Director: David Chung
Year: 1987
Rating: 8.0
In this third action film of Michelle Yeoh's, she is a fighting whirlwind as she takes on the Japanese invading army in China during the 1930's. This is a big film directed on a big canvass with a large cast and big ambitions. It is directed by David Chung Chi-man who was better known for his cinematography than as a director. He only directed six films – but five of them are terrific (have not seen the 6th) with this, Royal Warriors, Deception with Brigitte Lin, I Love Maria produced by Tsui Hark and It’s a Drink, It’s a Bomb with Maggie Cheung. I wonder why he directed so few films.
It is very much influenced by the Indiana Jones films with Michelle's
character as an adventurous swashbuckling woman who can tame any man with
or without her bullwhip. Her mission is to contact a Chinese agent in the
small town of Kaal set in the hinterlands of China. Once there she teams
up with him (Derek Yee), a small town hustler (Richard Ng) and the ruler
of Kaal to fight the Japanese. One might think this was not exactly an even
fight and you would be right as Michelle and company drive them out of Kaal!
But then the Japanese come back with a larger force to retake the town and
it is necessary for the entire town to fight them with tricks and stones
and arrows against the armaments of the Japanese. A brutal fight follows
almost in Zulu like fashion.
A terrific film in many ways. With the exception of some humor from Richard
Ng this is almost a nonstop action film. There are some truly amazing scenes
with Michelle as she takes on large numbers with her kung fu and whip and
anything else that is at hand. The intricacy of these action scenes is amazing,
but they are so fast moving that you can't really take it all in on the first
viewing. The action is choreographed by Stephen Tung-wai and Fung Hak-on.
One weakness of the film is that there is such a focus on keeping the
action moving that there is very little attention paid to character development.
Very little is learned of these characters until they are strung up and about
to be executed. Then in that typical about to be executed small talk manner,
we learn a bit about their backgrounds (don't worry they escape!). It is
a huge cast including Lowell Lo, Lo Meng, Hwang Jang-lee and Ku Feng.
After completing this
film, Michelle married the head of the company that had produced her films
– Poon Dickson – and retired from the film business until they were divorced
some years later. One can only wonder how many great films she could have
made in her five-year absence.
