Magnificent Warriors (1987)

aka Yes, Madam 3 (though there are other movies going by that title as well, because what Zombis are to Italy, the Yes, Madam films are to Hongkong)

Original title: 中華戰士

During the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Chinese secret agent/whip-wielding adventurer and pilot Ming (Michelle Yeoh) is sent to a town in Bhutan to make contact with one Secret Agent 001 (Derek Yee Tung-Sing) who has been stationed there running the local “town lord” (that’s what the subtitles call him) named Youda (Lowell Lo Koon-Ting). Youda is trying to stem the tide of Japanese activity there by the power of cringing and delays, also cringing delays. Up until a couple of days ago, this has worked out well enough but now the Japanese commander General Toga (Matsui Tetsuya) is putting on a bit of a reign of terror to soften up the population for the building of a poison gas factory. Ming’s job is it to evacuate 001 and Youda. Obviously, various complications ensue, just starting with the fact that our heroine’s aircraft lost all its fuel during an unlucky hit in an air battle just before she landed.

It takes a bit of time for Ming to actually make contact with Secret Agent 001, for a pigeon related incident means she believes a Wandering Conman (Richard Ng Yiu-Hon) to be him, at least for two or three scenes. The Conman, if he starts following the better nature he repeatedly seems to have, might come in handy as an additional partner, at least. 001 for his part doesn’t actually want to be evacuated but plans sabotaging the Japanese factory for good; the more pliable Youda only wants to bring his girlfriend, the particularly dubiously named Chin Chin (Lau Chin-Dai).

Of course, this is not going to be a movie about a group of people running away, but one about a group of very different people coming together (One China-style, because, well…) kicking the invaders’ ass. And getting a lot of people killed in the process, but that’s par for the patriotic course, whatever patria it is you’re sending people to their deaths for.

In its final third, David Chung Chi-Man’s Magnificent Warriors does lay its patriotism on a bit thick for my taste, though it has to be said that Imperial Japan’s as good an enemy as you get when you want to get patriotic without turning unpleasantly nationalistic, particularly from a Chinese perspective. Thematically, the patriotism is also well connected with some unexpected character growth, where cowardly as well as courageous Youda grows thanks to his patriotism, and the Conman connects it to his unexpected to himself growing wish of making the lives of people in general better. Which is more complex character work than you usually get or expect from these films. I certainly appreciated it.

At the very least, Chung doesn’t really let that patriotism get in the way of the typical maximalist joys of this phase of Hong Kong action cinema. There are quotes and little nods towards Hong Kong and Western cinema aplenty here, but every borrowed bit is twisted and turned in ways you only get from this particular part of cinema, at this specific time. So there’s some joyful hinting and nodding towards Indiana Jones in Michelle Yeoh’s character, but she’s wielding her whip a lot more artistically, keeping off a whole horde of men; while also kicking them in the face, of course. And as anyone going into a Michelle Yeoh movie from this phase of her career knows, there’s little more joyful than watching her kick guys in their faces.

Joyfulness is the watch word for Yeoh’s work this early in her movie career as a whole. While she’s sometimes still a little rough around the edges when she’s emoting melodramatically, she is such a joyful presence throughout, always looking as if she were born to kick faces, shoot machineguns (grinning gleefully), save orphans and fly planes. Like a woman doing exactly what she wants to do in a way nobody else could, and loving every second of it.

And even though Chung isn’t one of the great stylists of his era and place, his straightforward filmmaking style never gets in the way of letting his actors and stunt people do what they do best. He seems to interpret his job as a responsibility to not let a moment of insane stunt work – just look at the prologue, the dogfight, the climax or every damn minute of the film – or joyful abandon they deliver go to waste, and he fulfils this responsibility perfectly.

Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)

Sam (Karen Gillan) is working for some sort of criminal organization known as The Firm as a hit woman. As all professional killers do, she has a tragic past. Namely, her mother Scarlet (Lena Headey), who also worked as a killer for The Firm, disappeared fifteen years ago, never to be heard from or seen again.

Sam also has the career typical weakness for children (and perhaps the blind, too, though she doesn’t encounter any blind person during the course of the movie, thus I can’t say for sure), so when her newest victim turns out to have a little daughter (Chloe Coleman), she starts on the mandated way of protection, a way which will also lead to some surprising reunions and point towards methods to reconcile herself with her past.

On the way lie many dead thugs, a family reunion, and three awesome aunts -  librarians, traders in weapons and killers played by Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino and Angela Bassett.

