Royal Warriors (1986)

In her second starring role, screen action queen Michelle Yeoh portrays a no-nonsense Hong Kong police detective who joins forces with a sky marshal (Michael Wong) and a recently retired Japanese police officer (Hiroyuki Sanada) in stopping two military-trained criminals from hijacking an airplane. After the criminals are killed, two of their remaining cohorts seek revenge on the three heroes in this explosive ’80s actioner fully loaded with knockout martial arts and gunplay action from DP-turned-director David Chung (I LOVE MARIA) and Sammo Hung stunt team veteran Mang Hoi. Also featured are bang-up vehicular stunts from the late, great Blacky Ko.

Released in Hong Kong with the English title ROYAL WARRIORS, this early “girls with guns” flick was re-titled for the overseas market as IN THE LINE OF DUTY. Upon becoming a commercial success, D & B Films went back to Michelle Yeoh’s debut film, YES, MADAM and had that one re-titled as IN THE LINE OF DUTY 2 even though it came out seven months earlier and was not related plot-wise. The new English title stuck and D & B produced IN THE LINE OF DUTY 3 and 4 with action newcomer Cynthia Khan replacing Yeoh. To make things more confusing, IN THE LINE OF FIRE 3 also went by the title of YES, MADAM 2 and IN THE LINE OF FIRE 4 had the alternate title of YES, MADAM 4. With direction by “Eighth Master” Yuen Woo-ping and Donnie Yen in a leading role, IN THE LINE OF DUTY 4 turned out to be the best in the series although ROYAL WARRIORS holds its own very well.

ROYAL WARRIORS is a slice of ’80s action heaven that possesses just about everything that makes Hong Kong movie mayhem from the era great. It has larger-than-life heroes and villains, iconic screen personalities in Michelle Yeoh and Hiroyuki Sanada and explosive and fast-paced fighting, gunplay and car stunts delivered with all the skill and daring of Hong Kong’s ’80s-era stunt professionals whom fans and filmmakers the world over have come to admire.

The film kicks off with an action sequence unrelated to the film’s main plot that is designed to showcase the emerging screen talents of Michelle Yeoh. While visiting Tokyo as an off-duty police detective, she has a run-in with a pair of yakuza mobsters. To take them on, she borrows a shinai which is a bamboo practice sword used in kendo. In a lightly comedic moment, Yeoh makes a transition from tai chi stance to a Japanese sword stance, mostly to mock her opponents. This and similar affectations that Yeoh uses, largely in the early part of the film, mimic elements of the screen persona that Jackie Chan had developed since the mid-1970s when he began making kung fu comedies with producer Lo Wei. In only her second starring role, Yeoh was clearly being groomed as a female Jackie Chan, an image that fully blossomed when she later teamed up with Chan in POLICE STORY 3: SUPERCOP, the only Jackie Chan film where a female co-star matches Jackie every step of the way.

Trouble follows Yeoh everywhere she goes. On her way back to Hong Kong, she encounters the first two of the film’s four main villains when a gunman (Kam Hing-ying) takes control of an airplane in mid-flight in an attempt to free a war buddy (Michael Chan) who is under police escort for committing crimes that are not made clear. What Kam doesn’t know is that not only is Yeoh on board but so is a sky marshal (Michael Wong) and a Japanese off-duty police officer (Hiroyuki Sanada). Although outnumbered, the two criminals put up a bitter fight that ends with a satisfyingly gruesome and well-deserved death.

During this fight, Sanada makes his big entrance as a somber yet highly athletic fighting hero. Fans of Japanese action cinema from the ’80s would know Sanada as the protege of Sonny Chiba who appeared in hits like SHOGUN’S NINJA (1980) and LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI (1983). His Hong Kong debut was in Corey Yuen’s NINJA IN THE DRAGON’S DEN (1982). He has been seen more recently as Tom Cruise’s sword trainer in THE LAST SAMURAI and as the lead villain in RUSH HOUR 3. Like Yasuaki Kurata, another Japanese action star who worked far more frequently in Hong Kong, Sanada’s screen fight and stunt training was uniquely suited to the demanding rigors of Hong Kong action cinema and he is every bit an equal to Yeoh, perhaps even superior if you discount sex appeal, although ladies might disagree. Throughout the film, Yeoh is doubled during shots depicting advanced acrobatics and full-contact blows to stuntmen. It’s less apparent that Sanada is doubled during his scenes, mostly because his back is not facing the camera as often at Yeoh’s is. To be fair to Yeoh, Sanada had been doing this sort of work a decade before she made her first screen appearance in Sammo Hung’s OWL VS. DUMBO (1984). One thing is clear, Sanada definitely stands out in an industry that at the time was overflowing with screen fighting talent and it’s a shame that he didn’t continue to work in Hong Kong, except for a regrettable role in Chen Kaige’s fantasy co-production THE PROMISE (2005).

