bloody Mallory) would certainly all be contenders. And no animation either? While expecting Mr. Susman to have heard of the Dirty Pair is a bit of a stretch, what about, say, Mulan?

Even among the Western movies, there were some surprising omissions. No Angelina Tomb Raider Jolie? Or Milla Resident Evil Jovovich? Whatever one can say about those two flawed video-game cinematic franchises, the heroines undeniably did kick butt, in copious quantities. If Michelle Pfeiffer can get in for cracking a whip a few times, they deserve recognition too. Ditto Kate Beckinsale in Underworld; the trio represent the likely future of Hollywood action heroines. Now, if only we could hvae a word about the storylines...

Source: Entertainment Weekly, October 17 2005
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