Asian Charlie’s Angels

2001
Starring
Christy Chung! as An Qi
Kelly Lin Hsi-Lei as ???
Annie Wu Chen-Chun as ???/Zheng Ke Ren
Cheng Jutsi as ???
??? as Feng Ming
??? as Zhong Wen
??? as Pan Jai Xi

It seems America is not the only country where guys named Charlie hire beautiful women to solve crimes. Hong Kong has joined the fun, and their Charlie follows in his American counterpart’s footsteps. What results is a television pilot for a failed Chinese TV series (as best as I can gather from the few available sources) complete with all the bad parts left in that show you why it wasn’t ordered as a full series. Lots of bad spots. A few bright spots show up, but the show mostly contains some odd elements, some things left completely unexplained, and two main characters developed so flimsily that the VCD case this movie came in is thicker. The three Angels are played by some well known actresses, which puts the failure entirely on the shoulders of the writers/directors/producers. How you can score some big names and then fail in every other aspect must take some skill. Well, Uwe Boll pulls it off, but China should be emulating good directors. Christy Chung is the biggest name here of the three, not only is she super hot, but she’s pretty well known internationally. Kelly Lin is also known a bit outside of Hong Kong, as is Annie Wu, but neither to the extent of Christy Chung (Chung was previously seen here in Red Wolf.) Still, they are all big names in Hong Kong, and star power alone should have guaranteed a hit, even moderately. That it didn’t should be a warning sign. A big warning sign. Billboard size. Billboard seen from space size. Billboard seen from outside the galaxy size. What I’m saying is, pretty big. This is technically Part 2, seeming to be the second half of a two-hour pilot, yet it’s pretty stand alone as it is. If I ever run across Part 1, I’ll update this review, but there is no need to wait, especially since there is plenty of pain to go around for this episode, mixed with the guilty pleasure of seeing the hot Angels run around. From what little I’ve found of the missing first half, it has nothing to do with what happens here, anyway. So let’s sail away on the Angel train of adventure. Grab your halo and wings, it will be a bumpy ride…