Magnificent Warriors
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Movie Reviews of Magnificent Warriors
Movie Review: outstanding
Summary: 5 Stars
Outstanding story. With action none stop keeping
to the story. actors really bring the movie into reality.
Movie Review: yeoh rocks!!
Summary: 5 Stars
this is a great movie, a ton of action and humor. this is dubbed in english. just a fun movie.Movie Review: an Amelia Earhart complex, a bullwhip, and a sunny disposition
Summary: 4 Stars
So I've just now made it my life's mission to not let a few weeks elapse without talking up a Michelle Yeoh flick. It's a life's mission... or until I run out of Michelle Yeoh flicks or run out of synonyms for "beautiful" and "fearless" and "awesome martial artist" and "does her own stunts." MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS (a.k.a. "Zhong hua zhan shi.") is from her earlier days, released back in 1987, and it's an uneven period adventure that is ultimately more enjoyable than not. As ever, Michelle Yeoh is in top skull-denting form.
I guess I get the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK comparison, what with the setting being circa 1938, what with Michelle Yeoh playing a bold adventurer and brandishing that bullwhip, and then there's the wartime backdrop. But Michelle Yeoh's character, Fok Ming-ming, happens to also be a biplane aviatrix in the early 20th century, and so I'm bringing Tom Selleck's HIGH ROAD TO CHINA into the mix... so there. The plot soon catapults Fok Ming-ming thick into danger and intrigue as she's pressed into patriotic service by her uncle and by some high-ranking military Chinese officer. Her mission involves her flying out to Inner Mongolia, to some remote town called Kaal and there rendezvous with China's top operative Sky Number One. Sky Number One and Fok Ming-ming soon bump into a ruthless Japanese general who has developed a lethal poison gas to use against mainland China, with Kaal projected as the future site of the poison gas factory.
Hong Kong cinema has a habit of injecting common denominator comedy into the story line, except that the comedy in MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS is actually a notch above that base level. There are still moments of sheer over-the-top groaners but there are also bits of clever dialogue and situational comedy. Richard Ng's swindler character provides the brunt of comedy relief. He teams up with Fok Ming-ming and Sky Number One to take on the Japanese forces, and when the swindler goes into action, he reminds me a bit of how Bugs Bunny used to do it against Elmer Fudd. Other members of this tiny resistance group consist of the well-meaning but craven governor of Kaal and his kung fu sweetheart.
It's nice that even the side characters partake in the fighty fights. But make no mistake, when not being all sunny and charming, Michelle Yeoh assumes the lion's share of the fighting, and she's remarkable again and, as always, she does her own stunts. Not only does she wield a bullwhip like a pro, but she does crazy stuff with a length of rope. Note that the male lead Tung-Shing Yee (Sky Number One) is heroic and dashing, but he's not quite as intrepid as the former Miss Malaysia. Michelle ends up rescuing him a bunch of times. As if that's not enough of a punch to the ego, maybe he shouldn't have told her that his real name is actually "Lily Wang."
This is during an era when wirework wasn't as advanced and so, even as bodies get tossed thru the air with utter disregard for the laws of gravity, well, you can sometimes see the wire. There are several instances when the story screeches to a standstill as folks keep flapping their lips, and I do think that the plane chase dragged on too long. Going down the home stretch, the tone changes perceptively from breezy escapism to serious wartime drama WITH A MESSAGE. That streak of nationalism gets slathered on pretty thick. So it's a good thing that Michelle Yeoh is "beautiful" and "fearless" and an "awesome martial artist" and "does her own stunts." Don't need those synonyms yet.
The DVD's bonus stuff offers: an interview with Michelle Yeoh in which she talks about her first film THE OWL VS. BUMBO and of how MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS was the toughest action flick she'd ever made (00:06:57 minutes, in English); an interview with director Tung Wai who offers thoughts on Michelle Yeoh, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Bruce Lee (00:12:51, with English sub-titles); Production Notes which include a synopsis of MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS, Cast & Crew film credits, and Michelle Yeoh's filmography up to MASKED CRUSADER (a.k.a. SILVER HAWK) in 2004; a Michelle Yeoh biography and a so-so photo gallery of her in this movie; a photo gallery from the film (25 photos); the original theatrical trailer (00:04:00 minutes) and the English-dubbed new trailer (00:02:19), both trailers being fairly spoiler-heavy; and original promotional material (the original Hong Kong movie poster and 12 photo stills).
