Angel II (1988)

Angel II (1988)
aka: Iron Angels II; Angels 2; Midnight Angels 2
Chinese Title: 天使行動II火鳳狂龍
Translation: Angel Action II: Fire Phoenix, Mad Dragon

 

Starring: Alex Fong Chung-Sun, Moon Lee Choi-Fung, Elaine Lui Siu-Ling, Nathan Chan Ting-Wai, Siu Yuk-Lung, Kharina, Lee Ching-Ha, Yuen Tak
Director: Teresa Woo
Action Director: Stanley Tong

Angel is one of my favorite Girls n’ Guns films, if only for sentimental value. Angel II is an interesting case: some genre fans, including author Thomas Weisser, believe this one to be the best in the trilogy. I can sort of see why, since the big finale is well…bigger than any of the action sequences in the first film and it features one of Moon Lee’s absolute best moments. But once more, writer-producer-director Teresa Woo makes some odd decisions when it comes to making a Girls n’ Guns film that bring the film down a rung from the first entry.

The movie opens with a blast: Mona (Moon Lee, of Bury Me High and Beauty Investigator) goes to an abandoned mansion to negotiate a hostage exchange with some shady types. When the kidnappers decide that they want to keep the money and the hostage, a huge gunfight-cum-kung fu battle breaks out, complete with exploding grenades. Fellow Angel Helen (Elaine Lui, of Red Wolf and Once Upon a Time in China 5) and DEA operative Alex (Alex Fong, sort of reprising his role from the first film—the subs state he’s working for the CIA now) join Mona for the madness. Mission accomplished.

Alex then takes Mona and Helen to Malaysia for some R&R. While a questionable cabby—he has no license and makes all sorts of untrue claims about the clunker he drives—is taking the three to their hotel, they drive past a limo belonging to rich businessman/philanthropist named Peter Kam (Nathan Chan, of Love to Kill and Something Incredible – Return of the Devil). Apparently, Alex knows Peter from somewhere, because he comandeers the car and gets into a high speed chase with the limo and its accompanying bodyguard cars. We eventually learn—after another fight scene—that Alex and Peter are old friends, having studied criminal justice (or something) in the USA. Peter graciously invites Alex and the girls to his estate for the remainder of their trip.

Once at Peter’s pad, Mona and Helen just sort of hang around while Alex, Peter, and another colleague, Marco (Siu Yuk-Lung, of Possessed II and The Haunted Madam), go about the town, getting in bar fights and picking up on transsexual women. Peter also begins to spend time with Helen, who starts falling for him. One day, while the three are touring Peter’s palm oil factory and plantation, Marco is caught spying on an arms deal taking place on the other end of the palm forest. He is, in fact, working for the CIA and has good reason to believe that Peter is raising a small army to lead a Leftist coup d’état against the Malaysian government. Marco is captured and eventually executed.

During the time between Marco’s capture and his eventual death, Alex gets a call from the CIA informing him of Peter’s suspected activities. He finds evidence of it for himself and tries to persuade Helen to his side. She initially rejects the idea, but sneaks a ride on her new beau’s helicopter and ends up overhearing the ill-fated agent’s execution. When she’s found out, she puts up a good fight with Peter’s lieutenants, but is ultimately beaten and taken captive. Now it’s time for Alex and Mona, now assisted by a Malaysian Angel (Kharina, who shows up in the next film), to take on Peter’s army before the Malaysian army shows up and kills everyone, including Helen.

The big misstep that Teresa Woo makes in this film is pushing Moon Lee—the best martial artist among the protagonists—to the sidelines after the promising opening set piece. Moon Lee has little to do but lounge around the mansion (occasionally in a bathing suit) until the hour mark, when its time to go to war. Elaine Lui has more to do this time than she did in the first film, or at least is given more character depth (as opposed to her fashion-conscious airhead role in the first film). So the final shots are a bit more emotionally charged for her character than, well, any scene was for Moon Lee in any of the three movies.

Even so, much of the action during the second and third acts ends up going to Alex Fong, who’s not even really one of the Angels. I mean, his fights are reasonably well choreographed and all, but we’re here to see women fight, not Alex Fong. This is especially true for the final scuffle, which pits Alex and Peter in mortal combat. From a narrative perspective, it makes sense that those two would need to have the final showdown. Nonetheless, it’s strange that a female-centric action film made by a woman would end up putting the most important fights in the hands of the men. I’m pretty sure you could have switched Alex’s and Elaine’s roles in that sequence and still have gotten the same emotional impact, while not skimping on the Girls n’ Guns action.

