Martial Angels (2001)

I wanted to but couldn't!

How sad is this?

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Despite pretty bad reviews, I just had to give this film a go – it does, after all, star HK super-babe Shu Qi plus 6 other oriental lovelies as a team of all-action cat-burglars. Surely that's worth checking out? Well, as babe-fests go, Martial Angels is hard to beat. The eye candy is top quality. Shu Qi looks as fantastic as always, and of the rest of the girls, Rosemary Vandebrouck and Amanda Strang caught my roving eye in particular.Unfortunately, if one is to judge this movie by any other possible merits, it is an absolute stinker! The story is weak, the action shoddy and the special effects downright pathetic. Director Clarence Fok and Producer Wong Jing have given us a photogenic cast and little else.If Shu Qi is the only reason you're contemplating seeing this one, you would be better off watching Sex and Zen 2 again!

The movie was alright overall- the movie itself was a bit of a cliché, but if acting and effects were enhanced it would have been better. Amanda Strang's performance probably stood out the most, compared to the other typical 'angels'. The special effects were particularly bad and the ending was rather abrupt. It was a bit hard to remember all the chicks at first but the second time around I recognised all of them by their weird animal nicknames. Some of the lines were a bit cheesy and predictable, and the sudden chain of deaths really put me off. Also, I felt that some bits of the movie were a bit graphic and disturbing, but I guess for a good cause. I think it's safe to say that most people would think this movie is a load of crap, but if all these flaws were fixed then maybe the movie would score a bit higher.

If you are a fan of beautiful women, this is definitely something to rent. If you cannot stand (at times) really crappy special effects, don't check this one out unless you've seen everything already. I'm a big fan of Shu Qi as well as a chinese student, so for me this was a no brainer. I'm also someone who can just rear back and laugh at either bad acting or bad effects. At times this movie was really engaging. The story was interesting enough - although nothing too special for Hong Kong cinema. The fight sequences were interesting. The characters to watch in this movie are however worth it. The interaction between Bone and Spider (god i love names in chinese movies) is unforgettable. That and Shu Qi is lovely and a damn fine actress like always. out of 10, eh, i'd have to say the movie was about a 5.5 - 6.5, depending on who you're watching it with, like an utter intellectual, 1.0 or if it's a good friend who likes to laugh as much as you at cheesy things, 8.0

Sometimes you need to see a bad movie just to appreciate the good ones. Well, that's my opinion anyway. This one will always be in the bad movie category, simply because all but Shu Qi's performance was terrible.Martial Angel tells of Cat (Shu Qi), a professional thief turned straight after leaving her lover, Chi Lam (Julian Cheung), two years before. But her past returns to haunt her as Chi Lam is kidnapped for the ransom of security software belonging to the company Cat works for. In order to rescue him, she calls on her old friends from her orphanage days, six other feisty women, to save the day...I may have told the synopsis cheesily, but this is a cheesy story. In fact, the whole script and direction lacked any quality at all. Much of the dialogue was meaningless and coupled with a plot that was as thin as rice-paper in water. If I could sum it up, take a bad Jackie Chan movie, remove the comedy, remove the choreography, throw away the budget, and you have Martial Angels: a formulaic piece of work with no imagination at all.Mind you, I do have to give credit where credit's due, and Shu Qi was probably the only person to emerge unscathed from the terrible action, as it was her performance that shone through. Okay, you can't say she was excellent - after all she had absolutely nothing to work with - but she did manage to dig some character out from her role. Other than that, only Sandra Ng and Kelly Lin made any other impression - although these were mostly glimmers and very brief.Elsewhere, the film just fell to pieces. Scenes and dialogue were completely unnatural and unbelievable, special effects were obviously done on the cheap with no attempt to clean up edges between persons and the mask of the blue screen, poor editing involving numerous discontinuities in fight scenes, camera angles that were elementary and unflattering, and direction I've seen better from a lost dog.I guess this film was a too many cooks affair. Most probably, the budget was blown away on the over-enthusiasm to have seven babes on the same silver screen. That didn't leave much else.Frankly, the way this film was made was like a cheap porn movie without the porn. Charlie's Angels, it ain't. In fact, while sisters can do it for themselves, none of that was really that apparent here.Definitely one to forget.