Reign of Assassins (2010)

Reign of Assassins (2010)
Aka: Rain of Swords; The Swordsman’s World
Chinese Title: 劍雨
Translation: Sword Rain

 

Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Jung Woo-Sung, Wang Xue-Qi, Barbie Hsu Hsi-Yuan, Shawn Yu Man-Lok, Kelly Lin Hsi-Lei, Guo Xiaodong, Jiang Yi-Yan, Leon Dai Li-Jen
Director: Su Chao-Pin, John Woo
Action Director: Stephen Tung Wai

 

Most of us were excited when this film was announced. Part of it had to do with the fact that John Woo was producing and co-directing. As he was still riding a high from the warm reception to his Red Cliff films, another period piece wuxia film felt like a good idea. However, we were more excited at the prospect of Michelle Yeoh headlining her first wuxia pian since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and her first full-on martial arts role since 2004’s Silver Hawk. We fans were fine with her doing dramas and getting paychecks for limited roles in Hollywood blockbusters, but we wanted her to get to basics and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any.

The movie is set in the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368 – 1644), in the capital city of Nanjing. An official (Lee Hing-Cheung, of Generation Pendragon) and his household are slaughtered by a mysterious gang of assassins known as the Dark Stone. The reason? Apparently, the official was in possession of the corpse—well, half of it—of the Indian monk Bodhidharma, aka Tamo, aka the guy who invented Shaolin kung fu. Legend states that whoever is in possession of the full corpse can be cured of any ailment, no matter how grave. One of the assassins, Drizzle (Kelly Lin, of Martial Angels and The Legend of Zu), takes the corpse and disappears with it.

During her flight, she has two fateful encounters. The first is with the official’s son, Zhang Renfang (Guo Xiaodong, of True Legend and An Empress and the Warriors). He survived the massacre and is particularly angry with Drizzle for delivering the killing blow to his father. But he’s in no shape to fight and Drizzle dispatches him with a blow to the heart with her super-flexible sword. The second encounter is with a monk named Wisdom (Lee Zong-Han, of The Lost Bladesman), who apparently had been Drizzle’s lover before deciding to take his vows. He engages in a duel with her and purposely loses, but not before giving her a few swordplay pointers and admonishing her to leave the Martial World and live an honest, nonviolent life.

Drizzle takes his advice to heart and visits Dr. Li (Chin Shih-Chieh, The Great Emperor’s Concubine and The Flying Tigers and the Kung Fu Kids), who subjects her to the 15^th century equivalent to plastic surgery, only with ravenous insects. Drizzle gets a new face and adopts the name Zeng Jing and is now played by Michelle Yeoh. She gets a job in Nanjing selling fabric and living a quiet existence. Her neighbor, Auntie Cai (Pau Hei-Ching, of White Hair Devil Lady), tries to play matchmaker with her, much to her annoyance. However, she can’t help but notice the bumbling, but good-natured charm of the local courier, Jiang Ah-Sheng (Jung Woo-Sung, of Musa the Warrior).

Zeng Jing eventually decides that her karma is good enough for her to settle down. She and Jiang get married and set up a peaceful existence at her house, living an ordinary life and having ordinary problems: health problems that cause them to go over-budget, shoes with holes in them, etc. However, a visit to the local bank changes all of that. Rumors have been swirling around the Martial World that the other half of Bodhidharma’s corpse is being kept in the bank vault. A gang of assassins stages a robbery at the same time Jiang and Zeng are there. The assassins paralyze everybody present with pressure point strikes, although Zeng is crafty enough to deflect the one directed at her. When would-be robbers start killing all the witnesses, Zeng springs into action and defeats them with her dormant martial arts skills. However, in doing so, she inadvertently reveals her existence to her former colleagues of the Dark Stone. And now that they know that Drizzle is both alive and living in the capital, the Dark Stone will surely track her down and get back what is theirs. Zeng Jing’s idyllic existence is thrust into chaos as secrets on all sides start coming to light…

David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005) inspired a lot of filmmakers around 2010. The idea of your regular Joe Nobody standing up to some local riff-raff, only to reveal that he was once Somebody, shows up in a number of films. That was part of the premise of the Japanese martial arts flick KG: Karate Girl. It was also an important part of the plot of Donnie Yen’s Wu Xia, which was A History of Violence by way of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. It also serves as the turning point of the story in this film, which has been a little light on the martial arts up to this point. Things ramp up once Zeng Jing’s cover is blown and she finds herself compelled to take up the sword in order to protect her husband from her former employer.

Obviously, this film is a lot different from A History of Violence. Although it uses the same plot mechanic as that movie did, here it is an impetus to a story that involves the (supposedly) magical, mummified remains of an Indian kung fu monk and the conniving parties that will invent any lie and betray any colleague just to lay claim to it. We know that Zeng Jing has kept it as a sort of bargaining chip should she be discovered, but everybody else associated with the corpse becomes corrupted by the promise of the power it purports to give to the owner.

In that way, the cadaver of Tamo himself is much like the Sacred Scroll of the Swordsman trilogy, itself based on Jin Yong’s novel Xiao Ao Jiang Hu (translated as “The Laughing Swordsman” or “Laughing and Proud in the Martial World”). The thing is, if you know what happens in that story, especially Jet Li’s Swordsman II, then it becomes doubly interesting when the movie reveals the designs that the Dark Stone’s leader, the enigmatic Wheel King (Wang Xue-Qi, of Warriors of Heaven and Earth and Bodyguards and Assassins). Not only is it the exact opposite of what Brigitte Lin’s Asia the Invincible did to himself/herself in that film, it’s a complete subversion of all those powerful villains that populated 1990s wuxia films, like Dragon Inn and Swordsman.

Kudos to Taiwanese writer-director Su Chao-Pin for being able to do something that is both similar and different from the films of two decades earlier. Su Chao-Pin is best known for his unconventional horror films Silk (which he wrote and directed) and Double Vision (which he just wrote). Those were very interesting movies, but both suffered from giving the audience convoluted explanations for their respective supernatural goings-on, only for the characters to wave them away at the last moment in favor of a “Love is a powerful force” theme. The Power of LoveÔ does up at the end, but ultimately as an explanation for the characters’ final decisions as opposed to 90 minutes of Spooky Stuff, so it works.

Su Chao-Pin and John Woo’s assured direction for the former’s script is bolstered by a strong cast of (generally) well thought-out characters. Both Michelle Yeoh and Jung Woo-Sung make for likable leads, especially once things start getting ugly. My favorite moment of the latter is when he returns to find a naked seductress in his bed, played by Connected’s Barbie Hsu. Hsu almost walks away with the movie as Drizzle’s replacement: a sexually-insatiable but completely amoral killer. Shawn Yue (Dragon Tiger Gate and The Invisible Target) also does a great job as the needle-throwing killer Lei Bin, whose alter-ego is that of a loving family man. His final scene is one of the more touching moments of the film.

The fight scenes are staged by veteran action director Stephen Tung Wai. Tung Wai had previously worked with Su Chao-Pin on Silk and is best known for helping John Woo invent the Bullet Ballet sub-genre with A Better Tomorrow. However, when it comes to martial arts and swordplay, as slick as Tung’s choreography can be, one shouldn’t come into the film expecting any all-time classic fights. I mean, it’s one thing when he’s working alongside other choreographers like Yuen Bun (The Blade) or Ching Siu-Tung (Hero). But when he’s the head action director, expect some good solid fights but nothing more. There are lots of fun swordfights to be seen, although some of them are edited too much for their own good. There’s certainly nothing her that equals Michelle Yeoh’s fights with Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Jet Li vs. Donnie Yen in Hero.

