Royal Warriors (1997)

Excellent but underrated film

Don't Believe the Hype

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This cops vs. terrorists chase flick featured a pretty familiar plot line - Yeoh stops a terrorist on board a plane, and the terrorist chief targets her and two male confederates for a rub-out. But this is a must-see for Yeoh fans. The former (1983) Miss Malaysia first introduced her unsmiling, no-nonsense cop persona here and comes off as a kick-boxing female Charles Bronson. Yeoh's fabulous fight scenes (which, typically for any Hong Kong action star, she performed herself) and on-screen charisma made her a star in this role and it needs to be seen by her fans. It helps that the movie had a decent budget, with good looking production design and elaborate stunts to go with the martial arts. This is a first rate movie of its type.

For those who are familiar with the action side of Michelle Yeoh only from her later blockbusters like "Tomorrow Never Dies" or "Police Story 3", prepare for an eye-opening experience. She has rarely fought (or looked) better than she does in "Royal Warriors", a film made early (1986) into her career. Several of her moves will have you going "WOW!". Unfortunately, there are some problems that keep this film from being as good as it could have been. For one thing, there is too much gratuitous violence: I'm referring especially to the nightclub scene, which has at least a dozen innocent bystanders mercilessly gunned down. The nastiness of the villains comes through clearly enough through their other acts - that scene was overkill (pun not intended). For another thing, Michelle Yeoh has surprisingly few fight scenes: after her 2 in the first 10 minutes, there are no more than 3 in the rest of the film. And then there's Michael Wong, who's a pretty poorly written character: he acts as if he's in a romantic comedy, always flirting with Michelle and making jokes, when in reality he's in a grim drama, where almost no lives are spared. In fact, Michelle tells him straight to his face what is wrong with his character, which suggests that the writers knew it as well - so why did they write him to be this way? I'm still giving "Royal Warriors" a relatively high rating because of the action scenes - I just wish the rest of the movie had lived up to them. *** out of 4.

From the mid 80's to the early 90's, D & B Films produced some spectacular features. This is one of them. Everything here is big and loud and brutal. Michael Yeoh, credited as Michelle Kahn, plays a policewoman who prevents a major incident on a airliner, ably assisted by secret agent Henry Sanada. Kahn and Sanada's actions infuriate the mob and revenge comes quickly in the form of an explosion that kills the Japanese agent's wife and daughter. Michael Wong, another cop, assists the Chinese-Japanese duo in their quest for justice, but he only gets in the way, as does his bad acting.This has car stunts, explosions, rafts of grievous bodily harm and lots of woman-to-woman, man-on-man and man-on-woman fighting. John Chung, who directed the excellent "Web of Deception" and the delightful "I Love Maria", stages his action with tremendous energy and works hard to make us feel the pain the characters are feeling.The film has an expansive feel and, though it guns for some comedy relief now and then, never gets sidetracked by it. Kahn's character was replaced in "In the Line of Duty 3" by the aptly named Cynthia Khan, another tough cookie (but not as tough as Michelle).

SPOILER ALERT The plot centers on cops Michelle Khan (Yeoh), Hiroyuki "Henry" Sanada, and Michael Wong being pursued by revenge minded military men. After the obligatory opening showcasing Michelle kicking some butt, it all starts on a plane when two men kill a criminal being transported and highjack the plane. Luckily, also on the plane are Hong Kong cops Michelle and Michael, and Japanese ex-cop Yamamoto (Sanada), who thwart the highjacking and kill the bad guys. They land heroes, gloryhound Michael eating up the spotlight and turning on the charm towards Michelle, while Yamamoto is more concerned with patching up his marriage, reuniting with his wife and young daughter. It ends up that the two highjackers were part of a group of four military buddies who made a pact to always stay together and avenge one another if one should fall. One of the remaining men, `Bull', plants a bomb in Yamamoto's car and blows his wife and child up right in front of him. Yamamoto then uses Michelle and Michael as bait to lure the killer out and there is a huge shoot-out, kung fu battle in a restaurant in witch not only is Bull taken out, but many innocent bystanders are killed as well. Now, the last military psycho enters the picture, taking Michael hostage, intending to call out the hiding Yamamoto and Michelle, but Michael sacrifices himself. Despite this, or because of it, the killer comes up with an especially inventive and cruel bit to get Yamamoto and Michelle out into the open for the film's finale.The action is all top notch, with some terrific fight work by Michelle and Sanada. Michael Wong sticks to mainly serving as happy-go-lucky relief until his sacrifice, and does fine, with his coy smiles and jokey demeanor. A curious part is the use of sympathetic flashbacks to show the bond between the military men, an interesting diversion from the regular one-dimensional villains. The only faltering point is a very lame use of a cheesy tank car in the finale (I call it Herbie: The Armored Assault Bug), witch is thankfully brief and made up for by Michelle's duel with the remaining baddie. This is modern Hong Kong classic, action packed from beginning to end, with a good story, and the launching point for a great film series.