Angel's Mission (1990)

Angel's Mission (1990)
Chinese Title: 先發制人
Translation: Preemptive People

 

Starring: Yukari Oshima, Philip Ko Fei, Dick Wei, Ha Chi-Chun, Sin Do-Laai, Dion Lam, Chen Kuan Tai
Director: Philip Ko Fei
Action Directors: Ridley Tsui, Daai Wai, James Ha

 

Summarizing this film’s plot will be a bit difficult, because this film has one of the most unfocused stories I’ve seen in a Hong Kong movie, which is saying a lot. Stuff just happens for the better part of 90 minutes, without having an actual main protagonist to follow throughout. The story is so slipshod and ramshackle that I’m pretty sure you’ll forget what you just saw a few minutes after it’s over.

Yukari Oshima plays a Japanese Interpol officer who’s off to Hong Kong to look for some missing girls, whom we know are being sold into prostitution. We learn early on that her mother is one of the brothel madams—and incidentally, has a philandering “trophy” husband in the form of Lee Chun-Wah, the Bolo Yeung-esque fellow that played the cook in Drunken Master. Oshima goes to Hong Kong  and hooks up with a hot-tempered female cop, played by Ha Chi-Chun (aka Susan Hughes, whom I think was the treacherous Cambodian guerilla girl in Eastern Condors).  Oshima just gets in random fights at regular intervals until the film is over.

Philip Ko Fei plays Crowbar, a top-ranking Triad enforcer who works for a Triad Boss (Chen Kuan-Tai) and who pines to be on top. The second half of the movie will focus largely on Crowbar’s teaming up with a gang of Gwailos (led by Thomas Hudak, who’d go on to have roles in Knock-Off and A Man Called Hero) to help him off his boss and his most loyal followers.

Dick Wei plays some guy from Japan whose sister has been sold into prostitution. He joins the Triad and ends up taking on Crowbar after he finds out what became of his sister. He has little to do until the climax, when he storms Crowbar’s new manor with a shotgun and starts blowing people away with reckless abandon. A side note: if you’re a vicious Chinese triad who has just offed your boss and are now the leader of a powerful Triad dealing in white slavery and drugs, are you really going to celebrate by clapping your hands and singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow” while everybody play-dances with unattractive gwailo girls? Wouldn’t you just send for hookers or strippers or porn stars or something?

Like I said, stuff just sort of happens for 90 minutes.

On the female fighting side of things, Yukari Oshima does get in several fight scenes, especially during the first half. When we meet her, she’s teaching a karate class in Japan (did she do her own Japanese dubbing?) and she briefly fights one of her students. Then she beats up some of her mother’s men who mistake her for a newbie prostitute, but that fight is ruined by close-ups and quick cuts. She gets a brief fight with Lee Chun-Wah, and then fights off some thugs in two other fight scenes that show off her superior over-the-shoulder kicks and whatnot. At that point, she sort of disappears from the movie until the end. She does get to fight Philip Ko Fei briefly, and the choreography is great, but the editing is horrendous.  One moment the two are fighting, then we cut to Dick Wei in another part of the house killing one of Ko Fei’s cronies in a rather silly death scene, and then we cut back to the other fight, only we cut to Ha Chi-Chun just blowing Ko Fei away with a revolver. Uh…where’s the rest of the fight between Yukari and Philip?

I can’t really recommend this movie. It’s pretty terrible, although Yukari Oshima completists will surely enjoy her fights. I’d rather just watch A Punch to Revenge and Angel again instead.