In the end, Reign of Assassins succeeds because it’s such a well-rounded film. From the story to the acting and casting to the action, it does everything right, even if it doesn’t necessarily surpass the best examples of the genre in any given department. And given the state of wuxia films coming out of China today, sometimes that’s just more than enough.

This review is part of Fighting Female February 2023: The Month of Michelle. Click on the banner below for more reviews of her films.

Wing Chun (1994)

Wing Chun (1994)
Chinese Title: 詠春
Translation: Wing Chun (or Yongchun in Mandarin)

 

Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen Ji-Dan, Waise Lee Chi-Hung, Kingdom Yuen King-Tan, Catherine Hung Yan, Norman Tsui Siu-Keung, Cheng Pei-Pei, Chui A-Fai, Xu Xiang-Dong
Director: Yuen Woo-Ping
Action Director: Yuen Woo-Ping, Yuen Shun-Yee, Donnie Yen

 

As I always like pointing out, the unwritten rule of kung fu movies during the early 90s wire-fu craze was that they either were a) remakes of Shaw Brothers films or b) about a Chinese folk hero. Most of the time, Wong Fei-Hung or any of his contemporaries sufficed for these movies. Of course, semi-legendary figures like Fong Sai-Yuk and Hung Hey-Kwun also got their fair share of representation. Interestingly enough, not many female martial artists got their due during this period, even though the concurrent wuxia films were brimming with beautiful women on wires.

I suppose that has something to do with the dearth of female Chinese folk heroes to tell stories about. There is obviously Hua Mulan, whose story hadn’t become well known in the West during this time, and who hadn’t been the subject of a Hong Kong film since the 1960s. There is a Fu Hao, a famous female military officer and concubine to the Shang Emperor who lived in the 13^th century B.C. There is also Fang Qiniang, the founder of the Fujian White Crane style, whose story was sorta told in the 1979 film The Crane Fighters. And let’s not forget Ma Suzhen, who was the subject of a handful of kung fu movies in the early 70s, and had gotten a PRC wushu film about her in the late 1980s. But for some reason, none of these women inspired Hong Kong filmmakers in the 1990s.

Perhaps the reason was that by 1990, there weren’t enough bankable female martial arts stars to pull off this sort of movie. Mainstream actresses like Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung and Brigitte Lin (and their stunt doubles) were getting lots of roles, but they had mainstream crossover appeal. The Girls n’ Guns movement was quickly losing steam: Moon Lee was working more and more for television, Yukari Oshima was more active in the Philippines, Kara Hui Ying-Hung was mainly getting supporting roles, as was Sibelle Hu. There was Cynthia Khan, who seemed to find steady work in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, and on TV. I’m not sure why she wasn’t cast for any of the roles above.

The most bankable actress with martial arts cred in the early 1990s was Michelle Yeoh, who’d made her triumphant comeback to the big screen in Police Story 3: Supercop, and was soon appearing in all sorts movies: kung fu films, wuxia pian, superhero fantasies, and more. To my knowledge, she was the only woman who headlined a 1990s kung fu film, which was about one of the most famous female martial artists of all time: Yim Wing Chun.

Our film opens with the righteous (if cheap and a smidge lecherous) Scholar Wong (Waise Lee, of Zen of Sword and A Better Tomorrow) visiting some village in Southern China, telling his assistant about how he needs to do something about the local bandit army who’s terrorizing the region. They stop at some establishment where Wing Chun (Yeoh) and her sharp-tongued aunt, Abacus Fong (Yuen King-Tan, of Fight Back to School and Future Cops), are hanging out. The bandits show up and Wing Chun drives them way, manipulating Scholar Wong’s body so as to make it look like he beat them (stealing a gag from Yuen’s own Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow).

A few days later, the bandits show up at a local festival, trying to kidnap a young woman, Charmy (Catherine Hung of Death Melody and Black Wind Inn). The unfortunate young lady has arrived in town with her sick husband looking for a cure for the latter’s illness, and now has a bunch of bandits trying to rape her! Wing Chun once again drives off the bandits, much to the chagrin of the local martial arts masters. In order to win back face, those masters show up at the Yim Family Tofu Shop the next day and challenge Wing Chun to a duel. This is Michelle Yeoh we’re talking about here, so obviously she kicks their representative’s ass and sends the whole lot packing.

It's at that time that Charmy’s husband has passed on and the ill-fated widow is now selling herself to pay for his burial. Abacus Fong and Wing Chun take Charmy under their wing while convincing Scholar Wong to pay for the burial. The newly-single Charmy becomes the store’s “Tofu Beauty,” and soon every man in the town is interested in tofu (apparently a euphemism in Chinese for “vagina”) and soy milk (a euphemism for “semen,” as I understand it). That would include Scholar Wong, who has given up his machinations to marry the tomboyish Wing Chun in favor of the more conventionally beautiful Charmy. At the same time, Wing Chun’s long-forgotten fiancé, Leung Pok-To (Donnie Yen), has also shown up in town looking to reconnoiter with his long-lost love. However, since mistaken identity subplots are as common in Hong Kong films as credited action directors are, Leung mistakes Charmy for Wing Chun and Wing Chun (who wears men’s clothes) for her lover. Shenanigans ensue! Plus, Wing Chun keeps fighting those pesky bandits.

While Yuen Woo-Ping worked on some generally serious kung fu movies in the 1990s, like The Tai Chi Master and Fiery Dragon Kid, this one is closer in tone to Last Hero in China (which he choreographed). While LHIC tended to mix parody and farce with the occasional moment of graphic violence, Wing Chun is mainly a situational romantic comedy, punctuated with frequent displays of martial mastery and effects-driven creativity. I think there are only two deaths in this film: the offscreen death of Charmy’s husband and one bandit whom their leader, Flying Chimpanzee (Norman Tsui Siu-Keung, of Bastard Swordsman and Tiger on the Beat), punches out of anger. The fight scenes, while often intense, are not very violent, keeping within the lightweight tone of the movie. Drama is limited to the occasional moment of self-introspection, which keeps the film from becoming outright sappy on the whole.

Much of the film revolves around the machinations of the male characters—Leung Pok-To, Scholar Wong, and a bandit called Flying Monkey (Chui A-Fai, of A Warrior’s Tragedy)—to get into Charmy’s knickers. In Leung’s case, it’s because he’s too dense to realize that Michelle Yeoh in men’s clothing is still smokin’ hawt Michelle Yeoh. At the same time, Abacus Fong is doing some maneuvering of her own, as she’s out for love and companionship, too. Actress Kingdom Yuen overacts a storm in this role, making for a memorable performance as a greedy woman who has no inhibitions in saying what’s on her mind, even if it offends everyone around her. She makes a great foil to Michelle’s more reserved and bemused Wing Chun and some of the funnier moments are just watching those two interact with each other.

Speaking of bemused, that is the best way to describe Michelle Yeoh’s super-confident approach to her fight scenes for most of the first half. Except for when she’s fighting Flying Chimpanzee, she tends to fight off her attackers with a perpetual amused look on her face while hardly breaking a sweat. It’s a testament to Michelle’s toughness that she’s able to pull off such physicality while not losing her cool. And she does it all here: flashy kicks, complicated handwork, weapons (saber, pole, butterfly swords), prop-fu, and more. I think this is a favorite Michelle film for a lot of fans and it’s not very hard to see why.

Yuen Woo-Ping’s action is heavily wired up (as was the style of the time), but still staged in a way that makes the most of the performers’ physical abilities, including Norman Tsui’s stunt double. He also makes sure that each fight is not a repeat of the one before. But you have one fight where Wing Chun uses Scholar Wong as a prop. Then a more conventional hand-to-hand/sword fight. Then a crazy sequence in which she challenges an opponent to smash a plate of tofu and then does all sorts of moves and furniture kicking to prevent that from happening—sort of an homage to the calligraphy fight from The Magnificent Butcher. Later on, she has a weapons fight with Flying Monkey while both are on horseback. In the last act, there’s another complex sequence in which she and Flying Chimpanzee fight while balancing on a large metal spear. It’s a testament to the Yuen family inventiveness that each fight has a distinct personality while never falling out of step with the tone of the film as a whole.

