Angel on Fire (1995)

Angel on Fire (1995)
Chinese Title: 喋血柔情
Translation: Bloody Tenderness

 

Starring: Cynthia Khan, Philip Ko Fei, Ronnie Rickets, Melanie Marquez, Sharon Yeung Pan Pan, Waise Lee, Anthony Alonso, Winston Ellis, Mark Houghton
Director: Philip Ko Fei
Action Director: Philip Ko Fei

 

If you read reviews for this on the HKMDB and the now-defunct “View from the Brooklyn Bridge” website (whose owner, Brian, loved everything Girls n’ Guns), you’ll note that this is generally considered one of the low points of the sub-genre. I wouldn’t go that far, having wasted three hours of my life watching Cynthia Khan’s Yes Madam and Yes Madam 5 (neither of which have anything to do with the Michelle Yeoh/Cynthia Rothrock classic). I know how dull and uninspired and tacky and horrible these films can get. This one is just sort of there. I think I liked it more after watching the nigh-incoherent Angel Mission, as this one at least had a more focused story.

A Filipino supermodel-cum-thief-cum-martial artist named May (Melanie Marquez) breaks into the Shaolin Temple to steal a priceless artifact, kicking the collective butts of all the monks training there. She escapes with the help of her partner Kao (Philip Ko Fei), although he quickly reveals his treachery by siding with another crime boss, Tony (Anthony Alonso), who sends his cronies (including Darren Shahlavi) to kill May and get the artifact. She narrowly escapes through the intervention of an Interpol agent whom we’ll call Cynthia (Khan) because I didn’t take notes on what the character’s name is—and it really doesn’t matter.

May flees to the Phillipines, with Cynthia and Kao in hot pursuit, to get protection from the crime boss she works for. However, she actually plans on double crossing him and selling the artifact without his knowing to a gwailo buyer (whose bodyguard is played by Mark Houghton). Cynthia Khan is able to keep tabs on her with the help of a kickboxing cabbie (Ronnie Rickets). All of this comes to head in a huge action sequence that takes up the last 25 minutes of the movie, composed of gunplay, fisticuffs, airplane chases, and random explosions. Seriously, the grenade launcher that the crime boss Tony uses must have a 25-round grenade clip, if it can cause as many successive explosions as it does.

Oh, Sharon Yeung Pan Pan shows up as a Mainland Cop who’s assigned to the case, but she spends two or three scenes in the car of another agent, before miraculously showing up to the finale just in time for the fireworks factory.

There are two fights worth mentioning in this film. In the first one, Cynthia Khan takes on Philip Ko Fei and his men while trying to chase down May. It’s not a great fight, but it’s Cynthia’s longest one in the film and she does some decent moves. Despite the modern setting, choreographer Ko Fei throws in some weird wire stunts into the mix, like Cynthia doing a Once Upon a Time in China-esque “No Shadow Kick” while supporting herself on a pole. Much better is Sharon Yeung’s fight with a muscular black guy named “Black Leopard” (played by Winston Ellis, who plays the mercenary that Dodo Cheng and company beat silly with helmets in Operation Condor). Yeung’s moves don’t suffer from any wire enhancement, and she’s still fairly flexible at this point in her life. She does a nice cartwheel kick and a few other flashy moves, too.

This wasn’t a great movie, but I found it watchable for the greater part of its brief 80-minute run time. Trust me, you could do a lot worse when it comes to Girls n’ Guns films.