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)