Another point regarding Yeoh that is worth mentioning is that despite some doubling, from male stunt actors I might add, she still displays highly dynamic fighting ability at this early stage of her career, thanks in large part to her previous dance training and drive to succeed. One of her more memorable moves is a distinctive flying scissor leg lock to a standing opponent’s neck. Years later, a similar move became the signature maneuver performed by Veronica Ngo in THE REBEL (2007).

After making a great initial impression during the close-quarters brawl in the airplane, Sanada has a brilliant skirmish with David Lam. The sequence, which begins in a car chase and ends on a construction site also highlights the driving skills of Blacky Ko and the film’s dynamic action cinematography as attributed to Wah Ma-chun and Wan Man-kit. During the film’s main car chase, which was supervised by Ko, he makes a cameo as a bus driver. Ko was undoubtedly Hong Kong’s finest car stunt driver who had his hands on the steering wheel of nearly all of the territory’s best car chases and stunts.

The end of this third action sequence sees Sanada getting buried by a mound of dirt in a construction zone as Yeoh fights Lam. It is one of many moments in the film that displays director David Chung’s skill in building suspense and tension during an action sequence. He saves the best for last when Yeoh and Sanada go after the fourth and finale villain, played by Bai Ying, a longtime wuxia and kung fu movie veteran who made his acting debut in King Hu’s wuxia masterpiece DRAGON GATE INN (1966). Here there is another sequence where Yeoh comes to Sanada’s rescue and this time the tension is ratcheted up even more.

One of the film’s most blatantly barbarous action sequences takes place in a night club where Lam comes looking for the heroes with a Mac 10 submachine gun and seemingly endless rounds of ammo. He guns down a handful of patrons in cold blood. Chung seems to enjoy this gratuitous violence because it he goes out of his way to show hapless bystanders getting mowed down for no reason. In the wake of real-life world events like the 2008 Mumbai Attacks in India, this scene can be viewed as highly inappropriate. What is even more unsettling is how Tsang Kan-cheung’s script justifies the violent actions of Lam and his cohorts. They are war veterans with a bond forged under fire that is stronger than any sense of morality or empathy, not unlike the extremist views of real-life terrorists. The film may be unintentionally hitting too close to reality for comfort 22 years after release but there is still satisfaction in seeing such murderers whipped by the likes of Michelle Yeoh. The world needs fictional heroes to lift us up just as much as we need real-life heroes like Sandra Samuel.

The film concludes with a ten-minute action sequence that literally blows away many lesser action film endings. Yeoh and Sanada take on Bai in a quarry rigged with explosives. Instead of a basic fight sequence, Chung opts for a more dynamic scene involving elaborate car stunts, gunplay, pyrotechnics, and fighting. Highlights involve use of an armored car, a rail car and a chainsaw. Mang Hoi crafts an extremely high-impact bout between Yeoh and Bai that involves all sorts of props. It’s like a Jackie Chan end fight, only more brutal and to the point. Chan’s self-directed fights tend to be overlong overly dependent on rapid-fire sparring. Mang, a veteran with substantial experience working with Chan and Sammo Hung seems to have focused only the highlights of past fight work, resulting in a brutal exchange that provides one of Yeoh’s finest moments on screen.

If there is one major flaw in this movie it is the addition of Michael Wong, the Mark Harmon of Hong Kong cinema. He’s a smart-looking American Eurasian who has found and maintained success as an actor in Hong Kong but he possesses the onscreen personality of stale American cheese. It doesn’t help that he lacks substantial screen fighting ability, comic talent and anything else other than looks and the ability to follow direction. ROYAL WARRIORS was one of his first major acting gigs. In the same year he also appeared alongside fellow Eurasian Brandon Lee in LEGACY OF RAGE and in the romancer DEVOTED TO YOU, both produced by D & B Films. Here he plays a man-child, an emotionally and socially immature character who attempts to woo Michelle Yeoh’s character but falls flat. It’s one of those annoying and distracting characters that adds little to the plot other than some light humor that isn’t funny. As with most of his roles, Wong is dreadfully dull and clearly out of Michelle Yeoh’s league onscreen and off. Granted, most men are probably out of Yeoh’s league.

ROYAL WARRIORS is one of the better “girls with guns” flicks, a sub-genre of Hong Kong action cinema that began with a bang in YES, MADAM (1985) and ended with a whimper amid a slew of B-movie retreds in the mid-1990s despite a brief resurgence in 2002 that produced SO CLOSE and NAKED WEAPON. Fans of this sub-genre tend to be more forgiving of these films’ many faults. A lot can be forgiven so long at the film possesses an attractive, butt-kicking female lead able to convincingly shoot and box her way through an assortment of nasty villains. ROYAL WARRIORS fits the bill but what separates this film from others in the sub-genre is high tension maintained throughout and an excellent and rare team-up between Yeoh and Sanada. All that’s missing is a fight between the two.