Silver Hawk

Michelle Yeoh is apparently trying to kill herself, or at least damage something. The woman will do anything, regardless of how potentially painful it can be. This movie is a little bit tamer than other things I've seen her do, but still. She induces flinching. (I loved watching my mother's face when I made her watch Supercop--the scene where Michelle hung off the side of a van, only to fall off and crash through Jackie Chan's windshield caused Mom some anxiety. I of course piped up, "Michelle Yeoh does all of her own stunts. Jackie Chan isn't the only one.")

Anyway, this movie is about Lulu Wong, a hugely famous woman--she's famous because she's rich, apparently. (What's nifty about Michelle Yeoh playing Lulu is that you can see Michelle being stylish. She isn't usually--it's also interesting that Lulu seems to be MUCH younger than Michelle actually is. Good acting there, Michelle!) Lulu wears all white, and has all kinds of wigs and different hairdos. She knows everyone, everyone loves her, she's perfect. That's her main identity. When criminals strike, she dons a silver mask, a silver suit, a silver jacket, and dashes to the scene on a silver BMW motorcycle. (Gorgeous bike.) Silver Hawk is an appropriate name, as you can see. She has little silver blade things, like Batman's batarangs, or whatever they were called, but she only uses those to disarm people. Once they're empty-handed she starts the a**kicking. The first scene of the movie is the best--the movie starts off with Michelle (I'm assuming it's The Stuntwoman herself) jumping over the Great Wall of China on her bike in pursuit of some poachers. The cinematography here is marvelous. Once she catches them she beats them mercilessly, but it looks beautiful. It doesn't seem like wire-work, but if it isn't then Michelle Yeoh isn't affected by gravity. She does an incredible kick on several of the poor criminals--she runs up the front of a van, then does some sort of pinwheeling roundhouse kick in midair. All of this is in slow-motion, and I actually think real-time would have been more effective. Once the crooks are in a heap on the ground, Silver Hawk reveals her disappointment. "Give me ten more minutes," she asks. Five? Two? By this time the criminals have tied themselves up and completely surrendered. See, Lulu has to put herself in danger to get excited, but since she's such a great fighter she's never really in a perilous situation. (When I said excited, I didn't mean that this is a porno movie. I mean that some people ride roller coasters, others fight crime.)

After that great opening sequence, we're treated to a plot. Professor Ho Chung (one of Lulu's love interests) has developed a completely idiotic artificial intelligence chip that supposedly increases the wearer's standard of living. We see it tested on a young lady--a holographic English butler appears and informs her that she is 48 days pregnant. A co-worker of hers confirms this, yelling, "That's incredible! We only found out yesterday.!" I found myself wondering if the transparent English butler had Tact 2000, a program few people seem to possess. What if the lady didn't want everyone to know she was pregnant? Could the AI detect that, or will it just humiliate everyone endlessly? The guinea pig doesn't seem to mind, she just smiles. An assistant brings her a drink, and the butler explains that the AI taps into your most primitive impulses, in this case thirst. (That amused me--what would it do if someone had a certain other primitive impulse?!?) Finally, it demands that she do some prenatal exercises. She doesn't want to, but the butler isn't taking no for an answer. Finally, the demonstration is concluded. When Professor Chung asks Lulu what she thought, she tells him flat out that she doesn't like it. I don't blame her--she isn't fond of people telling her what to do. HOWEVER... ...enter Alexander Wolfe, a nut with an English accent. He is very fond of telling people what to do, via secret subliminal messaging, preferably. This new device seems to be perfect for his plan, so he sends MICHAEL JAI WHITE to kidnap the professor. (Don't send a Spawn to do a kung-fu master's job.) Once that's done, Wolfe reveals his silly plan--he is going to place the chip into millions of cell phones, and at a certain time he will play the aforementioned subliminal messages. A technology mogul's daughter is kidnapped also, so that Wolfe can force the mogul to place the chips into a new phone model. He does, and Lulu (remember her?) wonders why. She decides to take matters into her own silver-gloved hands.

As it happens, the new police superintendent used to be a friend of Lulu's, and even more coincidentally, he despises Silver Hawk. How can they work together, you ask? Not very well, is how. He has no idea that Lulu and Silver Hawk are the same person, even though anyone with at least one sense could figure it out. (Silver Hawk looks like Lulu, she sounds like her, she might even smell like her, I'm not sure. You get my point.) So, while they have to save the world they also have to contend with each other. The superintendent, Rich Man, is more interested in arresting Silver Hawk than anything else, especially when she humiliates him in front of some teenagers. (He dressed himself in drag, so maybe he shouldn't be so hard on her.) Eventually it comes to the point where Rich Man has to knuckle under and just deal with it.

This was a good action movie, with several nifty fights and some funny parts. I had a couple of gripes, though, and I might as well vent. First--Michelle didn't get to do all the cool stuff the bad guys go to do. For instance, when Silver Hawk first runs into Alexander Wolfe, his minions bounce around and fly through the air using huge rubber bands. It looks incredibly fun, but Michelle is grounded. She has to run around getting kicked in the face. By the time she gets her leg up to kick back, the person has already flown away. It's just that she could have done wonders with that. This same problem pops up in the last fight with Wolfe's goons. They zoom around on rollerblades with hockey sticks. Not Michelle. She has to hit them as they fly by. Again. It could be that Michelle Yeoh didn't want to do these things. That's okay. If for some reason behind the scenes they just decided that she wouldn't do it, that's not okay. She is Silver Hawk--she should fly. Second--this movie falls prey to another problem that's rampant in Michelle Yeoh's films. She's absent for long stretches at a time. Eventually, you get wrapped up in something else and then she pops up again just when you least expected her. That happened in "Royal Warriors," "Supercop," "Supercop 2," "Butterfly and Sword," and gosh, even "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon." I don't want to sit there wondering what happened to her. Did her character die, or just get fed up? Maybe if I had an explanation of why this is done. I realize that Michelle Yeoh gets injured frequently, and that's understandable. Is that the deal? Do they have to shoot around her? Someone fill me in, please. I guess I'm used to Brigitte Lin's films--there is rarely a moment where she doesn't appear. Even if one pops up the filmmaker makes darn sure that you'll think about her. Someone please give Michelle Yeoh the same courtesy.