Navot Papushado’s action comedy (with heavier emphasis on the action) Gunpowder Milkshake is one of those post-ironic, trope conscious movies that never quite seems to want to deconstruct the genre it is working in, making friendly nods and a couple of snarky remarks about the genre conventions it uses but also showing no shame nor embarrassment using them. Which is more than fine with me, seeing as this leads to a movie that seldom feels the need to congratulate itself for its cleverness, nor one that confuses small twists and turns in genre conventions with revolutionary acts. Rather, it uses its small changes and twists as more satisfying ways to fulfil genre expectations, finding the sweet spot where self-consciousness does not turn into self-(or genre-)loathing. Gunpowder Milkshake even does direct quotes from a panoply of classic genre movies well, again using little twists into the right directions to make even those things that aren’t exactly its own, very much its own indeed.

So, like this year’s other, even better, big female-centric action movie Black Widow, the film can be relaxed enough to treat the existence of its female action heroes as a matter of course, celebrating their awesomeness by also making it normal. This doesn’t preclude some mainstream feminist elements, but rather strengthens them by anchoring them in a world where a woman doing action hero things is the new normal and doesn’t need explanation or male approval anymore. Which to my eyes isn’t just all kinds of cool but also a pretty inclusive and practical way to move forward.

Of course, it does help the film’s project that Gillan’s has gotten rather great at that action movie star thing and comports herself very well in the action, the comedy and the drama bits of whatever she is given. She is also assisted by co-stars from a couple of generations before who are all actresses active in various genre spaces only an incel won’t love already, which offhandedly turns this into a film that celebrates some great actresses who have been paving the way for women in genre as a normality for decades.

Gunpowder Milkshake is aesthetically a pleasure, too, mixing super-stylized colour schemes and production design to enable less realistic and therefore more cool action, admitting many a silly and cheesy idea, and staging all of it – with this again wonderfully keeping in genre traditions – with increasing verve and style. There’s also a willingness to be weird on display that parallels the worldbuilding of the John Wick films, but in a way that feels less showy and more organic to me. You can insert my usual sarcastic remarks about Keanu here, too – Gillan and co are certainly the superior action actors (less flailing of arms etc).

In other words: it’s fun, not stupid, and looks great, too.

Past Misdeeds: Heroic Trio (1993)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only the most basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


An invisible villain is stealing babies from their cribs and out of hospitals! The evildoer even mocks the police by announcing his or her victims beforehand. Not even the son of Hong Kong's chief of police is safe, as hard as the policeman responsible for the case, Inspector Lau (Damian Lau), is trying. Eventually, the local superheroine (Anita Mui) - depending on the version of your subtitles either called the copyright-endangered The Wonder Woman or the incredibly boring "Super Heroine" - takes an interest in the case, which may or may not have something to do with her being Lau's wife Tung when she's not fighting evil while wearing a mask. But alone, not even she is able to catch the invisible fiend.

Said fiend is a woman named Ching (Michelle Yeoh), using an experimental invisibility device that is still in development created by a scientist she's shacking up with. Ching is in the service of someone only known as Evil Master or Old Bastard (Yen Shi-Kwan). Evil Master is a person of dubious gender (so probably supposed to be a eunuch) with a most excellent plan: make one of the stolen babies - all of whom are astrologically destined to greatness - the emperor of China and turn the rest of them into his cannibal assassins. It's quite obvious that Ching is conflicted about the whole baby stealing business, but years of brainwashing are difficult to get rid of.

Once the police chief's baby has been stolen, another costumed heroine appears. Chat aka The Thief Catcher aka Seventh Chan is more of a bounty hunter than Wonder Woman is, preferably - though not exclusively - working for money. Chat is also an escapee of the Old Bastard's assassin program, and an old friend of Ching's, who once let her friend live when Evil Master told her to kill Chat.

As a heroine, Chat is of the rather reckless sort, prepared to pull stupid stunts like kidnapping a baby herself to provoke the invisible baby stealer into action. That's the sort of plan that in a Hong Kong movie has a good chance to end with a dead baby, which it does. However, this does at least bring Chat into contact with Tung and lets the bounty hunter realize who is stealing all the babies and why. Eventually - but not before it is revealed that Tung and Ching have a common past too - the three women will throw their lots in with one another and give the Old Bastard what he's got coming.

Before Johnnie To had his own production house, he was working as a director for hire like just about anyone else in Hong Kong's industry. Most of his films of this period don't show as much of the hand of their auteur as we are accustomed from him now, and are instead realized in the directorial style of the minute in Hong Kong, making them decidedly professional and strangely impersonal affairs.