Movie Review: Yeah Yeoh!
Summary: 4 Stars
There's an interview (in English) with MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS star Michelle Yeoh on the 20th Century Fox dvd. Not having seen the James Bond flick `Tomorrow Never Dies,' or a Hong Kong action flick, I watched this movie unfamiliar with the star or the genre she was working in. What the heck, though - it's a war movie, so I figured there'd be something familiar to latch onto. The most welcome thing I heard on the interview was Yeoh's recognition that action is closely related to dance (Yeoh has ballet in her background,) a truth she learned when making this movie. If this is a typical example of Hong Kong action movies it seems she's not the only person in that industry who realizes there's a vital rhythm to be achieved when cutting an action sequence.
MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS was made in 1987, and Yeoh's character seems modeled on Indiana Jones. She wears a leather jacket, wields a nasty bull-whip, and hops around China in a canary yellow bi-plane. Yeoh's character is a soldier of fortune who is hired to travel deep into Mongolia and pluck a local governor with valuable information from the clutches of the evil, occupying Japanese. Naturally there are bad guys around every corner, impossibly acrobatic and tenacious bad guys, who must be battled into submission. The action is non-stop, the fight choreography extremely impressive, and the plot sturdily serviceable. The Japanese want to build a poison gas factory in the region, and in the meantime they're amusing themselves by testing the lethal toxin on defenseless locals. There are a couple of thousand Japanese troops around the city, impossible odds under normal circumstances, but more or less even odds when Michelle and crew start cracking the whip. As in the western action flicks I'm familiar with, the day extras break like matchsticks when Michelle's fists (and feet) start flying. Others - the bad guys with lines of dialogues and names listed in the end credits, are a little - okay, a lot - harder to take down. They're as tough as shoe leather and resilient as graphite, able to withstand a flurry of physical punishment that would leave a bull water buffalo whimpering for mercy.
Bottom line - MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS is a fun action flick, heavy emphasis on the action, that takes for granted our female heroine will save her comrades without missing a beat or stopping to pat herself on the back. The core story may not be terribly complex, but it doesn't let you down, either. Strong recommendation for this one.
Movie Review: really good movie, magnificent dvd
Summary: 4 Stars
Now the movie startrs out showing michelle as a bodyguard for a warlord who is going to sell weapons. We find out right away it is going to be a slapstick movie so watch michelle yeoh slash her whip at anyone who comes close to her. If the story would have been a bit better, I easily would have gave this a 5. But when her father is in trouble and then we find out it was just a way to test michelle, I didn't care one bit. Stupid reason to put in some jawdropping martial arts is just fine with me. SO the ma's are good, but the stunts are on a whole nother level. Michelle will do some unbelievable maneuvers with her whip, and all of a sudden we realized that she wrapped somebody up and another hong kong stunt man dies. I mean how are they allowed to do this crazy stuff!!!!! I actually got a little scared for the stunt men when watchign this, but hey, it's all about the finished product, and there are certainly no dissapointments in this movie.
So we find out that michelle has come to town to meet up with a couple of other secret agent to rescue lord Yoda. yeah, seriously. Now there is a commander who is playing Yoda like a puppet, but when you got guys like HWANG JANG LEE and LO MENG coverign your back, I would't be too scared of anyone finding out either. It took liek over an hour before Silevrfox fights, but when he does, man oh man. This is the newest movie(87 I think) I have ever seen Hwang in and his legs LOOK BETTER THAN EVER. In fact i actually saw a couple of REALLY scared looks on Michelle when she ahd to fight with with. You can see him actually slowign down at some points because nto only michelle, but NOBODY could ever keep up with his kicks. I figured he would only have like a couple minutes of fight time, but I got WAY more than I bargained for. Unfortuantely Lo Meng doesn't really fight.
So I HIGHLY recommend this hong kong action/kung fu movie. And remember in the aviator when howard hughes wanted to go where there is clouds to shoot so he can show how fast the planes are going? Well, in hong kong cinema, you just speed up the filming:)
Now the dvd release itself EASILY gets a 5/5. IT HAS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH ACTION DIRECTOR STEVE TUNG WAI AND MICHELLE, AND THEY ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT THE