What you shouldn’t expect in this movie is a faithful retelling of the Wing Chun legend or an Ip Man-level workshop on the awesomeness of wing chun as a fighting style. I’m sure that that last part was much of the reason that Donnie Yen and Yuen Woo-Ping had a falling out during filming. Interestingly enough, when those two finally made a movie together years later, it was Ip Man 3, a movie about wing chun! The film only pays lip service to the events that led to Yim Wing Chun’s training and is set years afterward, so it’s totally an original story. And to see Yuen Woo-Ping’s expert action direction in a period piece bereft of evil Qing officials and equally-evil foreigners who are out to exploit China make the film even more refreshing.

This review is part of Fighting Female February 2023: The Month of Michelle. Click on the banner below for more reviews of her films.

The Heroic Trio (1993)

The Heroic Trio (1993)
Chinese Title: 東方三俠
Translation: The Three Heroes of the East

 

Starring: Anita Mui Yim-Fong, Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, Damian Lau Chung-Yan, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, James Pax, Mimi Chu Mai-Mai, Yen Shi-Kwan, Paul Chun Pui
Director: Johnnie To, Tony Ching Siu-Tung
Action Director: Tony Ching Siu-Tung

 

Is there a name for the following phenomena? Back in the day, people might make mix tapes of songs they tape off the radio (or from other tapes, if their stereos had two tape decks). Or in the late 90s and early 00s, they would download random songs they liked from file-sharing sites like Napster and then burn them onto a CD. I’m guessing that with today, it’s done with HOURS worth of music on a flash memory stick, if not directly on the smart phone. In any case, with tapes and CDs, you often listened to things in the order they were recorded—you could shuffle it up on a CD, but why bother?

The thing is, with time, you mind would get used to the order of the songs on that tape or CD. And finally, you would come to associate one unrelated song with another, even years later. That’s how it is with me. One mix CD that my friend Huy recorded for me back in 2000 had a mixture of Chinese movie tunes and mainstream Occidental music on it. As a result, to this very day, I cannot listen to “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen without expecting Anita Mui’s award-winning theme song from The Heroic Trio, “Don’t Ask About Life”, to start playing immediately after. It doesn’t matter the context: karaoke, radio, random Youtube suggestion…as soon as I heard “Nothing really matters to me,” my mind starts to expect that the next thing that I’ll hear is “Sui wor sui wor sui chi kan, sheung sik kit hap liu wan nan.”

It is, to me, one of the most memorable movie tunes in all of HK cinema, ranking up there with “Naam yi dong ji keung” from Once Upon a Time in China and “Because of You” by Cass Phang from Peace Hotel. But that’s just me.

The movie opens with a policeman, Detective Lau (Damian Lau, of Duel to the Death and Holy Weapon) and his wife, Tung (Anita Mui, advertised on the Tai Seng VHS as “The Madonna of Asia”), doing checking out a run-down house in the boondocks of some Chinese City. If Egon Spengler were there, he’d probably say, “I think this building should be condemned. There's serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members, the wiring is substandard, [and] it's completely inadequate for our power needs…” However, Tung thinks the place has character and convinces her hubby that the place has “character” and they purchase the house, much to the surprise of the realtor.

The Madonna of Asia

It’s probably a good thing that the Lau family doesn’t have children yet, and that Tung herself is so willing to put in the effort to fix the place up, because Detective Lau has a lot on his place at work. For the past few months, babies have been disappearing all over the city, usually from maternity wards. No clues have been found at the site of the kidnappings, no terrorist organization has assumed responsibility for the crimes, nor have any of the families received any ransom notes. The authorities are completely in the dark as to what’s going on. Things really get intense when an invisible force shows up at the police station and informs the Chief (Paul Chun Pui, of Pantyhose Hero and Ameera) that his newborn son is next.

That’s enough to get most of the police force at the hospital. After all, if the culprit is so arrogant as to let the entire police department know where they’ll strike next, then maybe they are getting arrogant enough to let themselves get caught. That still doesn’t prepare them for what happens that evening. While the Chief’s wife (Chui To) is looking at her baby from the window in the nursery, it’s to her and the nurses’ horror that two babies—including her own—simply rise up to the air and fly through the window. The police gather on the outside to observe the floating babies, completely baffled at what’s happening in front of them. Suddenly, the city’s protector, Wonder Woman (aka Tung), arrives on the scene via running across the power lines to see what the commotion is about. She figures out that an invisible person is involved, as is able to wound them with one of her Batarang-esque darts. But one of the babies is the decoy and the invisible thief drops said baby, forcing Wonder Woman to rescue the falling baby while the thief gets away with the other child.

Asia's Top Action Actress (and Miss Malaysia 1983)

We learn that the invisible person is actually an Invisible Woman named Ching (Michelle Yeoh, billed on the VHS as “Asia’s Top Action Actress”). Ching is in the “employ” of a powerful Eunuch-sorcerer (Yen Shi-Kwan, of Dance of the Drunk Mantis and The Royal Tramp 2) who lives a strange netherworld beneath The City. His plan is to kidnap a bunch of babies with a special birthday and then, at the next Auspicious Day, choose one to become the next Emperor of China. I’m assuming said Emperor would raise up an army capable of smashing the CCP and start up a new (supernatural) dynasty. There you go.

The next variable in the mix is a mercenary named Thief Catcher (Maggie Cheung, advertised on the VHS as “Former Miss Hong Kong”). After displaying her skills by capturing a bunch of robbers holding the employees of a chemical factory hostage, she makes a deal with the Chief to find his son in exchange for half a million in gold bullion. To that end, she herself stages a kidnapping at the hospital in order to ferret out the real culprit. Although that ultimately works, it also gets the attention of Wonder Woman. The ensuing fight between the three women at another condemned building tragically results in the death of the decoy baby. However, Thief Catcher learns of the kidnapper’s identity, at which point we learn that she herself used to be in the employ of the Eunuch before escaping and going to business for herself.

The 1983 Miss Hong Kong Runner Up and Miss World Semi-Finalist

There is a lot going in this film, as I haven’t mentioned the subplot involving Ching’s boyfriend (James Pax, the thunder god from Big Trouble in Little China), who is the scientist that invented the invisible robe. That particular subplot contributes a lot to Ching’s eventual change of heart in the third act before she joins forces with Thief Catcher and Wonder Woman to stop the Eunuch. Each of the three is given a character arc, although Wonder Woman probably undergoes the least amount of development because she’s already a righteous do-gooder. Thief Catcher has to make amends for the death of the baby and overcome her own materialism, while Ching is a villainess until her employment and love life come into violent conflict with each other. It’s a testament to Johnnie To’s skill that he’s able to keep it all together, especially in the drama department, despite having so much to keep track of, while never skimping on the action, either.

It helps that action director Ching Siu-Tung is such a pro at this sort of everything-goes narrative. As Scott Hamilton and Chris Holland of StompTokyo said in their review of A Chinese Ghost Story: “This kind of scattershot approach to movie making could be confusing, or tiring, or even worse, boring, but Ching Siu-Tung's amazing visual style holds the whole film together.” In the case of The Heroic Trio, it’s a combination of Ching’s imaginative action direction and the slick photography. Credit to the latter goes to cinematographers Poon Hang-sang (Peking Opera Blues) and Tom Lau (A Chinese Ghost Story), both of whom had worked with Ching before. Bruce Yu’s art direction is also distinctive, reminding one of A Chinese Ghost Story in the Netherworld scenes and Disney’s live-action Dick Tracy for the interior sets.