Speaking of which, Tony Leung Siu-Hung did not return for this entry, being replaced by Stanley Tong. Stanley Tong had mainly worked as a stuntman up til this point, with his only prior choreographer credit being the wushu film Zen Master 6. Here he shows LOTS of promise as an action director, both in terms of scale and just knowing how to stage a good fight. The finale is reminiscent of the previous year’s Eastern Condors (and Stanley’s later work on Police Story 3: Supercop), full of machine guns, grenades, rockets, and exploding huts. Moon Lee even gets to use wrist-mounted arrow launchers and a crossbow! Stanley has always been open about his influences from Hollywood, and you can definitely see the traces of Rambo: First Blood Part 2 here, especially at the very end.

The tour-de-force in the action is a pair of fights between Moon Lee and two members of Peter’s rebel army, played by Chan Ming-Ching and Yuen Tak (Three Evil Masters and Hero). The latter appears to have been a member of either Stanley Tong’s stuntman group or Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association, although I’m inclined to think it was the former. Yuen Tak was one of the Seven Fortunes and an extremely talented action director in his own right. Anyway, Moon’s fight with those two features some killer choreography, including some nice jump kicks from Moon plus a nice bit with a retractable steel baton (17 years before Donnie used it against Wu Jing in Sha Po Lang). However, Yuen Tak ends up stealing the show with his speed and power—he did something similar in both Dragon from Russia and Hero. The man is a martial beast and I wonder why he didn’t spend more time in front of the camera after the old school kung fu movie died out. This section of the climax lasts about three minutes, and you wonder why there couldn’t have been more of it throughout the running time.

Police Story III: Supercop (1992)

Police Story III: Supercop (1992)
aka: Supercop
Chinese Title: 警察故事III超級警察
Translation: Police Story III: Super Cop

Starring: Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, Kenneth Tsang Kong, Yuen Wah, Bill Tung Biu, Josephine Koo Mei-Wah, Kelvin Wong Siu, Phillip Chan Yan-Kin, Lo Lieh, Ailen Sit Chun-Wai, Ken Lo Wai-Kwong
Director: Stanley Tong
Action Director: Stanley Tong, Stanley Tong’s Stunt Group[1], Bruce Law

 

By the start of the summer of 1997, I had seen three Jackie Chan films. The first was Rumble in the Bronx, which I had missed in the theaters, but rented a couple of times after it came out on video. Not long after the first time I watched Rumble in the Bronx, my older brother and I rented Crime Story, which was released straight to video. Finally, it was around January of ’97 that my brother, his friends and I caught Jackie Chan’s First Strike (aka Police Story IV) at the dollar theater on a double bill with Beavis and Butthead Do America. I had missed watching Supercop in the theater and for whatever reason, hadn’t gotten around to watching it yet. My brother did buy the soundtrack, which featured Warren G and Adina Howard doing a hip-hop version of “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” and Tom Jones doing a Jackie-centric cover of “Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting.”

That summer changed everything. One Friday evening, my siblings were out enjoying their social lives while my Freshman-soon-to-be-Sophomore ass was just hanging out at home with mom. She took me to Blockbuster video on the corner of Pershing Ave. and Robinhood Dr., right behind San Joaquin Delta College. There, I rented both Supercop and Jackie Chan’s Police Force, better known as Police Story. I watched both of them that evening. The next day, which was my personal clothes shopping day with my mom, we took the movies back. Low and behold, there was a copy of Jackie Chan’s Police Force (featuring the original international dub) on sale at Blockbuster for 10 bucks. Yoink! While buying clothes in Sacramento, my mom and I stopped by Barnes & Noble at Arden Fair Mall, where I picked up Jackie Chan: Inside the Dragon by Clyde Gentry III. There was no turning back at this point: I was now a Hong Kong cinephile.

