Silver Hawk

I won't lie. I LOVE Michelle Yeoh. I would watch a ninety minute movie in which she simply reads a phone book (not two hours, though...I'm not that big a fan). From the beginning of this movie to the end, they give you what you want: Michelle Yeoh, kicking butt...

Her Silver Hawk costume is simply silver cloth and hotpants. The best special effect is her motorcycle. My son was immediately reminded of Batgirl.

But, Yeoh is fun...smiling as she beats up villains, giggling with her female friends...far from the solemn character that she was in Crouching Tiger. Her personality was much more like Wing Chun.

The martial arts sequences are good and you can see that Yeoh did a lot of her own stunts. The villain looks particularly villainous. There is very little death in this and the violence is cartoonish.

A joy to watch!

I love Asian action movies. So when I saw the case for this, I had to check it out and picked up the DVD. I wish that I had just rented it. I was hoping for something as much fun as Returner. Silver Hawk, however, is not it. The movie is decent, but other than a couple of moments in the movie, it just doesn't fare too well. In some fights the action is pretty good but in others it's just overly cheesy. Don't get me wrong, I like cheesy stuff sometimes, but some of this was just bad. The editing and slow motion parts in the fights were crappy. Another problem, and this is the fault of the DVD makers and not the movie itself, is that the DVD did not contain the original language track. So I had to contend with a really bad dubbing job as well. Despite all that, there is some fun to be had. Michelle Yeoh and Richie Ren looked like they were having fun, and there was some good unintentional humor. It wasn't a total waste of money, but if I could go back I wouldn't have bought it. The bottom line is, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it's no where near the best either. It's merely forgettable, and that's worse than being horribly bad. If you want a good fun action movie go get Returner which stars Takeshi Kaneshiro and Anne Suzuki. Let Silver Hawk be a renter.

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.

I wasn't expecting much after Michelle Yeoh's last flop "the Touch". "Silver Hawk" doesn't have such a great story, but the action scenes were really well done. the part where Yeoh flew over the Great Wall with her motorcycle was particularily amazing. Jingle Ma once again proves his talent as an action movie director a few years after "Tokyo Raiders" (skip "Goodbye Mister Cool" and "Para Para Sakura" unless you're really desperate). Another good reason to go see "Silver Hawk" is the absence of Ekin Cheng from the cast. That guy seems to star in too many HK movies since the mid 1990s. Worth mentioning is "Yin Xiong"'s Chen Daoming, who delivers a great performance. "Silver Hawk" is by far the most successful HK attempt at adapting a comic superhero to the big screen after "Hak Hap" and the mediocre "Hak Hap 2: City of Masks". Just for that I would give it a 7/10.

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.