Royal Warriors

Heavy Duty

Royal Warriors
aka Wong ga jin si
aka In The Line Of Duty
aka In The Line Of Duty 2
Hong Kong 1986
Directed by David Chung
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

Well, this is confusing. So, Royal Warriors is one of Michelle Yeoh’s very early films, the next film she did after Yes, Madam (reviewed here) and Magnificent Warriors (review coming soon). Except, in some territories it’s known as In The Line Of Duty and kicks off that series... even though the next films are nothing to do with this one and feature different cast and characters. Except, it’s also known in some Western states as number two in the In The Line Of Duty series, with Yes, Madam known as the first of the In The Line Of Duty films... even though that one also has nothing in common with the others (other than Yes, Madam also stars Yeoh... in a totally different but similar role).  Okay... so this is all very confusing, it has to be said.

What’s not confusing is that this one has a lot going for it in terms of the action and stunts. Opening with a silly, gang fight sequence in which Yeoh rescues a man completely unrelated to the plot from a pair of thugs, who are also completely unrelated to the rest of the movie... it moves on swiftly to a really strong action sequence on a plane where Yeoh and the two mail protagonists...  a fellow police officer of her majesty’s Hong Kong police force (hence the title this has been released as over here, Royal Warriors... which is kind of tenuous anyway) played by Hiroyuki Sanada and an air security officer called Michael Wong, played by... um... Michael Wong.

However, the two bad guys the three manage to kill before they harm anymore passengers, are part of four friends who promised to look out and avenge each other in whatever war they are flashing back to here. So, our three heroes (Wong is trying to get into a romantic relationship with Yeoh’s character) are targets for the other two. And then, the next day when Sanada’s character leaves the police force to go back to Japan with his wife and kid, he watches the car said spouse and sprog get into explode... and the chase is on, so to speak.

And it’s a pretty heavy and serious film, no doubt about that. There are stabs of humour here and there but none of the usual, very broad comedy I’ve seen in a lot of these types of movies lately (thank goodness). Instead, the film just keeps pouring on the grief with loads of innocent bystanders being killed in the crossfire of the action set pieces and then with Wong’s character killing himself to stop Yeoh’s police officer being lured into the same building as the final killer left standing. In fact, the whole bait for the killer to bring the two surviving cops to where he wants to trap them is Wong’s stolen coffin, under danger of being crushed by the villain... so, yeah, it’s a pretty heavy film a lot of the time.

However, despite the cheesy 80s synthesiser soundtrack... another sad prerequisite for the Hong Kong films of this era, it seems to me... the film is quite solid in the way it positions and executes the various fights, shoot outs and chases in this one. Hiroyuki Sanada has some good fighting moves in this and so does the always brilliant Michelle Yeoh, for sure. You can certainly see why, after doing a load of these Hong Kong movies, she was disappointed that on the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (reviewed by me here) she wasn’t allowed to perform all her own stunts.

And that’s me done on this one, I think. Royal Warriors, or whatever you want to call it this week, is a good, solid Hong Kong action movie and I’m glad I’ve finally started catching up to these films, if a little late in life. Labels like 88 Films and, in this case, Eureka Masters Of Cinema, are doing a good job at finally getting these things released for the UK market and, while I’m skipping a fair amount of the ones they’ve been releasing over the last few years, I’m happy to be able to get to see some of these films and you’ll certainly see a fair few more reviews of this kind of stuff coming up on the blog in the next few months or so... if you like these kinds of things.