The movie would be set about four years after the events of Police Story II, although no mention is made of Kevin Chan (Jackie) saving Hong Kong from a bunch of mad bombers or bringing down a major drug dealer named Ku. The film opens with a bunch of high-level types from (presumably) Interpol and the Hong Kong police discussing Asia’s problems with drug smuggling, including anecdotes of carriers dying of overdoses while smuggling condoms filled with heroin in their stomachs. They discuss a “Supercop” initiative to have a Hong Kong cop collaborate with Mainland Chinese law enforcement to bring down one of the bigger drug dealers, a man named Chaibat (who’ll be played by The Replacement Killers’ Kenneth Tsang). For the record, this scene was cut from the American version, presumably to keep the pace breakneck.

Shortly afterward, Kevin Chan shows up at work to get his orders to patrol whatever park in Hong Kong his superiors think he’ll do the less damage at. It’s funny, Kevin Chan causes lots of property damage and he either gets demoted or some Mickey Mouse jobs in the most innocuous places. In the Lethal Weapon films, Briggs and Murtaugh do property damage and they get promoted to the rank of captain. Anyway, Chan overhears his Uncle Bill (Bill Tung, of the previous two Police Story films) arguing with Commissioner Chan (Phillip Chan, playing essentially the same sort of role he did in Bloodsport and Hard Boiled) about whether or not they should recommend Kevin for the Interpol assignment. This is intentional, so as to guarantee that Kevin’s mouth will be watered for some real police work, as opposed to patrolling some Podunk park somewhere in Hong Kong. The plan works, and soon Kevin is kissing his girlfriend, May (Maggie Cheung, of Project A 2 and Twin Dragons), goodbye and flying to China.

After meeting with the top brass of China’s military, Chan is introduced to his opposite number in China and (though he doesn’t know it yet) partner in the mission: Captain Yang Choo-Kheng[2]. That sly dog Kevin tries to put the moves on her, but her strict PRC discipline will allow none of that. In any case, their plan is to disguise Kevin as a local named Lin Fu Sheng (from Wuhan, no less) and have him assist a team of mercenaries in breaking one of Chaibat’s lieutenants, Panther (Yuen Wah of The Iceman Cometh and The Master), out of a prison labor camp. The plan is simple: while the mercenaries are rescuing Panther, Yang picks them off one by one with a sniper rifle while Kevin/Fu Sheng shows up at helps Panther. The two escape together and Kevin makes it into Panther’s good graces.

Panther has Kevin take him and his men to Yan Yu Village, where his alter-ego apparently hails from. There, they’ll lay low until it’s time to flee to Hong Kong. From a geographical point of view, this is interesting because Wuhan is located in the landlocked province of Hubei, in Central China. I’m guessing that they were somewhere in the Guangdong province, but for whatever reason, the people who made the English version just changed it some other random Chinese city. While at the village, which is apparently populated by undercover policemen, Kevin Chan/Fu Sheng meets his “family,” which includes his sister Hanna/Fan Hua (actually Captain Yang) and his mother (Uncle Bill in drag). There’s a funny bit where Kevin tells Panther that Hanna’s his wife, only for to show up and yell “Brother!”, making them look like inbred hicks.

While eating out that evening, some policemen who aren’t aware of the Interpol mission try to arrest Panther and his men, only for Yang to step in and beat the shit out of everyone. She also pretends to kill another policeman (who does know what’s going on), which is enough to win Panther’s trust—he takes her along with him so she won’t get executed for murder. Panther takes both Kevin and Yang to Hong Kong to meet Chaibat. From there, the mission will take the two from Hong Kong to the jungles of Thailand and from there, to the streets of Kuala Lampur, Malaysia.

Supercop is a pretty good example of the sway that Jackie Chan held over the Hong Kong and Pan-Asian film industry in the 1990s. After Armour of God 2: Operation Condor went way over budget and became the most expensive HK film up to that point, Golden Harvest wanted Chan to tone it down for the next few films. I’m guessing while a second Police Story sequel would have cost some money to make, it was expected that it would at least be a local production. That was probably the case, until stuntman-turned-choreographer-turned-director Stanley Tong got on board. With Tong’s Western filmmaking sensibilities and penchant for large-scale stunts, Supercop quickly became an international effort with scenes filmed on location in four different countries, with some of Jackie’s biggest stunts yet. Tong’s previous effort had been Stone Age Warriors, an action-adventure film set in New Guinea which put its lead actresses, Nina Li Chi and Elaine Lui, through the hell of falling down waterfalls, being attacked by Komodo dragons and being covered in scorpions. Although Chan has notoriously had problems in working with other directors, in Tong he found a kindred spirit: both men were downright insane.