Nonetheless, some of To's movies of that time period are pretty great movies, or are even, as is the case with Heroic Trio, minor classics of their kind. Heroic Trio might be an impersonal effort by the standards of its director, but it also features action directed by the great Ching Siu-Tung, and perfectly adapts nearly everything that is great about early 90s wire fu movies to the superhero genre that wasn't exactly filled with great movies at a point in time when Tim Burton's Batman movies seemed to be as good as superheroes could get on film.

The wire fu film's combination of the insane, the bizarrely violent, the poetry of bodies in motion, the slapstick-y and the melodramatic always had clear parallels to what's great about the superhero genre (one could even argue that wuxia heroes are old-timey superheroes with swords), so making a wire fu superhero movie seems like an obvious direction to take the genre in.

Of course, obvious directions don't always lead to watchable films. In Heroic Trio's case, though, they do. Even though you can criticize To's direction as being strictly inside the parameters of early 90s wire fu, with all the Dutch angles, wobbly zooms and dramatic slow motion shots that implies, one would have to be a soulless monster not to enjoy this style of filmmaking, especially when the action sequences between the scenes of melodramatic slo-mo crying are choreographed by someone like Ching who knows how to let non-martial artists like Anita Mui and Maggie Cheung look more or less convincing in a fight, or at least as convincing as is necessary in this sort of film. Michelle Yeoh for her part doesn't need anyone to let her look good in an action scene, of course.

It's also a true joy to watch a movie featuring three female superheroes where the heroines' competence is never questioned by anyone. "But you're a girl" is just not a sentence that belongs in a film coming from a wuxia tradition so rich in female heroes, so nobody ever utters it. On a slightly more superficial level, and one slightly less feminism-compatible one, seeing our competent heroines played by Mui, Yeoh and Cheung is the sort of experience that can distract a guy from a movie's flaws quite well, too.

Truth be told, I'm not even sure I should call Heroic Trio's problems flaws at all. Perhaps, interpreting them as simple markers of their place and time would be much fairer, especially given how much more enjoyable they make the movie at hand. How, after all, can I resist a script that turns a decidedly simple basic plot into a more or less labyrinthine construction of flashbacks, side plots and contrived connections between characters? And how could I not approve of a superhero movie actually willing to kill a baby, even if it's only to give Mui the opportunity to cry some very decorative tears? And how could I not enjoy Heroic Trio's sudden, generous, bursts of ridiculous, awesome nonsense like Anthony Wong (playing the original cannibal assassin) munching on his own cut off finger, or the great moment in the film's finale when the Big Bad has been reduced to a skeleton and decides to ride Yeoh's body like a bony puppeteer? How not to love a film morally dubious enough to throw in a scene of one of its heroines mercy-killing a bunch of cannibal toddlers for no good reason at all?


If Heroic Trio is one thing, it truly is the embodiment of the whole of Hong Kong wire fu filmmaking in 1993.

Three Films Make A Post: They called it God's Country... until all hell broke loose!

Morgan (2016): Luke Scott’s film starts as a very pretty to look at SF film about a woman (Kate Mara) sent to a research facility to find out what has gone wrong with the artificial life form (Anya Taylor-Joy) they have built there, promising some exploration of what it means to be human. Alas, halfway through, the whole thing turns into a very standard AI running amok flick that’s still pretty to look at and competently directed but suffers from the banality of this approach after the film has promised something slightly more interesting.

The film wastes a fantastic cast (also including Rose Leslie, Michelle Yeoh, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Giamatti, Toby Jones and more) by not giving them much to do with their underwritten characters and caps things with a so-called twist anyone in the market for SF films will have seen coming a mile away. It’s not a terrible film, mind you, but one that wastes so much potential it might as well be one.

Siren (2016): Speaking of banal, this spin-off of bro horror mainstay series VHS by Gregg Bishop is the kind of vaguely competent monster movie with a perfectly boring script (including about one somewhat interesting idea and of course not even doing something with it) that, while not being offensively bad, just isn’t worth the time invested into watching it. There are exactly one and a half relatively memorable scenes in here, the rest of this thing is the movie equivalent of a mediocre hamburger.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994): On the other hand, there’s worse things for a film than being a burger, as is amply demonstrated by Kim Henkel’s abominable fourth and final film in the original TCM series, a film that starts out as a particularly dumb slasher movie, becomes an annoying camp fest that makes a mild-mannered boy like me think very bad thoughts about its director/writer, and finishes on whatever the hell that ending even is supposed to be, seeing as it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with the film that supposedly led up to it. If that’s the sort of thing that rings your bell, there are early career lead roles by Renée Zellweger (who is much better than the film she’s in deserves) and Matthew McConaughey (camping it up in what I can only read as an attempt at self defence) before they were famous. Apparently, both actors (or “their people”) tried to suppress this thing in a move I find even worse than the actual film.

