Angel Cop - Final Crisis


Director: Phillip Ko-fei
Year: 2001
Rating: 3.5
The Cat is back. The good news is that Almen Wong has returned to the screen in an action role. The bad news is that she has returned in this one - a film that has obscurity written all over it for very good reasons. Almen of course made a large impact with her role as a deadly assassin in the 1998 film, Her Name is Cat – and the image of her decked out in hip high blue boots, blue bikini and gun with her body glistening in sweat has become an icon of HK film – alluring, sexy and dangerous. At the time she mentioned in interviews that she would like to make more action films – and was training hard for the opportunity – but her timing was all wrong. The female action figure of the “girls with guns” genre was in a steep decline and nothing has been able to reverse that yet.
 

Almen went on to make a few very solid films – she has a lovely action scene in The Group – but gave her best performance in the terrific dramatic film, The Accident, in which she plays a beautiful but lonely Cat. III actress. She also made a “Keep Fit” video that was purchased by a number of men who never had the slightest intention of exercising along with Almen – the picture of Almen on the cover is explanation enough for that buying decision. After that she had a baby girl (Camelot) and seemed to disappear from the screen. Well, she is back in this film and if anything looks better and more athletic than ever. She has three action scenes and shows some great moves and high kicks. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is to put it kindly mind numbingly bad.

It reminds me of some of those low budget “girls with guns” films of the past and interestingly much of it takes place in the Philippines, as was the habit of many of those films. It is directed by Phillip Ko, so no wonder. The action choreography is not bad – very Matrix like at times which makes no sense in the context of the film – but still not too bad to watch – but the script is ghastly and appears to have been written by someone with attention deficit syndrome. It’s all over the place and has some elephant like coincidences take place. Almen doesn’t show up until the 30-minute mark or so (hopefully she was off making a better film elsewhere!) – but is involved in action almost immediately.  Lets take this one from the beginning.


Three Interpol agents are after some terrorists and almost have one nailed in Hong Kong when the HK police show up looking for a weapons dealer (Ben Ng in a small cameo) and mess up the arrest. The film then decides to jump to the HK cop – a young red-lipped fellow who pouts more often than Chingmy Yau – and he later tries to kill himself for a lost love as a treackly love ballad plays in the background. Regretfully, he survives - and his Internet pen pal, Grasshopper, tells him to go look for a woman. He picks up a girl in a bar – but she is one of the terrorists (and a very efficient killer) and she seduces him into going to the Philippines with her. It’s a set up of course – and in his escape he jumps into a car trunk and then walks into this person’s house.

It’s Almen’s house and she beats the crap out of him with a few flying kicks to the head – but it turns out that Almen is – yes – Grasshopper. What an amazing twist in this script. Anyway, they bond except Almen is a lesbian and her girlfriend soon grows a bigger pout than the fellow. Eventually, they all meet up with the terrorists. Along the way though may be the two worst death dialogue scenes in the history of cinema – one in which the dying guy grouses that he hasn’t seen “Accidental Spy” yet – and another in which the wife tells the guy that she will need to have “monkey affairs” after he is gone. How the actors kept straight faces is simply astonishing. So its great to see Almen again – lets hope the next time will be in a better film.

Thanks to Dan of the Almen Wong site for letting me know of this film and for the good work on his site.