In Clyde Gentry’s Jackie Chan: Inside the Dragon, the author comments that Supercop was mainly Tong’s child. As a result, the fighting itself is toned down—unlike the first two movies, there is no all-time classic set piece in this one—while the stuntwork is ratched up past 11. The international settings also give this film a James Bondian film, which influence would be further felt in the subsequent Police Story IV: First Strike. Supercop would also become known as the first Hong Kong film to be filmed in synch sound in decades: because of the Hong Kong and Taiwanese markets, filmmakers often found it easier film movies silently and the dub them into Cantonese or Mandarin for whatever market the film was being released in. Supercop was filmed in Cantonese (for the Hong Kong scenes), Mandarin (for the Mainland China scenes), and Malay/English for the scenes in Kuala Lampur.

Completing the trifecta of crazy action people is Michelle Yeoh, who had just gotten out of retirement after her failed marriage to movie producer Dickson Poon. Yeoh had met Stanley Tong on the set of her pre-marriage swan song, The Magnificent Warriors, when the latter was still cutting his teeth as a stuntman. The two apparently became good friends on set, so when the news came out that she was looking to get back into the business, Tong cast her in the role as the tough-as-nails Captain Yang. Yeoh has stated in interviews—see Top Fighter 2: Deadly China Dolls—that she likes the more physical action as opposed to the more flowery wire-fu of movies like Butterfly and Sword. In the end, she actually steals the show in terms of the fight scenes and performs two awesome stunts during the climax.

The action was choreographed by Stanley Tong and his crew. They were nominated for Best Action Choreography at the Hong Kong Film Awards the following year, but lost to Yuen Woo-Ping for Once Upon a Time in China 2. The fighting itself is well staged, but the fights are very short and to the point. There are a handful of them, however, which include Chan in a demonstration with a Mainland instructor (Sam Wong), some tussles with prison guards and local policemen, a short scuffle with Chaibat’s men, and a few moments of fisticuffs against the Malaysian authorities. The Thailand sequence is mainly gunplay and explosions, inspired more by 80s right-wing action movies (like Rambo: First Blood Part 2 and Predator) than Hong Kong cinema.

The finale in an unforgettable mix of fighting prowess and bonkers stuntwork. After Chan and Yeoh beat up the local authorities, Yeoh finds herself atop a moving van while Chan following behind in a sports car. Chaibat and his men are following both vehicles in a helicopter, blowing up all the cars around them with a grenade launcher. Yeoh ultimately falls off a moving van and onto the hood of Chan’s car, which stunt did not work out the first time. Yeah, ouch. Then you get to the part where Chan hangs onto the ladder of a helicopter as it flies all over the city while Michelle Yeoh follows it on a motorcycle. She finally rides the motorcycle onto a moving train, where she and Chan face off with Chaibat’s bodyguards, played by Ken Low and Ailen Sit.

From a pure stuntwork point of view, Supercop is tops. Even Quentin Taratino agrees, putting this film on his top movies list on account of the stunts[3]. Fans of pure martial arts may be a little disappointed with the shorter fights, especially during the finale atop the train. Knowing just how good a martial artist Ken Low is, we wish that Tong would have let him unleash his kicking prowess in an extended demonstration against Chan, but that wasn’t his style. Moreover, by 1992, Yuen Wah had long demonstrated that he could be a badass given the opportunity: just watch his work in Eastern Condors and The Iceman Cometh. His character Panther barely fights and Yuen’s physical skills are wasted in this film. The same goes for blonde badass Kim Maree Penn (The Death Games and City of Darkness), who shows up in the Thailand sequence but doesn't get to throw down with Michelle. I’m sure that some people who were introduced to Chan through Rumble in the Bronx and loved the fight scenes there might have been disappointed with the slightly more “Westernized” action here. But if you come in with the right expectations, Supercop is a hoot and half and fun ride all around.

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[1] -The HKMDB entry for this film lists them as: Dang Tak-Wing, Ailen Sit Chun-Wai, Chan Man-Ching, Sam Wong Ming-Sing, Mak Wai-Cheung, Ho Hon-Chau. The HKFA page for the 12^th annual Hong Kong Film Awards lists the names for this film’s Best Action Choreography nomination as Stanley Tong, Dang Tak-Wing, (Ailen) Sit Chun-Wai, Chan Man-Ching and (Sam) Wong Ming-Sing.