The action itself is a synthesis of everything that Ching Siu-Tung had been doing in cinema up to that point. By 1993, Ching had established himself alongside Yuen Woo-Ping as the king of wire-fu. In fact, his films were even more divorced from the laws of physics as we know them that Sifu Yuen’s efforts were. In addition to the complex wire stunts, we also get frequent bursts of balletic swordplay (see Butterfly and Sword and Dragon Inn); stylish gunplay (á la A Better Tomorrow 2); supernatural attacks (see The Swordsman trilogy); and even a brief stop motion sequence (see A Chinese Ghost Story). There is even some bullet time thrown in for good measure, which had gotten a lot of attention the year before in Full Contact. Of the seven film that Ching Siu-Tung contributed to in 1993, it was this one that got nominated for a Best Action Choreography Award, but lost to Corey Yuen’s Fong Sai Yuk.

Most of the individual action sequences aren’t especially long, but they are always fun to watch with some memorable visual at the end of each one. Whether it’s Wonder Woman running across power lines; the Eunuch’s enforcer (Anthony Wong, of Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome) killing hostages with a flying guillotine; or Maggie Cheung throwing dynamite sticks into oil drums and riding them through the air; or a fight with a stop-motion skeleton (á la The Terminator) there’s always something nutty going on in this movie. There isn’t much in terms of sustained martial arts: Michelle Yeoh has a brief exchange of punches and kicks with Anthony Wong and wields a mean chain whip throughout. Don’t go into this expecting a kung fu movie, it’s a superhero fantasy with some martial arts in it.

Finally, a note about releases. There are two main ones in the US that I’m aware of: the Tai Seng release and the Miramax one. The Tai Seng release is the full version, as far as I’m concerned. The Miramax cut, which, incidentally, is also the one that came to Brazil, has several scenes missing that would undoubtedly offend anyone not well-versed in Hong Kong filmmaking tropes. You see, in the West, there’s something of an unwritten rule about not killing children or putting them in danger in action movies. If you look at Leonard Maltin’s takes on films like Double Team and The Long Kiss Goodnight, you can see that he’s offended by the idea of putting children in the middle of violent action sequences. But in this movie, children are fair game. While the death of the baby is kept on the grounds that it’s an important plot point, the Hollywood distributors removed the throw away scenes of shanghaied children in the Netherworld being forced to subside on human flesh(!) and Thief Catcher ultimately killing them with dynamite because they’re already beyond saving. Moreover, casual tastelessness like Anthony Wong eating his own severed finger(!!) has also been excised. And when you consider that these scenes are juxtaposed with “beautiful” ones like Anita Mui walking through a residential area covered in bubbles because dozens of children are on the balcony blowing bubbles, you know you’re dealing with a Hong Kong film at its Hong Kong-iest.

This review is part of Fighting Female February 2023: The Month of Michelle. Click the banner below for more reviews.

Butterfly and Sword (1993)

Butterfly and Sword (1993)
Aka: Comet, Butterfly and Sword
Chinese Title: 新流星蝴蝶劍
Translation: New Meteor, Butterfly, Sword

 

Starring: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Michelle Yeoh, Joey Wong Cho-Yin, Jimmy Lin Zhi-Ying, Donnie Yen Ji-Dan, Tuo Tsung-Hua, Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong, Elsie Yeh Chuan-Chen, Lee Ka-Ting, Chang Kuo-Chu
Director: Michael Mak
Action Director: Tony Ching Siu-Tung, Ma Yuk-Sing, Cheung Yiu-Sing

As I’ve stated before, the general rule of making wuxia movies in the 1990s is that they had to be 1) based on the works of Gu Long or Louis Cha/Jin Yong (or some other famous tale or legend) and/or 2) previously adapted to film by the Shaw Brothers. In the case of Butterfly and Sword, both criteria apply. The source material is a novel by Gu Long called Comet, Butterfly and Sword (the Chinese term 流星 – Piyin: “Liúxīng”—can be translated as “comet”, “meteor” or “shooting star,” depending on the context). It had been adapted to film by the Shaw Brothers in 1976 as Killer Clans, which was the film that kicked off director Chor Yuen’s cycle of super-complicated wuxia films based on Gu Long’s novels, often starring Ti Lung.

I have yet to see Killer Clans, nor have I read the original novel, so I’m not sure how this film compares to either. I do know that it typical 90s wuxia manner, it tries to compress about 800 pages of source material into an eighty-minute narrative. That makes the movie a bit confusing to the uninitiated, especially given the breathless pace of Ching Siu-Tung’s action direction. Teenage Blake had to rent it three or four times from Blockbuster Video in the late 90s to understand the story—something similar happened to me with Kung Fu Cult Master, too.

Set in the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644), the film opens with a high official who’s writing a letter to one of the clans. We’re not quite sure who he is, who he’s writing to, or why his letter is important, but someone does. An unknown assailant flies into his inner sanctum and slices off his face with a sword.

Cut to another location, where Sing (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, of Hard Boiled and Tokyo Raiders) is lying about in the trees waiting for someone. Sing is a super-powered kung fu assassin working for the Happy Forest Clan, led by Sister Ko (Michelle Yeoh). Sing’s quarry is a man named Lui Chung-Yuen (Kickboxer's Lee Ka-Ting), who has ties to a high-ranking official named Lee Siu-Tin. Sing defeats Lui’s men by firing himself from a bow and using the momentum to slice everyone in half. He captures Lui, who is later executed by Sister Ko after trying to escape and attack her.

We learn in the meantime that Sing is currently engaged to a beautiful young woman named Butterfly (Joey Wong, of City Hunter and A Chinese Ghost Story III). Butterfly grew up in the Martial World—hence her ability to perform all sorts of wire-assisted acrobatics—but left it because she was tired of watching her father kill people. Sing hasn’t told her what his real profession is—she thinks he’s an ordinary merchant—but plans on leaving the Happy Forest after his next mission.

Said mission was given to Sister Ko by her employer, an elderly Eunuch named Tsao (played by Wong Chung-Kui, of Flying Dagger and Wonder Seven). Tsao has informed Sister Ko that the aforementioned Lee Siu-Tin may be planning a rebellion against the Emperor, with the help of another clan, led by Suen Yuk-Pa (Tsui Kam Kong, of Girls Unbuttoned and Prison on Fire 2). Lee Siu-Tin has sent a letter to Lord Suen of his intentions. If Sister Ko can retrieve the letter as evidence, then the Eunuch will be able to arrest Lee Siu-Tin and put an end to his political machinations.

To this end, Sister Ko stages a fight in public between her, Sing and her right-hand-man, the drunken swordsman Yip Cheung (Donnie Yen, of Sha Po Lang and Dragon Tiger Gate). Ko and Yip “kill” Sing, which allows him to assume a new identity, not unlike James Bond in You Only Live Twice. Sing plays the role of a wandering swordsman and ingratiates himself to Lord Suen  Yuk-Pa by defending him from some random assassin at a public festival. Suen Yuk-Pa invites Sing to join his clan, which Sing accepts. There are few kinks in the plan: like how Lord Suen’s lover (Elsie Yeh, of White Lotus Cult and Sam the Iron Bridge) looks an awful lot like Ho Ching, Sing’s childhood friend who, like Sing, had been taken in by Sister Ko. Also, both Lee Siu-Tin and Eunuch Tsao may know a lot more than either of them are letting on…

Of course, this is only an outline of the main conflict. There’s also a love cube between our main characters. Although Sing and Butterfly are clearly in love, Sister Ko has pined for Sing for years, and all of the riches of her clan (not to mention her Michelle Yeoh beauty) isn’t enough to sway him to her bedside. Sister Ko also has an admirer in the form of Yip Cheung, whose love she regularly spurns, even though the two complement each other perfectly when it comes to kung fu killing. That leads to a funny scene where a drunken Yip tries to make out with a charcoal drawing of Michelle Yeoh, which is both goofy and just pathetic. The movie jumps back and forth between the characters’ personal lives and the mission at hand, which is why some viewers find the story both underdeveloped and full of filler. I personally found it all enduring and really felt for the characters.

