Special Female Force (2016) Chinese Title: 辣警霸王花 Translation: Spicy Police Bully Flower
Starring: Eliza Sam Lai-Heung, Joyce Cheng Yan-Yi, Jade Leung Ching, Jeana Ho Pui-Yu, Cathryn Lee Yuan-Ling, Anita Chui Pik-Ka, Chris Tung Bing-Yuk, Mandy Ho Pui-Man, Philip Ng, Shirley Yeung, Stephy Tang
Director: Wilson Chin
Action Director: Wong Chi-Wai, Chin Kar-Lok Action Team
Although the English title doesn’t suggest it, Special Female Force is actually a reboot of director Wilson Chin’s own The Inspector Wears Skirts series. The Cantonese title of those films was “Ba Wong Fa,” which was the name given to the female police unit. The last three characters of this film’s Chinese title are “Ba Wong Fa” (in Cantonese), thus letting us know that Wilson was once again visiting the world of light action comedy involving female police cadets.
The original series played like a female-led version of the Police Academy movies, usually capped with a really good action sequence—the first one featured Cynthia Rothrock as a veteran police woman who duels with Jeff Falcon at the climax. The next two entries lost Cynthia Rothrock, relying on Girls n’ Guns veteran Sibelle Hu (and her stunt double) to carry the action. The fourth film traded Hu for Cynthia Khan as the hardline commanding officer of the team, with Moon Lee playing comic relief. That film actually had the most action of the original series, although Moon Lee doesn’t cut loose until the very end.
Special Female Force opens in Thailand during the mid-90s. The “Ba Wong Fa” team, led by Macy (Kung Fu Mahjong 3’s Shirley Yeung), is staking out the place, waiting for the arrival of a terrorist known only as “The President.” They’re on a joint operation with the Thai police and all is going according to plan until they mistake the wrong man for The President. A huge gunfight breaks out and all of the team are killed, except for Song (Stephy Tang). That includes Macy, who (get ready for this) was on her final mission before (you’ll never guess) retiring (guess why) to spend time with her daughter. Tragedy! Of Greek proportions!
Twenty years later, the Ba Wong Fa program is being restarted under the supervision of Madam Song (now played by Jade Leung, of Enemy Shadow). There are twenty-four cadets vying for positions in the six-woman team, but we’ll focus on the “D” team. Let’s meet our plucky band of inept would-be crime fighters:
Tung (Jeana Ho, of Due West: Our Sex Journey) – She’s the ambitious and competitive one who hates the fact that her teammates are slackers. We later learn that she joined the police to spite her overly critical dad.
Honey (Joyce Cheng, of Cold War) – The chubby comic relief—daughter of Adam Cheng and Lydia Shum—who becomes the heart and backbone of the team, despite her less-than-imposing physical demeanor.
Fa (Miss Chinese Vancounter Eliza Sam) – The beautiful one who does sexy things like sleep in the nude. We later learn that she is the late Macy’s daughter.
Ling (Anita Chui) – She’s the tall, fashionable one with big breasts. We learn that she joined the force after being molested a lot during her youth, so she wants to get those sort of evil men off the street.
Cat (Cathryn Lee) – The mousy, weak-looking member of the team that’s there to prove to her chauvinist SDU boyfriend (Philip Ng) that she can be a cop.
Ho (The Real Iron Monkey’s Mandy Ho) – The deep-voiced lesbian of the group who wants to prove to the world that a woman can do anything a man can do.
Initially inept, the girls learn to like each other and work as a team, even after Tung almost sells them out during a game of Capture the Flag. During a training exercise, Honey leads them off course and they end up getting caught in an actual kidnapping scheme, which leads to a lengthy gunfight between the girls and the kidnappers—the SDU eventually shows up to clean up the mess. That leads to their dismissal from the program. But then another policeman, Wong Sir (Evergreen Mak, also of Enemy Shadow), shows up and informs them that they have been chosen as the top secret “B Team” for a mission in Thailand: capture The President, who’s about to release a deadly virus into the world…(four years before COVID)
There are a handful of twists and turns during the last half hour. I think at least one of them you’ll guess. A second one I did not see coming. And I already spoiled the one about Fa’s real identity, although it doesn’t really affect the plot. Fa was the character we knew least about by the time came for her to reveal herself, so most viewers would have connected her to an otherwise irrelevant plot detail from the beginning of the film.
Special Female Force follows the story structure of the other movies: kick things off with an action sequence, followed by 50 minutes of light comedy as the unlikely heroines bumble their way through training, and then end with a series of action set pieces. I have not seen The Inspector Wears Skirts II, but parts I and III were rather light on the action in terms of quantity. This actually matches a little more with the fourth film. The second act ends with the mock rescue-turned-actual rescue set piece, complete with some martial arts and a lot of gunplay. The third act actually features several action scenes: a gunfight at the pier, a gunfight at the airport, and a series of fights between the girls and the main villains.
The acting is what you would expect from this type of film. Joyce Cheng seems to have inherited both her mother’s weight and knack for fast talking. She’s no Sandra Ng, but maybe if she works enough at her game she can reach that spot. The actresses playing Fa, Ling and Cat are mainly there to look pretty (thankfully, they are). That said, they lack the natural charisma of the likes of Ann Bridgewater, Ellen Chan, and Regina Kent. The real disappointment is Jade Leung, who phones in her performance as the stern Madam Song. When Sibelle Hu and Cynthia Khan played the part, they were rigid but often knew how to humorously deal with the cadets’ antics. Song and her two subordinates show absolutely no personality throughout the entire production, except for yelling. Even when Madam Song puts it all on the line to help the girls during the climax, it doesn’t register at all because Song hasn’t shown any real personality.
The action scenes were staged by Wong Chi-Wai, a veteran action director who got his start on the much-disliked Taiwanese film The Invincible Kung Fu Trio and worked his way up to collaborate several times with Johnny To (Election; Exiled; and Fulltime Killer). Backing him up is the Chin Kar Lok Action Team—Chin himself cameos as a former Triad who assists in a training activity—including Chan Chung-Fung as the knife-wielding psycho working for The President. The action is actually quite brutal and bloody, even sadistic in some places, which clashes with the overall tone of the movie. The first two films in the original series were choreographed by the Sing Ga Ban (Jackie Chan Stuntman Association), so they knew how to keep things intense while consistent with the rest of the movie. This film starts off violent, then switches to almost an hour of girls pouting, and suddenly becomes something akin to a John Wick movie. The brief smatterings of fight choreography during the last 15 minutes feel more like that—arm locks, take downs, knife fighting—than an attempt to pay homage to 1980s kickboxing choreography. There is a bit of that in Ho’s fight with the President’s female enforcer. Philip Ng shows up to throw a couple of kicks, but don’t expect much from him.
If nothing else, Special Female Force was better than Martial Angels, which brought in a whole cadre of cute girls and did nothing interesting with any of them. It’s fluff. Fluff occasionally stained in blood, but fluff nonetheless.
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