Silver Hawk (2004)

Sorry, this movie sucks

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

So you thought 'The Avengers' was a good comic book flick huh? well move over Iron Man Captain America and Hulk...move over for Silver Hawk!!!Not too dissimilar from various other Far Eastern fantasy martial arts flicks, this film merely came to my attention due to the casting of Michael Jai White, Luke Goss and the gorgeous Michelle Yeoh. Its your basic comic book character action film but the hero is a heroine (Yeoh) and she isn't exactly a superhero but more like Iron Man, a person with money who fights crime in a nifty suit.Well I say nifty suit, this suit simply looks like silver spandex with some silver painted goggles on her head and a long silver flapping coat. The thing that is so silly with this is everyone is virtually dressed in silver, all the bad guys and henchmen are in silver armour and everyone uses silver weapons or gadgets.Surprisingly Jai White is a silent bad guy henchmen in this (looking like a certain character out of Mortal Kombat and with some Biggles head wear for some reason) and unsurprisingly Goss is the main villain. He is dressed in a Matrix style full length silver trench coat (indeed) with prosthetic silver metal forearms and looking like Richard O' Brien's brother. The action is tame but reasonably well choreographed, nothing amazing but it does the job with no strong violence or blood.All of the film is pure comic book silliness which does look like something made for TV but a lot of Asian movies can look like this. You could almost think of this as a Chinese 'Batman and Robin' complete with fighting bad guys on bungee ropes, rollerblading ice hockey bad guys and Silver Hawk has her own Batbike type vehicle, its just not as camp. Well...that is until you see Goss in his skintight shiny silver vinyl costume towards the end.5/10

I won't lie. I LOVE Michelle Yeoh. I would watch a ninety minute movie in which she simply reads a phone book (not two hours, though...I'm not that big a fan). From the beginning of this movie to the end, they give you what you want: Michelle Yeoh, kicking butt...Her Silver Hawk costume is simply silver cloth and hotpants. The best special effect is her motorcycle. My son was immediately reminded of Batgirl.But, Yeoh is fun...smiling as she beats up villains, giggling with her female friends...far from the solemn character that she was in Crouching Tiger. Her personality was much more like Wing Chun.The martial arts sequences are good and you can see that Yeoh did a lot of her own stunts. The villain looks particularly villainous. There is very little death in this and the violence is cartoonish.A joy to watch!

I've been looking forward to this for over a year, and it's region 2 DVD release finally came a week or so ago.It's an Asian take on the traditional superhero movie, with Michelle Yeoh as a Batman-esquire crimefighter. Of course, there is also more emphasis on martial arts. And although it's Asian, all the actors speak English.The Good points...The action scenes. Great martial arts, all sorts of different weapons and situations, all number of different fighters, and the actors all know how to fight properly. You know the problem with modern action movies is the too-fast editing? Silver Hawk gets that just right, so you can see exactly what is happening in one shot, but no more than that, and then it changes. It's perfect. There is a fight on top of a moving truck, a fight with men on bungee cords from the ceiling, and a fight with guys on rollerblades with hockey sticks. This shows Batman & Robin how it's done - but Christopher Nolan could learn a lot from it too.The music. Surprisingly good and lush sounding.Silver Hawk's background. Her history is told in flashbacks throughout the film, Highlander style. It's simple but effective, nicely creating the relationship between the two principal characters as children at martial arts school.The Bad points.The actors speak English. This is not as bad as dubbing, but it's very obvious some of the actors don't speak English whatsoever.Comedy. Very, very bad. And even Silver Hawk is messing around and making jokes by the end. One of the characters has a very bizarre, supposedly funny martial arts stance with a weird noise he makes, and we're shown this repeatedly, much to the audience's dismay and embarrassment.Tone. Silver Hawk is good when it's serious, it's dramatic and exciting. Silver Hawk is no way near invincible, and she has to escape from the bad guys at one point. But then we have jokes and Silver Hawk smiling during the climactic fight. There is a silly scene where the main police officer tries to catch Silver Hawk - by dressing as a woman. And then they have a fight. Which is taken seriously. Silver Hawk is only good when it's serious, and that's only for the last thirty minutes.The bad guys. Michael Jai White (Spawn) and Luke Goss (Blade II) are wasted on very 2D cartoon characters. They are decent for a fight, but White doesn't even talk, and Goss plays an English Blofeld with bionic arms.Finally, Michelle Yeoh as Silver Hawk is debatable. No question she has the charisma, as well as the physical and actorly skills to pull off the role. But she is much too old for the role, as Silver Hawk seems to be about thirty in the narrative.So my verdict on Silver Hawk is......meh. It's entertaining enough, and the action scenes are exactly what you wanted to see but didn't in all those Batman/Catwoman/Daredevil movies. But it's just not serious enough to take seriously most of the time.Of course it's much better than Supergirl (1984) or Catwoman (2004), it's a solid 7 out of 10 movie, which makes it the best female superhero movie so far. A dubious honor.

My wife and I didn't expect much from this film, knowing that it has the worst box office in the past ten years for a Chinese New Year release and how much we loathed "The Touch"... However, being a sucker for bad movies, I opted for the action movie rather than the other usual comedies and I wasn't disappointed at all. Yes, the dialogues might be a bit dodgy, a common flaw amongst Hong Kong production nowadays, trying to look "Hollywood-esque" but we were there for the action and we got what we were looking for, great fight sequence with each character having his/her own fighting style.I have seen most of Yeoh's movies and this one ranked right at the top with "crouching tiger hidden dragon". Most of her film roles were forgettable but "silver hawk" at least leaves a more lasting impression albeit Yeoh really begin to look her years. I certainly hope that a sequel would follow but judging from the box-office, I might be pushing too far.