Director Michael Mak is best known for another Ming Dynasty-set film, the infamous Sex and Zen. That said, I think his role here was similar to Gordon Chan’s role in Fist of Legend: just get the characters to the next piece. While FOL was largely Yuen Woo-Ping’s movie, this is definitely a showcase for the talents of Tony Ching Siu-Tung, who ruled the wuxia genre with an iron grip during the first half of the 1990s. The film is filled the brim with flowing silks, flying people, wire-assisted flips and twists, qi blasts, and all sorts of over-the-top madness. Most characters can’t even walk a few steps without breaking out into some super-powered, acrobatic, push-off-the-wall leap. And Ching Siu-Tung treats it all as a thing of beauty, an aesthetic that Tsui Hark was obviously trying to deconstruct in The Blade (1995).

There are a number of action sequences, all of them filmed in that over-the-top, quick-cut style that Ching Siu-Tung had been trying to perfect ever since The Swordsman (1990). Each of them has its own type of creativity, like Tony Leung firing himself out of a bow and reducing an entire squadron of fighters to mulch. Or an early attempt on Suen Yuk-Pa’s life features a bunch of assassins flying into his estate armed with blades that are spinning around like helicopter rotors. That ends with heads getting lopped off and limbless torsos being kicked against trees.

The first showstopper is a massacre set in a bamboo forest. Sister Ko and Yip Cheung show up to kill a bunch of fighters who are to be hired into Suen Yuk-Pa’s clan. Donnie Yen shows off a few of his trademark kicks—his patented jumping back kick and jumping double back kick—but that’s just small potatoes compared to the rest of the scene. This is the sort of sequence where Michelle Yeoh will slice a bamboo tree in half, slide down the middle while performing the splits, and then allow each half to skewer a wire-bound stuntman. Or Donnie Yen holding out his sword, slicing another sword in half, and causing the two halves to fly back into the owner’s chest. It’s wire-fu madness cranked up to eleven, ending with the dark image of dozens of people impaled on bamboo.

Then you get to the last ten minutes, and things really go into overdrive. I won’t spoil the story context of the final fights, but suffice to say that all of it is just pure insanity. Michelle Yeoh fights with a silk scarf that can function as a lash or a staff, like Donnie Yen in Once Upon a Time in China 2. Donnie Yen has an ultra-fast exchange of swordplay with another fighter that ends with a multiple blood geysers. The human bow-and-arrow idea gets revisited in a way that you won’t expect. Candle flames are used as bullets. Property damage is in the millions! Headless corpses decide that they don’t want to stay dead and continue fighting! It’s all pure lunacy, spoiled only by a few moments of unnecessary undercranking.

I think that once I came to terms with Tony Ching Siu-Tung’s brand of action direction—you rarely watch any of his movies to see a true showcase for the actors’ martial talents—this quickly became one of my favorite wuxia films of them all. It’s just so nutty and the characters are so endearing (and the women beautiful) that I can’t help but just enjoy the ride. And to top things off, the movie ends with a recapitulation of the all the action scenes, set to the song “Love is Like a Shooting Star,” sung by Michelle Yeoh herself! It’s just heaven for a Michelle fan like myself!

This review is part of Fighting Female February 2023: The Month of Michelle. Click the banner below for more reviews

Royal Warriors (1986)

Royal Warriors (1986)
Aka: In the Line of Duty
Chinese Title: 皇家戰士
Translation: Royal Warrior(s)

 

Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michael Wong Man-Tak, Pai Ying, Michael Chan Wai-Man, Lam Wai, Kam Hing-Yin, Niwa Reiko, Kenneth Tsang Kong
Director: David Chung
Action Director: Meng Hoi, Blackie Ko

Royal Warriors is sort of funny because its alternate title is In the Line of Duty, which suggests it’s the first in a series that gave us seven films over a six-year period. However, if you look at the second film in the franchise, that would be Yes, Madam!, which had come out a year earlier. So, I’m guessing that it took the latter a little longer to get widespread international distribution than this one, which is why the alternate titles look like they’re out of order. It’s similar to how Armour of God 2: Operation Condor got an official American release before Armour of God, so the latter was retitled Operation Condor 2 instead.  did That said, the In the Line of Duty movies don’t really have much in the way of continuity--at least until part 3, after which it’s assumed that Cynthia Khan is playing the same character. They’re mainly about ass-kicking policewomen who eventually find themselves in a situation where they act outside of their jurisdiction in order to bring the bad guys to justice.

In this case, the bad guys are a quartet of former mercenaries who became friends while fighting in the Golden Triangle--the area in the Mekong River basin encompassing parts of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand where poppy is grown to supply the world with opium and heroin. The movie doesn’t really let us know what they got into after their tour there, but I’m guessing it’s nothing legal. One of them, Tiger (Michael Chan Wai-Man, of Broken Oath and Spirits of Bruce Lee), has been arrested in Japan and is to be extradited to Hong Kong for trial. One of his comrades, Rooster (Kam Hing-Yun, of Police Story and Yellow Peril), smuggles some weapons onboard and kills his handlers. Together, they hijack the plane.

Unfortunately for them, at least three passengers have the skillz needed to act in a situation like this. One of them is Hong Kong policewoman, Michelle Yip (Yeoh), who is returning from a vacation in Japan. Then there’s Michael (Michael Fitzgerald Wong, of First Option and Legacy of Rage), an air marshall who would be the only other person on the plane who’s armed. Finally, we have Kenji Yamamoto (Hiroyuki Sanada, of Shogun’s Ninja and The Last Samurai), a retired Japanese cop who’s on his way to Hong Kong to be reunited with his wife and daughter. A huge fight breaks out between those three and the two terrorists, but in the end, good prevails and the criminals are killed.

Of course, you can’t have a big dust-up on a plane with hijackers without catching the attention of the media once you touch ground. So it isn’t long before the three heroes’ faces are plastered all over the news and magazines and what have you. The problem is that nobody—not even Interpol (I assume)—know that there are two more members of the gang, both of whom now want vengeance for their fallen brothers. One of them, Dragon (Lam Wai, of The Long Arm of the Law and Project A 2), makes the first move by rigging Kenji’s car with plastic explosives. Although Kenji isn’t close to the car when it detonates, the same can’t be said about his wife and daughter.

Although Michelle’s superior (Kenneth Tsang, of The Replacement Killers and A Better Tomorrow) tells Yamamoto that vengeance isn’t the way things are done in Hong Kong, he just ignores him and illegally gets himself a gun…a friggin hand cannon that can take the head off a honky at 20 paces, to be precise. The spiraling descent of violence has already commenced, however, and as both sides seek vengeance against the other, dozens of innocent bystanders are going to pay the price…

Royal Warriors is a particularly vicious movie, far more so than Michelle Yeoh’s previous Yes, Madam! Director David Chung, filling in for Corey Yuen (who was busy with Righting Wrongs), gives this movie a meaner edge and none of the goofy comedy that served as filler in Yes, Madam! There is some humor in Michael’s attempts to woo Michelle—in the international dub, the line from Michael about buying wonton soup for Michelle had my friends and I laughing about that for years. But otherwise, you’re never more than a few minutes away from punches being thrown or someone getting shot in this movie.

