Enter the Eagles (1998)

 Enter the Eagles (1998)

Aka: And Now You’re Dead

Original Title: 渾身是膽

Translation: Covered With Guts

Starring: Shannon Lee, Michael Fitzgerald Wong, Jordan Chan, Anita Yuen, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, J. J. Perry, Jan Revai, Rudolf Kubik, Jan Ruzicka, Magda Souskova, Michael Ian Lambert

Director: Corey Yuen

Action Director: Yuen Tak

Enter the Eagles is another submission by Corey Yuen into the Girls n’ Guns sweepstakes, and is a surprisingly good entry. I’m pretty sure it beats his previous effort in that sub-genre, Women on the Run, and was a better overall film than DOA: Dead or Alive. Not quite as good as So Close, but a solid action romp overall. Watching it a second time after a 23-year interval was revelatory. The first time I watched it, it was a Malaysian VCD that had the original Cantonese/English language track, but lacked English subtitles whenever actors Jordan Chan and Anita Yuen were talking in Chinese. So, that aspect of the presentation distracted me more than it should have. The Brazilian DVD had the international English dub, so enjoying it was an easier task.

The film is set in Prague amidst the arrival of a rare diamond at the local museum. Bad guy Karloff (Benny Urquidez, of Dragons Forever and Wheels on Meals) wants to get the gem to sell to other, richer entities in the criminal world. Although his men are good at everyday criminal stuff, high-stakes heists are not the thing. So, he sub-contracts the job to Martin (Michael Wong, of First Option and Legacy of Rage), a retired cat burglar. After a little stunt involving escaping from a car that has been set ablaze, Martin convinces Karloff that he’s the man for the job. In addition to his current team, Martin also convinces his former sister-in-law, Mandy (Shannon Lee, of High Voltage and Epoch), to join him. Mandy is actually an assassin-for-hire and not a thief, but her presence will be necessary if Karloff decides to go back on his word.

While staking out the museum, Martin has his little burglar computer stolen by a pair of Chinese pickpockets, Tommy (Jordan Chan, of Bio Zombie and Big Bullet) and Lucy (Anita Yuen, of Protégé and Thunderbolt). While scouring the device for…something…bank account apps? Incriminating photos?...they find a number of files relating to the diamond. They correctly figure out that Martin is trying to steal the diamond and try to join his team. He agrees on the condition that they can beat Mandy in a fight, which they cannot. So, he sends them on their way.

Thus is the beginning of twin attempts to steal the diamond. On one hand, Martin in his gang resolve to stage a mock car accident in front of the museum, pose as ambulance drivers, and use that as an excuse to get into the museum and get past security. On the other hand, Tommy and Lucy have this more complicated plan involving Lucy getting a job at the museum as a cleaning lady—watch for the scene where she poses as the HR woman telling the Czech job applicants that they have to have a college degree and speak Chinese for the job—and then executing a plan that involves eggs, tomatoes, a jar of honey, posters and a hive of bees. In the end, Martin gets the diamond and is arrested while Lucy is captured by Martin and his boys.

As Tommy has hidden the diamond at the police station, Martin and Mandy have to storm the place in order to get it. This is complicated by the fact that Karloff and his men, who were not amused that the first attempt to steal the diamond went south, decide to raid the precinct, too—they call in a bunch of random bomb threats in order to get most of the police out of the place. That can only lead to…lots of action.

Okay, let’s see how much this resembles your typical Corey Yuen directorial effort—ignore The Transporter and DOA: Dead or Alive, as those are Western movies scripted to Western sensibilities. Violent, high-octane action? Check. Empowered female that doesn’t go on about being empowered? Check. Tragic, drawn-out death of a major character that precedes the climax? Check. Out of place comedy in an otherwise serious film? Not so much. Anita Yuen comes across a few times like she’s trying to be a fast-talking comic relief, but (thankfully) that dies down pretty quickly as the stakes rise. Single moment of bad physics that goes against even the film’s loose internal physics—like Collin Chou’s “extra slow” bullet in Bodyguard from Beijing? Check. But yeah, this film hits all the expected beats one might expect of a Corey Yuen project.

I’m not quite sure how to judge the acting. Jordan Chan puts in a good performance as expected. Anita Yuen, what with her Asian straight-hair braided-out hairstyle, threatens to become annoying, but reigns it in the final reel when the action really ramps up. Shannon Lee is a little wooden as Mandy, and it was probably unnecessary for her to do half-baked impressions of her father during the fight scenes. But Lee, who trained in Taekwondo under Dorian Tan Tao-Liang, does a credible job of selling her action sequences. Michael Wong is Michael Wong. I think that even in the original Cantonese version, where he spoke all of his lines in English, he was dubbed. But he does a decent job of emoting where he needs to, especially during the climax. And slimy bad guy Benny “The Jet” gets more of a character in this film than he did in either Wheels on Meals or Dragons Forever, so that’s something.

The action is pretty well split between stylized gunplay and martial arts. Fellow Seven Fortune and frequent Corey collaborator Yuen Tak staged the action sequences, which were probably overseen on the whole by Corey (considering he was the director and much of the film was action). Shannon’s first fight is against U.K. fighter Michael Ian Lambert (the white-robed knife guy in Unleashed), where the two trade kicks in a barn while their hands are tied together with ropes. There are disc mowers on each side of them, so one wrong move will get them sliced up real good.

That is followed by two gunplay-heavy set pieces. The first is when Martin and his gang show up to inform Karloff that Tommy got away with the diamond, and Karloff’s gang starts shooting. There is a brief fight between Mandy and Karloff’s henchman, Ben (J.J. Perry, of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and Sunland Heat), before Anita Yuen threatens to shoot him in the balls. The set piece at the police station runs a good 15 minutes, and involves gunplay, helicopters, car stunts, foot chases, fruit stalls, exploding melons…the whole she-bang-a-bang. 

Then we get to the finale, which is set on a blimp (cue the unconvincing CGI). There is some more gunplay, followed by a lengthy fight between Shannon Lee, Benny “The Jet”, and J.J. Perry. They are in section of the blimp that is full of metal cables, so the performers have to fight around them, which makes for some creative environment-based fight choreography. Lee acquits herself well to choreography once again, and Benny has not lost a step since Dragons Forever a full decade before. Michael Wong and Anita Yuen provide the firefighting, with Wong going full John Woo with two-fisted pistols while Anita uses a machine gun. Anita does get involved with the fighting and she (and her stuntwoman) gets thrown face-first through a glass table at one point. Oh, Hong Kong…equals rights been equal lumps taken in films. Even if the rest of the action wasn’t that great, the final fight between Lee, Urquidez and Perry would justify the rental price (or cheap VCD price I paid) alone. But since there’s a little more where all that came from, I can say that Enter the Eagles is one of the better action films to come out of Hong Kong between 1996 and 2005, when Sha Po Lang restored our faith in the genre.