Magnificent Warriors (1987)
In [i]Magnificent Warriors[/i], female Chinese secret agent Fok Ming-ming is sent to a city near Tibet to connect with another secret agent and rescue the ruler of the city, Youda. Ming-ming is told she will know her connection because of the watch he wears, but when she arrives she initially teams up with a silly conman who ended up with the watch. Ming-ming eventually finds the right contact, Youda brings along his girlfriend, and soon the pack of five are leading a Chinese rebellion against the Japanese soldiers occupying the city.
I’ve watched a lot of kung-fu movies and most of them are set either in China or modern day, but this film feels like a World War II film — and, at times, an Indiana Jones film. The setting is a small city near Tibet during the Second Sino-Japanese War, so there are a lot of sandbags, and Jeeps, and soldiers with rifles and bayonets, and at least one aerial dogfight. Ming-ming arrives in a yellow biplane and is handy with a whip, which adds to the Indiana Jones feel.
The pacing of this movie is slightly off. The film is exactly 90 minutes long, with three nearly exactly 30 minute acts. The first act has plenty of action, but mostly with characters we’ll never see again, and it’s not until the end of the first act that Ming-ming actually arrives in the city and the story begins. In the second act the team is assembled and the mission is underway, but before you know it that’s over and we’re back into a full-on WWII film. The film’s structure follows the 30/30/30 plot arc to a fault; if this film were made today, it would be more like 10/35/35/10.
What sets this film apart, other than the rather unique setting, is the amazing cast. Michelle Yeoh plays Fok Ming-ming, a full 35 years before film critics were goo-gooing over her performance in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Yeoh’s work in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Supercop, and tons of other films established her in the martial arts pantheon, but her fight scenes in this movie rival her contemporaries. The conman she crosses paths with is played by Richard Ng, mostly known from his appearances in all the Lucky Stars films. Ng is one of those guys that can make you laugh one second and knuckle up moments later. Secret Agent 001, Ming-ming’s original connection, is played by Derek Yee (Tung-sing), who appeared in more than 40 Shaw Brothers films before eventually becoming the chairman of the Hong Kong Film Awards Association in 2017.
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[i]Magnificent Warriors[/i] isn’t a great movie, but it’s a good movie with some great scenes. The scale bounces between small fights between a couple of people and large-scale fights that take place between the entire city and a regimen of soldiers. Like a lot of these films, [i]Magnificent Warriors[/i] isn’t sure what it wants to be — an Indiana Jones film, a WWII film, or a straight up kung-fu films. It does each of these things pretty well, but not a great job of combining them seamlessly into one coherent movie.