Chung, who also directed Michelle in The Magnificent Warriors the following year, goes for outright emotional manipulation, playing very maudlin music in scenes where the characters interact—especially Kenji and his family---before dropping them down the greased chute to hell with some horrible murder or action sequence. He really wants to up the emotional stakes so that, by the end, you really want Michelle Yeoh to murder these people dead. Corny at times? Yes. But cathartic in the end? Indeed. I should also point out that this movie features second and third-unit direction from a young Johnnie To (The Mission and Running on Karma) and Phillip Chan (who was in Hard Boiled, but also directed the giallo-esque film Night Caller).

The action was mainly furnished by Meng Hoi, who had previous worked with Michelle Yeoh in Yes, Madam! As I said earlier, Corey Yuen was off doing a bigger budgeted film for Golden Harvest, so Meng took up the reigns here, assisted by Siu Tak-Foo (who plays a Yakuza assassin in the opening scene) and Chin Kar-Lok. There is also a lengthy car chase involving lots of vehicular mayhem and low camera angles for maximum excitement. Being made in the 1980s, you can bet that it was staged by kung fu veteran Blackie Ko, whom you hired for this sort of thing before Bruce Law came on board. Look fast for Ko as a bus driver during said car chase.

The fighting is your typical 80s Hong Kong modern kickboxing, generally holding up quite well to what Jackie and Sammo were doing at the same time. There is some subtle humor in the opening fight, where Michelle saves a guy from his Yakuza buddies with a bamboo shinai. Yeoh does some more balletic movements with the weapon, no doubt taken from a Chinese kung fu form. The Yakuza just stop and look at her funny. She then sighs and switches her pose to something more like how a samurai would hold the sword. The later fights are a lot more serious.

There are two well-staged two-on-one fights involving Michelle Yeoh and Hiroyuki Sanada. The first is on the airplane during the hijack, where they both face off with Michael Chan. It’s a nice mixture of great bootwork and some acrobatic knife evasion. Later, the two face off with Lam Wai at a club after the latter goes on a complete killing spree. That fight is a lot more brutal, but the choreography is still really good. Looking for a flying leg scissor from Michelle during this sequence. In between these segments, Sanada has a great fight with some arm dealers led by beady-eyed Eddie Maher, who’d also had a small role as a small-time criminal in Yes, Madam!

The climax shows us once again just how much Tango & Cash was inspired by Hong Kong movies. Michelle Yeoh raids a construction site wired with dynamite in an armored prototype police tank-vehicle-thingamajig. After lots of gunfire and explosions, she faces off with the final terrorist, played by old school veteran Pai Ying (Dragon Inn and Hapkido). This fight is just feral, as he tries to kill her with chainsaws, sledge hammers and sheer brute force. Yeoh, on the other hand, has her fisticuffs and a Jackie Chan-esque ability to adapt to the environment. Sure, the fight should have been a little longer, but tonally speaking, it ends the movie on the right note. I have to point out that Pai Ying was never that good of a martial artist. His skirmishes with actual fighters like Angela Mao and Bruce Li tended to drag them down rather than make him look good. Meng Hoi uses his stiffness and limited skills to good effect, having him use found objects and shorter, more direct attacks instead of showier moves, which he reserves for Michelle.

Royal Warriors has been on my (and my friends’) “Classics” List since late 1998 (or early 1999) or when we first saw it. Watching it again made me relive that great experience again, although watching the subbed version, I missed hearing, “I just wanted to know if you wanted to go out with me and get some wonton soup!” And to this day, I always end a conversation with my friends saying, “Brothers! We live together…” “…and die together.”

This review is part of Fighting Female February 2023: The Month of Michelle (click on the banner for more reviews)

Yes, Madam! (1985)

 

(this article was originally published in a fanzine, Xenorama #18, in the spring of 2015)

                The mustached maniac threw a barrage of blows at Inspector Ng, who blocked each every one of them, not flinching the least as he battered her forearms into oblivion. A quick duck on her part saved her head from being ripped clean off by a power spinning heel kick, although she wasn't fast enough to evade the killer-in-army-fatigue's leg sweep, which lifted her high into the air. Ng landed on the balustrade, narrowly missing what would have been a fatal fall.

                But Ng's troubles were far from over. The maniac's continued his martial onslaught, even as the Inspector lay on her back. She quickly got to her feet and, in an amazing display of poise, performed a cartwheel across the balustrade. Backed up against a post, she dodged the man's roundhouse kick, swinging around the bost and burying her foot into his face.

                His pride hurting more than his head, the mustached lunatic lunged for his knife, which was sticking out of the wall.

                Ng wagged her finger and said, “Hey, you said you didn't need a knife, you chicken.”

 

Introduction     

 

                Nineteen eighty-five was an extremely important year for Hong Kong action cinema, being arguably one of the most influential single since 1978, arguably unequaled by any single year since. You see, that year saw the release of the hugely-successful Police Story film, which not only lifted the bar for large-scale stunt-oriented action, but started a franchise that ran four films from 1985 to 1996 (six in some territories, which count Crime Story (1993) as an entry in the series), and that's not counting two more unrelated films, New Police Story (2004) and Police Story 2013, and a spin-off movie, Project S (1993). It wa also the year that the Sammo Hung-directed action comedy, My Lucky Stars, would become one of the biggest hits of the decade (a sequel, Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars, was released the same year and had even better action in it). And let us not forget the landmark hit Mr. Vampire, which spawned lots of sequels, spin-offs, reimaginings, and rip-offs, including one featuring Bushman actor Nixau of The Gods Must be Crazy fame.

                 But the movie that interests us now is Yes, Madam!, which like the films mentioned above, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. We live in a time where the red flag is constantly being raised by feminists and the politically-correct over the treatment of women in Hollywood. From controversies stemming over a woman running in high heels from a tyrannosaurus to a lack of female action figures accompanying a multi-billion-dollar franchise, women can't seem to get a break when it comes to action films in Hollywood. And that's to say nothing of the absurd difficulty that filmmakers have had in doing anything related to Wonder Woman, or giving Catwoman a solo project worth watching, or stuff like that. And even when women do take the forefront in Hollywood, more often than not it's done in a sexualized manner, as if an ass-kicking woman wasn't attractive in and of itself.

                 But while Hollywood has struggled for years to get over their own sexist mindsets, the Chinese have been extolling women in action roles for decades. The first modern (i.e. In terms of story mechanics, portrayal of violence, and the like) martial arts film is generally considered to be the 1966 King Hu masterpiece Come Drink With Me, which is at its best whenever Cheng Pei Pei is hacking the stuffing out of everyone who stands in her way. King Hu really liked the powerful swordswoman, since he cast a young and unknown Polly Shang Kuan in his next film, Dragon Gate Inn (1967), followed by Hsu Feng in two more masterpieces, A Touch of Zen (1970) and The Valiant Ones (1975). The 1970s were home to many a female fighter, from the intense, headkicking Angela Mao, to the powerful Polly Shang Kuan Ling Feng, to the acrobatic and multi-talented Chia Ling. More female fighters popped up during the old school era, like the graceful Kara Hui Ying-Hung, the hyper-flexible Sharon Ng Pan-Pan, and lovely Hsia Kwan Li. These women beat down their male counterparts with little remorse, never needed to doff the duds in order to be sexy to us male fans. They let their martial skills and intense gazes speak for them.

                 Despite a few attempts during the seventies to place Chinese women in a modern action context, such as the highly-lucrative Shaw Brothers film Deadly Angels (1977), once Sammo and Jackie revolutionized the genre in 1983, it would be another two years before the quintessential female action film would be produced. That film would be Yes, Madam!, a movie that would jump-start the careers of Michelle Yeoh (once the highest-paid actress in Hong Kong) and Cynthia Rothrock (who in the 90s was known as Queen of the B-movies, a title not to be taken lightly). The film also started the Girls n' Guns genre, which has attracted dozens, if not hundreds of fans to Hong Kong cinema over the years. It is that movie and its immediate legacy that we would like to a look at.