[2] - This is actually kinda funny from a linguistic point of view. According to the HKMDB, Michelle’s character is name Yang Chien-Hua. However, in the American dub, she identifies herself to the authorities in one scene as Yang Choo-Kheng. Choo-Kheng is actually Michelle Yeoh’s Chinese name, albeit in the Hokkien language—Yeoh Choo-Kheng. “Yang” in the Mandarin pronunciation of the character 楊, which is pronounced “Yeoh” in Hokkien. Thus, the character’s name in the American dub is a mixture of both Mandarin and Hokkien words.

[3] - https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/quentin-tarantino-favorite-movies/

Angel III (1989)

Angel III (1989)
Aka Iron Angels 3; Return of the Iron Angels; Angel 3; Midnite Angels 3
Chinese Title: 天使行動III魔女末日
Translation: Angel Action III Witch Doom

 

Starring: Moon Lee, Alex Fong, Kharina Isa, Ralph Chan, Mark Steinborn, Katy Hickman, Tam Wai-Man, Panna Rittikrai
Director(s): Teresa Woo, Stanley Tong
Action Director: Dang Tak-Wing

 

As Wonder Woman is wowing both critics and audiences, finally showing us that it is possible for Hollywood to do a superheroine movie right, let us reflect on just how hard it’s been for Hollywood to get the whole female action thing right. With few exceptions, it’s been very hard. Okay, done. Meanwhile, Hong Kong and Taiwan have been doing it with ease since the 60s, and maybe even longer. We got wuxia heroines played by like Josephine Siao and Cheng Pei Pei, and then kung fu heroines like Chia Ling, Angela Mao, Polly Shang Kuan Ling Feng, and more.

By 1983, things were changing. Period pieces were no longer bringing in the audiences like they used, unless they had some new state-of-the-art gimmick, like crazy whackadoo optical effects or giant ninjas who broke up into smaller ones. Audiences were more inclined to intense action-oriented comedies, like the combined works of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. They also liked John Woo-directed triad bullet ballets that made young kids forget about shaving their heads and joining Shaolin, and instead don trenchcoats, light dollar bills on fire, and join Triads. A lot of actors and fight choreographers who made a living with the old school kung fu movies had a hard time adapting and drifted into obscurity. But what about the women? Did the changes in audiences tastes mean that those powerful, butt-kicking members of the fair sex were also a thing of the past?

Hell no.

The “Girls n’ Guns” sub-genre began in 1985 with Corey Yuen’s Yes, Madam!, which introduced the world to former ballet dancer Michelle Yeoh and gwailo wushu champ Cynthia Rothrock. It was successful enough to get a sequel the following year, Royal Warriors, which has also become a classic of the genre. In 1987, female director Teresa Woo made a little film called Angel. It starred Yukari Oshima, a Japanese goju-ryu stylist who, until then, had mainly worked in Taiwan. It also featured Moon Lee, a Hong Kong singer/actress who hadn’t much experience in action movies, but had recently been training with the second important “fei jai” of Hong Kong cinema, Tsui Siu-Ming. Rounding out the cast was Elaine Lui, up-and-coming actor Alex Fong, Shaw Brothers alumni David Chiang, and your friend and mine, Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee. The result was a fun little action romp with one of the best mano-a-mano female fights of the genre.

The next year, Teresa Woo rounded up Elaine, Moon and Alex and made a sequel, Angel 2. The film was a little inferior to the last one, until the last twenty minutes, when it goes all Rambo on us, culminating with a legendary duel between Moon Lee, Chan Man-Ching and Yuen Tak. The fight choreographer was an up-and-coming stuntman named Stanley Tong, and whatever praised he garnered for his work here was channeled into his becoming “Executive Director” of tonight’s film.

Angel 3 begins with a Vietnamese diplomat arriving in Thailand for official business. The relationship between the two countries has apparently been strained, so the presence of the politician means that maybe they can start patching things up. Unfortunately, some terrorists appear and gun down the politician in cold blood. So much for improved relations.

