Angel’s Mission (Review)
Angel’s Mission
aka Xian fa zhi ren
1990
Directed by Godfrey Ho and Chris Li
A Hong Kong Girls with Guns film, starring mainstay Yukari Oshima as well as costars Dick Wei and Phillip Ko. Directed by the infamous Godfrey Ho (though there are rumors that this Godfrey Ho was just a pseudonym for Phillip Ko!) and some random guy named Chris Li. This film followed in the wake of the Angels films and is filled with lots of action thrown together with a cops and triads plot where women beat up and shoot lots of dudes. The fad produced a great deal of these films before the market moved on to other things. So here’s one of them. It’s not the best, it’s not the worst, it just is. And some days, isn’t that enough?
Angel’s Mission is also known as Xian fa zhi ren, as well as Born to Fight, Buddha’s Justice, Kicking Buddha, and Sin faat jai yan. Welcome to the world of renamed Hong Kong movies!
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Chen Kuan-Tai, Chris Li, Dick Wei, Godfrey Ho, Ha Chi-Jan, Hong Kong, James Ha Chim-Si, Lee Chun-Wa, Phillip Ko, Women who kick butt, Yukari Oshima
Angel Enforcers (Review)
Angel Enforcers
aka Wong ga fei fung
1989
Directed by Hoh Chi Mau (probably Godfrey Ho)
Another in the long line of female action movies from Hong Kong, this uses the Angel name in its title despite being unrelated to Angel. The 1989 release date puts it near the beginnings of the movement, so it was released before the genre became fully saturated and the public moved on to different interests. That doesn’t mean it is a good film, but it is entertaining, lots of people end up getting shot, and main characters don’t even make it through the end of the film! What is weird is the film seems billed as a group of four female cops, but two of them have roles that are less substantial than minor characters in the film. It is what we would call “crazy”. The film is directed by Hoh Chi Mau, but this is the only film he is listed as directing, and on the dubbed trailer Godfrey Ho is listed as director(!) so this is probably just another of his pseudonyms. Previous Godfrey Ho encounters on TarsTarkas.NET include Robo Vampire (since proved NOT Godrey Ho), Catman in Lethal Track, Catman in Boxers Blow, and Deadly Target; so you can see why we are not too pleased to run into him again. Keep in mind that sometimes Godfrey Ho’s name showed up as director of films he didn’t do after Joseph Lai’s company released them (one noticeable example is Wolf Devil Woman, really directed by Pearl Cheung Ling.) Angel Enforcers is supposed to be out on DVD, but all we have is a subtitled, tore up VHS (and as those DVDs are just sourced from VHS, so we aren’t that far behind in quality) so that’s what we got screencaps from. Heck, maybe I’ll upgrade to Laserdisc next! The Inaccurate Movie DataBase is all over the map on the cast listing here, throwing in all sorts of actors and actresses that are nowhere near this film. But that’s what happens when you let the general public edit things. Enough complaining, we must get with the non-stop Hong Kong action! Cops shooting, criminals being evil, people dying, and women kicking butt!
First let’s meet our characters….
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Aan Lee, Chiu Wai-Ling, Dick Wei, Godfrey Ho, Ha Chi-Jan, Hong Kong, Kitty Meng Chui, Phillip Ko, Sharon Yeung Pan Pan, sodomy, Women who kick butt
Godfather’s Daughter (Review)
Godfather’s Daughter
aka Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues aka Lit foh ching sau
1992
Starring
Yukari Oshima as Amy
Mark Cheng as Wai
Alex Man
Ken Lo as Kuyama
Slooooooow pacing, hackneyed plot, genre indecision, this movie has it all! What becomes finally a revenge movie spends most of the time jumping back and forth between a terrible Goodfellows ripoff to being Godfather, until the lazy writers get around to killing off enough characters that it’s revenge time. Luckily this movie seems to have as many names as genres it becomes, in addition to Godfather’s Daughter, The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues, and Lit foh ching sau, it’s also called Flaming Love Enemy which is what the Chinese title translates into. The journey is frought with pain and suffering, and mindcrushing boredom. This movie could have used a team of whipmasters to speed up the pacing, as scenes draaaaaaaaaaaag like a cripple’s foot.
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Alex Man Chi-Leung, Benny Lai Keung-Kuen, Dick Wei, Fung Hak-On, Hong Kong, Ken Lo Wai-Kwong, Mark Cheng Ho-Nam, Yukari Oshima