 

The Film

                 The movie starts off with a bang as Inspector Ng (Yeoh) takes on a small of gang of robbers targeting an armored truck. In one of the earliest examples of the art of “gun fu”, Ng jumps and somersaults in, on, and around cars while exchanging bullets with the robbers. The violent sequence ends with Ng cooly blowing the hand off a robber with a 12-guage shotgun after he refuses to give up. At no point in this scene does Michelle Yeoh use her sex appeal to get the job done; she's a no-nonsense hard-hitter here and that alone is enough to make many a fan just want to drop down a single knee and ask for her hand.

                We then move on to the plot, such as it is. Inspector Ng is getting ready to visit an old mentor of hers, a police analyst from Scotland Yard (in the new dub, his name is Richard Norton, an amusing nod to Cynthia Rothrock's frequent co-star and American and Hong Kong action film veteran). Following their dinner, Ng plans on going on vacation in the UK, where she'll be staying with him. But that won't be happening any time soon. Norton is wasted in his room by a hitman, played by perennial movie heavy Dick Wei. Dick is looking for a microfilm that has evidence of some faulty contracting on the part of his boss, played by James Tien. Back in the 1980s, when you needed someone to play a crime boss, you hired James Tien, the same way you hired Roy Chiao whenever you needed a lawyer or a judge. The microfilm, which was hidden in a passport, is taken by two petty thieves, Aspirin and Strepsil (Meng Hoi and John Shum, respectively). They give the passport to their forger colleague, played by respected Hong Kong director Tsui Hark.

                This is where things get complicated. Tsui switches the photo on the passport and sells it to some shmo bail-skipper (another perennial HK movie heavy, Eddy Maher), and then turns him it when he gets worried that he'll be snitched on. This leads to a big chase/fight between the bail skipper, Inspector Ng, and the police at the airport. The guy tries to take a hostage, who happens to be Inspector Carrie Morris from England (Rothrock). Needless to say, Carrie doesn't take too kindly to being a hostage and beats the poor sucker to a pulp. Carrie and Ng become partners, but initially don't like the idea, mainly because Carrie thinks Ng is too soft and Ng thinks Carrie is too brutal. We've all seen this before.

                But the bail-skipper doesn't like being snitched on, só he tries to get back at Tsui for tattling on him. This gets Tsui in trouble with the police, who figure out that he's in cahoots with Aspirin and Strepsil. At about the same time, Dick finds out where they are, which leads to a chase sequence followed by a fight in a nightclub between Ng, Carrie and Dick. Now that they know they're in danger, Aspirin and Strepsil try to get police protection. Carrie and Ng, however, won't be so kind as to simply throw the men in an isolated cell and leave them there. They know that the microfilm has to be in their possession, whether they are aware of it or not. And when the microfilm is found, the only thing preventing Ng and the police from incarcerating Tien is sudden surfeit of greed on Tsui and Aspirin's part.

                While some may complain about the trivial nature of the plot and the overused microfilm macguffin, anybody who's familiar with 80s HK action cinema will know that plot was always a secondary concern in these movies. It's something to give the heroes some reason to be beating the snot out of each other and performing death-defying stunts. That's all. The problem with this movie is the lack of confidence that director Corey Yuen had in his two female protagonists. Too much time is spent with Aspirin, Strepsil and Tsui, including two extended celebrity cameo gags featuring Sammo Hung, Richard Ng and Wu Ma that really didn't need to be in the final film.While the two women to dominate the action portion of the film, the drama is mainly tied to the three petty criminal supporting characters.

                This being an early Corey Yuen directorial effort, it's fascinating to see just how many characteristics of his later films show up here. Overwrought death scene of one of the protagonists preceding the climax? Check. Powerful female fighters? Check. Blood spurting onto the camera lens? Check. Violent action punctuated by goofy comedy? Check.

                Where the film really made its mark was in the action (natch!). I mentioned the first set piece. The action comes in fits and spurts between the explosive opening and the unforgettable finale. The best mid-film fight scene is probably the airport chase with Eddy Maher, with Cynthia Rothrock showing off some excellent legwork against the surprised criminal. The two-on-one bathroom fight with Dick Wei is also solid.

                Nonetheless, most people will leave the film talking about the climax. For a good five whole minutes (closer to ten if you count John Shum's antics and a breather where the combatants exchange verbal barbs), Rothrock and Yeoh take on a mansion full of stuntmen armed with long, curved watermelon knives, making sure that each of them is dispatched in the most painful way possible. That usually involves the poor sucker being thrown or knocked through glass, wooden furniture or both. Rothrock does some traditional pole fighting for her fighting, while Michelle displays the nimbleness acquired from years of ballet training. Finally, Michelle Yeoh fights Sammo Hung stunt team member Chung Fat, who sports some crazy eyebrows and a mean dagger, while Cynthia Rothrock fights Dick Wei. Rothrock performs a great over-the-back kick against Wei, although during filming, Wei hit so hard that Rothrock refused to fight him in any other movie of hers (though they did co-star as villains in Sammo Hung's Millionaire's Express). The fight sequence equals the more famous mall fight from Jackie Chan's Police Story on every level, and shows us that women are just as physically capable of doing the sort of insane stunt-driven action that Jackie popularized during that decade. Action directors Corey Yuen and Meng Hoi received a nomination for Best Action Design at the 5th Annual Hong Kong Film Awards, but ended up losing to Jackie Chan's Stuntman Association for, well, Police Story.

                 For years, the film was not available in mainstream video stores in the USA. One might have found it at a video store specializing in Asian films, although it would not have been subtitled and may have been dubbed into a Southeast Asian language, like Vietnamese or Hmong. The alternative would have been to find a mail-order company and get a gray-market copy, which was what I did during the late 90s. My vendor was Advantage Video, which sent me the original International dub with Dutch subtitles(!). The international dub was interesting, since it eliminated about ten minutes of footage (including a lot of the actresses' bickering and the false arrest sequence leading up to the heroines turning in their badges and pursuing vigilante justice) and inexplicably tacked the opening action sequence to Sammo Hung's Where's Officer Tuba, where David Chiang's stunt double performs a flying kick through the windshield of a truck in movement, on to the beginning. It also featured a lot of profanity, especially the “F-bomb” and gave Cynthia Rothrock's character a British accent. The recent dub has restored the missing scenes and changed some of the profanity to something less offensive.

 

The Sequels

                Yes, Madam grossed about 10 million Hong Kong dollars at the local box office, which was a decent amount of money for what was probably a low-budget film (for purposes of comparison, Police Story grossed 26 million HKD; My Lucky Stars grossed 30 million HKD; and Heart of Dragon grossed 20 million HKD; all featured Jackie Chan in the cast). A follow-up was in short order. Yes Madam is generally considered to be the start of the In the Line of Duty franchise, which ran for six more films between 1986 and 1991.

                 The first “sequel” to Yes, Madam was In the Line of Duty, aka Royal Warriors. We'll discuss that one in a separate article. It is interesting that Royal Warriors is considered to be the first In the Line of Duty while Yes, Madam! was retitled In the Line of Duty 2 in some markets. 

                By 1988, Michelle Yeoh had married Dickson Poon, the executive producer of D&B Films, which produced these movies. At the time, an actress getting married meant retirement, which Michelle did until their divorce a few years later. So when the next sequel, In the Line of Duty III, was produced, a new actress was chosen to fill in Michelle's shoes. The role went to 20-year-old Taiwanese dancer/martial artist Cynthia Yang, whose stage name was Cynthia Khan, meant to cash in on Michelle Yeoh's then stage name, Michelle Khan. The film was extremely hardcore, with an astronomical body count, graphic deaths and even some explicit sex, a first for the series.

