Meng xing xue wei ting

Judging from the other reviews, I seem to be in the minority in enjoying Dreaming the Reality as much as I do. I saw it back in the late 1990's on a not great VHS tape with the occasional hard-to-read subtitles. I am guessing that this is still the best print out there. I had been looking for this movie for years. Thanks to YouTube, I was finally able to re-watch it this week.

Two plot threads are juggled in Dreaming the Reality. In one, two unrelated girls are raised to be stone cold assassins by their criminal adopted father. As adults, one (Yukari Oshima) seems to have accepted her role, while the other (Moon Lee) has great doubts about the life. Meanwhile, in Thailand, an ex-cop turned restaurant owner (Sibelle Hu) and her brother get into trouble with the criminal owner of a kickboxing stadium. Eventually, these two stories come together over a lot of beaten, shot, and blown apart bodies. The finale is the highpoint, with the adopted father/daughter showdown giving the viewer a gleefully intense ride.

Admittedly, the film's story is pretty simple and there are more kickboxing ring matches than needed. On the other hand, the action scenes are dynamite and Moon Lee looks gorgeous. Perhaps more of a guilty pleasure than a great movie, Dreaming the Reality lives up to my memory of it. I am not disappointed at all, which is not always true in re-watching old favorites.

(1991) Dreaming The Reality (In Chinese with English subtitles) ACTION/ COMEDY

Co-written and directed by Chun-Ku Lu that has Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima, frequent female collaborators of such films as "Angel", "Mission Of Justice" and "Kickboxer's Tears" to name a few, star together as sisters, Silver Fox and Silver Fox's sister, trained to be assassins for the self absorbed fathers growing empire. A slight turn-around happen at the last hit job, involving a small school bus full of children colliding with the intended target and then as a result got children killed in an almost botched operation but the job was completed afterall. Then on the next assignment, Moon Lee receives amnesia while trying to escape from the Philippine authorities with a suitcase handcuffed onto her hand of a runaway airport, it is then, she meets with actress Sibelle Hue as a tough as nails gambler and her brother Rocky (Ben Lam) entering a 'maui thai kickboxing' matches, with his protective sister trying to keep him out from dealing with the sleazy club's owner. Some of the comedy routines work, but in terms of the action does not rival as the best neither Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima's had ever done, especially from their previous action efforts but as an action fan it's still entertaining! There is more 'Thai kickboxing' than I needed to see.

An expert assassin - trained since childhood to be the perfect killer - loses her memory during a mission in Thailand, and ends up in the care of a wry ex-policewoman and her boxing cohort. The equally lethal sister of the assassin pursues her, uncertain of her intentions and whether to kill her.

A great comedic boxing drama and a badass female assassin noir in one and it makes an ok concoction, though Sibelle Hu has a penchant of smoking and fighting. There's some good action, and choreography, though it can be a bit too gory, a little more than the other gun and gals genre films I have seen. It's a distracting enough and as always Moon Lee as the guilt-ridden assassin who loses her memory and Yukari Oshima as her sister -a much colder character - are great. Eddy Ko is effective as the domineering and criminal uncle of the assassins. What a gung-ho finale!

The 1980s "girls with guns" films from Hong Kong can be pretty hit-or-miss for viewers who aren't particular fans of that subgenre, but I'm happy to say that DREAMING THE REALITY is a general hit. Imperfect though it may be, it makes the most of its cast and features an accessible, surprisingly dramatic and funny storyline. Action heroines Moon Lee, Sibelle Hu, and Yukari Oshima have made movies together before, but this one's the best of their team-ups that I've seen.

The story: An expert assassin (Lee) - trained since childhood to be the perfect killer - loses her memory during a mission in Thailand, and ends up in the care of a wry ex-policewoman (Hu) and her boxing cohort (Ben Lam). The equally lethal sister of the assassin (Oshima) pursues her, uncertain of her intentions and whether to kill her.

Like many movies of this era, it takes a while to warm up: though it opens with the humorously macabre scene of the assassins as children practicing marksmanship and blowing away a (toy) bunny, it's not until the film's second half that the drama, comedy, and action portions reach their zenith. An early action highlight includes a surprisingly lengthy and well-balanced boxing match between Ben Lam and an uncredited opponent, but the two standout scenes include an effectively emotional exchange between Moon and Yukari and a lengthy shootout that John Woo would have been proud of, featuring the heroines going through a number of different weapons and causing a ton of explosions. Lee and Oshima do good with most everything they attempt, but while Sibelle does well while holding a shotgun and a baseball bat, her single one-on-one fight sees her being doubled a lot.

Hu shines more evenly as the dramatic force of the picture: her role as the cigarette-smoking big sister is my favorite of her career so far, and she's responsible for about half of the humor in the film. Ben Lam is a little colorless, but while Oshima and Lee are merely passable on their own, they display a surprising dramatic chemistry in the scenes they share, including the aforementioned fight scene. The writers of the film - Lee Ho and Tony Liu - deserve at least some of the credit for this, though they couldn't resist inserting some weirdness into some portions of the picture, like when our heroes inexplicably decide to bury two of their fallen comrades in the woods instead of giving them a proper burial. Nevertheless, the movie's still more dramatically accessible than many a lesser-known Hong Kong action flick - at least enough so for me to enjoy it.

These aren't the most enthusiastic four stars I've ever awarded, but DREAMING THE REALITY certainly does enough things right to qualify for its score. As of this writing, it's ridiculously expensive to get a hold of, but I encourage you to try and watch it at a more reasonable cost if you can. You can definitely do worse for any of the stars involved!

A trio of deadly China dolls is the reason to see this HK actioner DREAMING THE REALITY (1991). SIBELLE HU joins forces with MOON LEE to take revenge; both have lost the person closest to them, and the villain of the piece is FOK (the late EDDY KO is appropriately slimy and despicable).

MOON LEE and YUKARI OSHIMA have been trained as assassins by their adoptive father FOK. The pre-credits sequence details their training at a very early age, and clearly differentiates the personalities of the two girls/women; the vicious nature of their foster brother and the ruthlessness of their mentor FOK.

There is a lengthy section of the film that takes place in Thailand, where a would be boxer and his sister run foul of a cruel and manipulative promoter. Of course, the two female assassins are then assigned a mission in Thailand, where of course, the two very different pairs of siblings are fated to meet.

There is the usual non-stop action, well choreographed but preposterous; the needless mayhem and senseless elimination of all the minor and some of the major characters; some interesting location shooting, and of course, the appeal of seeing the three women do their thing - something they do often and well

Though I was pleased that this film was broadcast locally on a Vancouver multi-cultural station, I am prone to dismiss this film as one that I would watch once, and no more.