#david chung

[manderley]

ᴍɪᴄʜᴇʟʟᴇ ʏᴇᴏʜ ɪɴ

𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐬 (𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟕)

[twilightronin]

I Love Maria - David Chung & Tsui Hark 1988

[separateways]

Brigitte Lin in WEB OF DECEPTION (1989) dir. David Chung

[of-fear-and-love]

[brody75]

Royal Warriors (1986)

[flashfuckingflesh]

Digging Up the EVIL Disentombs the Past! "Exhuma" reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Open the Blu-ray Coffin on “Exhuma” Today! A shaman and her assistant recruit a geomancer and a mortician to investigate the case of an American newborn boy’s distressing grave calling that has also haunted every patriarch member of the family for generations.  The large paying job sends them to remote forest where the unmarked grave of the boy’s great, great grandfather lies beneath the…

[omercifulheaves]

Roboforce a.k.a. I Love Maria (1988)

[hotpotdragon]

Royal Warriors (1986)

[zaat]

I Love Maria (鐵甲無敵瑪利亞) aka Roboforce (1988) dir. David Chung & Tsui Hark

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Royal Warriors (Chung, 1986)

You know you're off to a good start when a movie opens with not just one, but two great action sequences. First you get Michelle Yeoh as a cop on vacation visiting Japan and doing touristy things like snapping pictures of street performers, only to run into a bunch of mob goons chasing some poor bastard. These mob goons are extra dangerous because they have swords, but you get Yeoh and the precision of her movements as she takes these suckers out one by one. Then you get Yeoh on a plane with Hiroyuki Sanada holding a giant stuffed animal and Michael Wong providing security, and a bunch of bad guys being transported as prisoners, only for some other bad guys to try to free them. You learn that two of the bad guys are named Tiger and Cockerel, and you know which one pulled the short straw when picking cool nicknames. You get a lot of punching and kicking and shooting in close quarters, one guy going out like Goldfinger (almost), and a thing with a grenade that you probably shouldn't try at home. We're off to a great start.

This is an early girls with guns actioner, in that it stars a girl with a gun in Michelle Yeoh (although she uses her arms and legs too), but pairs her with a couple of guys probably because producers were still uncertain about the viability of female-led action films and wanted to hedge their bets. To the movie's credit, Yeoh gets to be plenty badass and does not need much saving, as can happen in more annoying examples of bet-hedging, and actually plays off pretty well with the male leads while providing a charismatic centre. And she also plays things pretty by the book, at least until the end, which is a nice enough surprise. Anyway, alongside Yeoh you get Michael Wong as a hunky, goofy cop, providing some comedic elements without getting too annoying. He hits on Yeoh with some regularity, but it feels more like flirting between coworkers than the straight up sexual harassment you often get in these movies. And you get Hiroyuki Sanada as a Japanese cop, a more stoic counterpoint to the other two. I guess he's hunky too, but for him it's not really a character trait. And I suppose Yeoh is hunky too, whatever the girl version of hunky is. Hunkette. Let's go with that. I promise I'll be less thirsty in my reviews going forward but I've been sick the last few days so please forgive me. I'm drinking lots of water so that should help. Anyway, how hunky he is doesn't matter because he's a family man and off the market, until his family gets horrifically murdered with a car bomb. But there's no time to get back in the dating scene because he's off to get his revenge.

The bad guys do some revenging too, and in fact murdered Sanada's family in the first place for that reason, although there's a bit of a chain reaction happening here. Anyway, you get a lot of great action scenes, one of them in a neon-lit nightclub, a car chase turned demolition derby, lots of collateral damage in the form of innocent bystanders, non-zero amounts of Seinfeld bass, some sacrifices, some heroism, plenty of bloodshed, some heroic bloodshed while we're at it, some mishandled evidence, a twist involving two carefully edited videotapes, a fight scene involving a chainsaw, Sanada trapped under a car sliding across a gravel pit as Yeoh pushes it with her armoured car, a bunch of explosions that look too close for comfort, and I'm having a good time. If you're watching it on the Criterion Channel, I should note that the subtitles drop out for a little bit during a climactic fight scene, but as the characters are conversing through the universal language of punching and kicking, little is lost in translation.

[twilightronin]

I Love Maria - David Chung & Tsui Hark 1988

[genkinahito]

Royal Warriors 皇家戰士 (1986) Dir: David Chung

[of-fear-and-love]

Tony Leung in 鐵甲無敵瑪利亞 / I Love Maria (1988)

[bens-things]

Magnificent Warriors (1987) dir. David Chung

[flashfuckingflesh]

A Pact Plans EVIL Revenge on Crime Fighting Heroes! "Royal Warriors" reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

“Royal Warriors,” a Revenge Tale, Now on Blu-ray from 88 Films! Hong Kong police inspector boards a Hong Kong bound plane on return from her vacationing in Japan.  She meets Michael Wong, the plane’s air marshal, as well as her across the aisle seat mate, Japanese native, Yamamoto, a retired cop returning to Hong Kong to retrieve his wife and daughter and retreat back to Japan to start their new…

[moviesiveseenandwanttoremember]

David Chung’s “中華戰士” (Magnificent Warriors) April 16, 1987.