In this movie, Michelle Yeoh plays Lulu Wong, a much-idolised rock star and philanthropist by day, and a super heroine, Silver Hawk, who fights injustice in skin-tight black leather outfit as her alter-ego. Richie Ren plays police detective Richman, who has an uncanny instinct and incredible wit, but he hates Silver Hawk for being always two steps ahead of the police. Both of them, however join hands to fight a baddie, Wolfe (Luke Goss) who wants to dominate the world through a special microchip in mobile phones which will broadcast subliminal message to users.

Directed by cinematographer-turned-director Jingle Ma (Hot War, Tokyo Raiders, Summer Holiday, Goodbye,Mr.Cool and Para Para Sakura), the action scenes are beautifully choreographed, especially the one where a group of bungee jumpers armed with hockey sticks attacking our heroine in an outdoor arena. The opening sequence is also awesome with Yeoh riding a motorcycle and jumping over the Great Wall of China. There's also ample use of CGI to enhance the action sequences throughout the movie. Although the script is pretty straight forward, Ma succeeds in presenting the story in an entertaining way with constant flashbacks to the past when Lulu and Richman were studying at a Shaolin Temple. The two kids who play them are excellent, especially the boy.

Yeoh is a delight to watch. She looks great in her well-designed outfits and executes her fighting scenes with style and finesse. Her experience in martial arts helped tremendously. Providing comic relief is Brandon Chang, who plays a computer whiz kid who constantly pops up to annoy Richie Ren. Wolfe's role was downplayed. Instead his two assassins played by Bingbing Li and Michael Jai White (Universal Soldier: The Return and Spawn) got most of the action. Surprisingly, both of them had no dialogue in the movie.

Nonetheless, Silver Hawk is an entertaining movie which promises good laughs and visual delights for this Lunar New Year.

My wife and I didn't expect much from this film, knowing that it has the worst box office in the past ten years for a Chinese New Year release and how much we loathed "The Touch"... However, being a sucker for bad movies, I opted for the action movie rather than the other usual comedies and I wasn't disappointed at all. Yes, the dialogues might be a bit dodgy, a common flaw amongst Hong Kong production nowadays, trying to look "Hollywood-esque" but we were there for the action and we got what we were looking for, great fight sequence with each character having his/her own fighting style.

I have seen most of Yeoh's movies and this one ranked right at the top with "crouching tiger hidden dragon". Most of her film roles were forgettable but "silver hawk" at least leaves a more lasting impression albeit Yeoh really begin to look her years. I certainly hope that a sequel would follow but judging from the box-office, I might be pushing too far.

SILVER HAWK (3 outta 5 stars)

Pretty decent action-hero yarn starring Michelle Yeoh as the title character... who dresses up in a silver coat and mask and goes around beating up bad guys and making the police look bad. She meets up with a childhood sweetheart who now happens to be in charge of a police task force devoted to putting a stop to her vigilante tactics. They are forced to team up to fight a madman with a plan to take over the world with some mind-altering telephone technology. The story is pretty standard... but the stunts and fights (which are very reminiscent of The Matrix and Tomb Raider movies) are fun. I was glad to see that, while the movie does have lots of humour, the movie is not too "camp". Fun for the whole family!

Asia doesn't have many bona-fide superheroes in their fantastic fiction; they tend to have kung fu masters and such, but apart from Black Mask (which was very mediocre) I don't think I've seen any other real Asian superhero movies except for this one; Silver Hawk. It is a true combo of kung fu and super-heroics, as the main character, Lulu Wong (Michelle Yeoh), has excelled in the martial arts since childhood and have found a way to use her martial arts for the good of all society as the silver-costumed hero Silver Hawk.

The movie takes place in the future, where they have holographic mahjong and some brand-new mind-reading devices. Stylistically, everything is entirely kept in ice-blue glass and metal, which all looks sleek and cool, but also rather cold and inhuman.

A human dimension is added, however, in the childhood flashbacks, where a lot of connections are drawn to Silver Hawk's adult life. For instance, the reason she wears a mask is because she did so as a kid, too, to disguise her identity when she was kung fu brawling in defiance of her teachers' orders. This cross-time dimension with her childhood works very well indeed, also because she runs into her childhood friend again as an adult, his having become a police chief. Initially he wants to catch Silver Hawk, but as soon as he finds out who she is, he starts working with her.

The bad guy (supervillain, really), Fire Wolf, is quite dull, and his plan not very well described. There are a couple of plot holes in the story, too, and while the action is pretty good, the fighting isn't spectacular. But still a relatively good and watchable movie. I rate it a 6 out of 10.

I'm very interested in movies that combine kung fu and science fiction. My list so far includes Silver Hawk, Avenging Fist, Jet Li's The One, and, of course, the Matrix Trilogy, and Equilibrium. And also, Star Wars, sort of, since the Jedi abilities are a form of martial arts... I hope to discover more movies with kung fu and sci-fi combined.