Otherwise, don’t blame me if you watch this, for there’s really no sane reason to inflict this much pain on yourself.

On WTF: Heroic Trio (1993)

If you have even the smallest place in your heart for wire fu, superhero movies or female-lead action movies, you'll be pleased by this week's column on WTF-Film, I hope.

Directed by a mercenary era Johnnie To, and action directed by Ching Siu-Tung, Heroic Trio tells of the baby-kidnapping, child-killing adventures of Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh and Maggie Cheung. To see me go on about the film a bit longer, just click on through.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: hong kong movies,reviews,superheroes,action,johnnie to,ching siu-tung,anita mui,michelle yeoh,maggie cheung,other places

In short: Royal Warriors (1986)

aka In the Line of Duty 2 (or 1? My sources contradict each other on that point)

When a group of gangsters hijacks a passenger plane that is transporting a Japanese gangster boss to his new home in a Hong Kong jail, their plan of freeing the boss is thwarted by three law enforcers who are sharing the same flight.

CID Inspector Michelle Yip (Michelle Yeoh, definitely not stupid enough not to have a different first name than her character), the pea-brained sky marshal Michael Wong (Michael Wong, very possibly stupid enough to need to share his name with his character, and the worst actor this side of Keanu Reeves) and Japanese cop Peter Yamamoto (good old Hiroyuki Sanada) take the gangsters out with aplomb and a disturbing lack of surviving perpetrators. Still, the three are the heroes of the day. But their hijackers have a few surviving friends, two old war buddies, who are less than willing to forgive the death of their old friends and start a rather rude campaign of vengeance on the cops.

If I tell you that Yamamoto has a wife and a small child and is just in the process of giving up his police job to have more time for his family, you know what will happen next.

Royal Warriors is a very typical mid-80s Hong Kong action film. This of course means the characters are flat as cardboard cutouts and the plot is as thin as India-paper, but the action is so furious and ruthless that I don't find myself caring about the film's weak script.

Hong Kong films from (one of the Golden Ages of HK cinema) like this had a sense of absolute and wild abandon about them, milking the willingness of (probably mad) actors and stuntmen to do the damndest things (very much like some Thai action productions do today) without a care for anyone's health, good taste or realism. You can just watch your last hopes for the latter go up in flames with the homemade tank Yeoh drives into the finale.

Royal Warriors is also a wonderful showcase for the young Michelle Yeoh (at that time often billed as Michelle Khan), who is throwing herself into her role and the action sequences with the mix of athleticism, charisma, kicks to the face and plain talent that would make her famous. Of course she's just waltzing over her co-stars here, which isn't much of a surprise when it comes to Wong (who just can't act at all), but needs more of an effort with Sanada, who never was a Sonny Chiba to be sure, yet alright enough in his mere mortal way.

There really isn't more to say about this one. It is a movie as far from anything cerebral as possible, yet it is a fine choice if you crave some very Hong Kong adrenaline kicks in an 80s stylee.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,action,michelle yeoh,michael wong,hiroyuki sanada,in short

In short: Wonder Seven (1994)

I am a pretty big admirer of director Ching Siu-Tung's films, so I am biased in favor of this film, but really, what's not to like in a classic Hong Kong action film of the lighter and friendlier sort?

There is some kind of plot. A group of seven grown-up orphans works in Hong Kong as a crack top secret police team for the Chinese government (which would also make them something of secret agents, I suppose). Top secret as they may be, their style is about as subtle as you expect from seven people living on a houseboat when not flying through the air on or off their motorbikes while shooting wildly.

Would you believe that their newest case will lead them into a confrontation with mad villains, traitorous superiors, their old trainer and an incredible number of nameless henchmen?

There is lots of jumping, exploding, shooting, flying and completely ignoring those pesky laws of physics of course. As an additional bonus, Ching Siu-Tung also packs in some of his favorite colors, a love sub-plot with Michelle Yeoh as redemptive villainess (who really knows how to wear a scarf), and a Viking burial on a motorcycle.

I really don't know what more one could ask for.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,in short,michelle yeoh,ching siu-tung,action