At this point, Alex (a returning Alex Fong), who now runs the Angels, is contacted by the CIA and asked to help find out who’s responsible for the killings. I always found it weird that Alex Fong’s character is portrayed in Angel 2 and Angel 3 as being Moon Lee’s equivalent to Charlie, since that function was filled by David Chiang in the first film. In Angel, Alex Fong was the Angels’ CIA contact, so the switcharoo of his roles is sort of odd.

In any case, agent Moon (Lee) is dispatched to intercept a Japanese assassin who’s been hired to join the assassins, who’s run by a gwailo girl (Katy Hickman) and is apparently under orders from the late Moammar Khadaffi himself(!). I’m not sure why Khadaffi would be so interested in sewing discord in SE Asia, but this was made in the 80s, so maybe it’s one of those ripped from the papers dealies. Moon joins the assassins, proving her merit by beating up the flunkies in two separate fights. She tries to sneak into her boss’s study, but is caught and another fight breaks out, after which she escapes.

A few days later, there’s a big party at the King of Thailand’s mansion, attended by lots of foreign dignitaries. Suddenly, the place is invaded by dozens of motorcycle-driving assassins who start mowing down the guests with Uzis attached to the handlebars. A huge gun battle erupts between the Thai military and an army of assassins, with the latter outnumbering the former. Cue the arrivial of Alex and Ralph, another male member of the team, who fly in on jet packs with Uzis mounted on them. May the unbelievable climax begin.

I know a lot of people consider this to be the least in the series, of which I’m inclined to agree. Part of it stems up from Teresa Woo’s script, which unwisely treats the scenes with Moon and those with Alex almost as two separate movies. There’s also some cutaways to a Libyan general (played by a white guy) who laughs maniacally and berates his black subordinate, but those two never interact with anybody else in the movie, so why were those scenes even included. I’m also convinced that Woo’s script ended up in a rather short movie, because there’s one sequence that goes on for a good 15 minutes in which Alex and Ralph go to muay thai match (you can’t have a movie set in Thailand without one of those), and Alex ends up challenging one of the fighters, played by a young Panna Rittikrai. The entire movie stops just for that sequence, and it adds nothing to the film.

I think the part of the blame lands on Stanley Tong. I’m not sure, but as good a fight choreographer and stunt director the man is, he’s really not that good of an action director. That is, I do not think the man makes good decisions when it comes to where to take the action and what to do with the action. Elaine Lui is absent from this film, which is unfortunate. But Kharina Isa, who played the machine gun-toting transsexual soldier in Angel 2 is back. So what does she do in this movie? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Then why even include her in the movie?

And then there’s the finale. Yes, it’s bloody and violent with an exceedingly high body count, just the way we HK cinephiles like it. Sure, the jet pack-mounted Uzis never need reloading, but that’s okay, since it’s such a bizarre, James Bondian touch (more proof that Stanley Tong had more say in the action than frequent collaborator Dang Tak-Wing did) that we’ll let it slide. But really, who goes to see a movie called Angel 3 starring Moon Lee, only for her to disappear from the film prior to the climax and focus on Alex Fong and friggin’ Ralph Chan? Nobody, that’s who. We want to see Moon beat the hell out of Katy Hickman and then blow the back of her skull out with a large revolver, not Alex Fong. And sadly, this would be the first, but not the only time that Stanley Tong would botch a climax. See Project S, China Strike Force and The Myth for more examples.

That said, the fighting itself in the film is pretty good. Moon Lee is at her absolute best (like I said, Stanley Tong and his crew are great choreographers, even if he makes questionable decisions as a director) and the scene where she fights an army of blade-wielding killers with a pair of nunchaku is one of the best fights of her career. She gets in four fights, which are easily the highlights of the film. Alex Fong is pretty obviously not a trained fighter, as you can see from his Keanu Reeves-esque stiff moves and kicks that rarely go above stomach level. But Stanley Tong and Dang Tak-Wing choreograph him well enough that he keeps up a good rhythm in his fights. The final fight, while disappointing in conception, is enjoyable in execution as Fong wields a rapier against Hickman, who wields a curved knife that reminds me of Die Hard with a Vengeance and a Thai woman, who has a more conventional dagger. It’s a very bloody fight, which is par for the course with these Angel films.

In closing, the film is perfectly entertaining if taken solely on its action merits. But as a Girls n’ Guns film, its refusal to have a female heroine take part in the bullet-riddled final set piece knocks it down several rungs, even if the female-oriented action before it would’ve placed it near the very top.