Hong Kong action movies in the 80s were made on such short production schedules that calling them 'quickies' is almost flattery. This one is no exception, a serio-comic cop actioner with a crazy plot that is at once simplistic and yet totally unbelievable. The police procedural plot is so silly and slap-dash it makes Crockett and Tubbs look like Holmes and Watson. Famed director Tsui Hark stars as a two-bit forger who, by a series of coincidences, stumbles across a valuable piece of microfilm, then discovers that a dangerous hit man is after it too. Detectives Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock team up to follow the microfilm up the criminal food chain, hoping it will lead them, by another series of coincidences, I guess, to the hit man. Or something. I swear, Hong Kong is about the only place where a movie maker would attempt to shoot a murder mystery / police procedural story without bothering to fully work out the plot first... Or bothering to check with a police technical adviser to see how many laws the cops broke in 90 minutes. Anyway, Hark is pretty funny in his scenes as a coward adept at dodging and running away and sticking other people with his problems, and Yeoh and Rothrock kick major butt in their action scenes. If you take the movie on its merits and don't compare it to CSI too closely it makes for pretty decent low brow entertainment. Note that (this film having been shot in 1985) Yeoh and Rothrock - and everybody else - did all of their own stunts and that no wire work was used in the fight scenes, just a little slo-mo to stylize the action. As athletes, they were pretty impressive!
Review of Yes, Madam!