                 A third sequel came out the following year, with Cynthia Khan continuing in the role as Inspector Yeung. Directed by the legendary Yuen Woo-Ping, Yuen brought his protégé Donnie Yen onboard, who plays an arrogant CIA agent who teams up with Yeung to protect a witness from crooked CIA agents led by Michael Fitzgerald Wong. In the Line of Duty IV is 90 minutes of literal non-stop action, most of it being hand-to-hand combat, but with some vehicular stunts thrown in for variety. Most notable is a fight between Cynthia and some thugs atop a moving ambulance and the now-famous dirtbike jousting sequence between Donnie Yen and frequent collaborator Michael Woods. The finale features some the best fighting ever committed to film.

                 Most people tend to agree that the series suffered a steep drop in quality with the next entry, In the Line of Duty V: Middle Man (1990). I am not one of those people. Gone is Yuen Woo-Ping and his entourage, with Chris Lee, a former member of Jackie Chan's Stunt Team, filling in as action director. The plot is some mishmash about Inspector Yeung protecting a cousin from international assassins working for a spy ring based in Korea. The action highlights include an escrima duel between Cynthia Khan and Chris Lee, a fight with Billy Chow, and the big finale, which ends with a bloody katana showdown between Khan and Australian martial artist Kim Maree Penn.

                 The sixth entry in the series, subtitled The Forbidden Arsenal, is easily the most generic of the bunch. The film switched action directors yet again, with former Venom Mob alumni Kuo Chi stepping up to the plate. A pre-Mortal Kombat Robin Shou shows up as the main villain, but the action is uneven (i.e. Cynthia Khan and Robin Shou are as good as can be expected, everybody else is slow) and the film on the whole is forgettable.

                 The series ended on a higher note with the last official film of the series, Sea Wolves (1991). Inspector Yeung is back, once more played by Cynthia Khan, as is Philip Kwok as the action director. Khan teams up with Gary Chow, the survivor of a massacre by pirates who prey on Vietnamese refugees. The final duel on the ship features some nice combat with found objects and is the best moment of the last two films combined. It's not up to the standard of action set by the first five movies, but it's a solid way to end the series.

In Name Only

                It is said that imitation is the highest form of flattery. Unfortunately, it the case of Yes, Madam, the three unrelated films whose English titles bear the same name flatter the original in no way. In fact, two of them not only denigrate the image of Corey Yuen's classic and entered the author's “Worst Films Watched in 2015” list, but stand shamefully among the worst Chinese movies ever made.

                The first offender is Yes Madam '92: A Serious Shock. With a title like that and a cast that features the Girls n' Guns Trifecta: Moon Lee, Cynthia Khan, and Yukari Oshima, one would expect nothing more than pure HK action genius at work. That turns out to not be the case. The premise is certain solid, but the execution is severely lacking.      

                Moon Lee and Cynthia Khan play May and Wan Chin, fellow Hong Kong cops who went through the police academy together. Wan Chin is engaged to another cop, played by Sex and Zen's Lawrence Ng. The fellow once had an affair with May, but broke it off when he decided to get serious with Wan Chin. When May finds out that the couple will emigrate following the nuptials, she simply snaps.

                She kills the poor sap and manipulates another admirer on the force to help her put the blame on Wan Chin. But the drama doesn't end there. Wan Chin goes into hiding with a car thief named Coco (Yukari Oshima), but it doesn't take long before May finds out. May has her admirer do horrible things like kidnapping her friends and setting them on fire in order to force Coco to reveal where Wan Chin is. More horrible things happen before the two women confront an increasingly-deranged May in a warehouse.

                The major problem with the movie is the lack of decent action. The first act is promising, but once fiancé boy is out of the picture, the movie tones down the action and turns up the torment of Coco, which is not very exciting. The finale in the warehouse is especially a let-down, partly because Yukari Oshima doesn't contribute much to the fighting, but also because the choreography is sadly muted. I expected more from veteran Fung Hak-On—who cameos early on as a random perp in a scene that clashes tonally with everything that comes later. All three of the ladies have given much better performances in other films, and it's said to see them fight só generically here, that is, whenever the director decides that they should fight.

                Moreover, the absence of fisticuffs worthy of the first In the Line of Duty films is doubly disappointing when you consider just how many evil deeds Moon Lee's May has piled onto her résumé by the time the finale rolls around. I mean, she has her boytoy transform Coco's best friend (Waise Lee) into a drug addict for crying out loud! I was fully expecting Khan and Oshima to kick and spin kick Moon Lee's character into a broken, bloody mess. But I was denied that sort of consolation. As a result, we have a movie with three action queens whose titular “serious shock” is nothing more than the disappointment gleamed from how much their skills is wasted.

                Worse still was the Taiwanese action comedy Yes Madam (1995), a film só devoid of any sort of comic restraint that it makes Jackie Chan's City Hunter look like a Woody Allen film in comparison. Cynthia Khan plays Lydia Lee, the leader of a special crime-fighting squad called “The A-Team.” She dates her former fellow student and security guard, Dave, who one day finds a little black book belonging to Bryan, an evil supervillain who dresses like a bad guy from a cheap traditional chopsockey film. Boyfriend guy is marked for death by the Bryan, and only Lydia Lee can help him.

                The comedy is goofy and absurd, with characters breaking out into song and dance for no reason or acting like they're in a live-action cartoon. Bryan is flanked by a guy in Peking Opera make-up and a grill, not to mention two flunkies whose faces are painted green and white and who can kiss a person until they die. The boyfriend has a goofy family, including a perverted 8-year-old brother who can remove a person's pants with his mind and another younger brother who spends his time dressing like Goku and practicing drunken boxing. That's the level of film we're dealing with here.

                The action, choreographed by Christopher Chan, who plays Dave and whose biggest credit was Assistant Action Director on Stephen Tung's Extreme Challenge (2001), is too sparse to justify the time spent watching the movie. The action is frequently wire-assisted and sped-up, although the first random fight scene is pretty fun. The rest of it is too idiotic to be enjoyable, especially at the end when two villains start flying around and firing Chi blasts at Lydia Lee like an early 90s wuxia pan, despite the film's modern setting. I cannot in good conscience recommend the film to anyone, even Cynthia Khan completists. It's that bad.

                Less aggressively bad, but still an utter waste of the talent involved, was Yes Madam 5 (1996). Directed by Philip Ko, one could only imagine how the guy who participated in so many important movies, Shaw Brothers and otherwise, could direct and choreograph such tripe. Khan plays Inspector Yeung, a HK police officer on the trail of the Malaysian girlfriend of a murdered undercover cop. What she doesn't initially realize is that her crime boss boyfriend, played by Fist of Legend's Chin Siu-Ho is also involved in the case. Despite his wanting to go straight, Chin is dogged at every corner by another member of the gang, played by Philip Ko. Lots of drama occurs before the action begins, although when it finally does, it's directed só limply that once again I can't help buy wonder how a person could make such a bland film with só many talented people.

                The action is extremely stingy, not to mention badly filmed. Chin Siu-Ho performs a few nice aerial kicks, and Billy Chow shows up to show everybody that he's faster and more powerful than everybody else, but even then he only gets a single fight. Khan's fights are awkwardly photographed and do nothing to flatter her skills. Another Girls n' Guns hard hitter, Sharon Yeung Pan Pan, shows up in the first scene as a Mainland cop and gets a brief fight, but her scene really has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It's a disparaging sight, this movie.

                So in closing, in honor of Yes, Madam's 30th birthday, all we can say is that, for all its flaws, it's still among the best of its kind.

This article is part of Fighting Female February '23: The Month of of Michelle