Angel Force

aka 天使特警 aka Tian shi te jing

1991
Written by Johnny Lee Gwing-Gaai
Directed by Hua Shan

Angel Force gives us what we want, tons and tons of action. Sure, there’s a plot in there, a half-baked rescue mission in the jungle that for some reason is done by cops, and some corrupt cops angle, but mostly it is just tons and tons of action. Shooting, kicking, knifing, punching, ridiculous stunts…Hong Kong action at its finest. These are the types of videos guys like me seeked out like crack at rental stores because nothing like this was coming out of US studios. Angel Force just brings back so many memories of renting anything I could from the woefully undersupplied Foreign section of the local video stores, at least until I got to a town with an awesome video store, and then the rise of cheap DVDs.

One thing about Angel Force is the film randomly leaves the Hong Kong cop setting for the middle of the film to do a jungle commando rescue mission, a la the beginning of Predator. This sets Angel Force enough different from the competition without it becoming one of several jungle commando pictures that were also out at the time. I do love all these girls with guns flicks, the danger is with most having similar plots and featuring the same core of actresses, without ridiculous stunts the films will begin to blur. So anything that helps a picture stand out is good in my book.

May (Moon Lee Choi-Fung) – Cop who is sent to the jungle to take down a terorist general and rescue hostages, because you want cops doing that, not the army. Even though she brings army guys. Moon Lee can also be seen in Angels, Fatal Termination, and Tomb Raiders/Avenging Quartet Peter Lung and Helen Lung (Wilson Lam Jun-Yin and ???) – Peter is a hardworking cop who keeps getting called back to work and thus having no time for vacations, which upsets his wife Helen. Peter gets shot halfway through the movie and misses out on the jungle battle. Their son is Yaya, who gets giant ninja turtle toy and quizzes everyone on what “make love” is. Benny (Hugo Ng Doi-Yung) – Crazy guy brought in on the commando team because he’s awesome at commando stuff. But he’s also a jerk and likes to rape women, so up yours, Benny!