Angel Cop - Final Crisis
The Cat is back. The good news is that Almen Wong
has returned to the screen in an action role. The bad news is that she
has returned in this one - a film that has obscurity written all over it
for very good reasons. Almen of course made a large impact with her role
as a deadly assassin in the 1998 film, Her Name is Cat – and the image
of her decked out in hip high blue boots, blue bikini and gun with her
body glistening in sweat has become an icon of HK film – alluring, sexy
and dangerous. At the time she mentioned in interviews that she would like
to make more action films – and was training hard for the opportunity –
but her timing was all wrong. The female action figure of the “girls with
guns” genre was in a steep decline and nothing has been able to reverse
that yet.
Almen went on to make a few very solid films –
she has a lovely action scene in The Group – but gave her best performance
in the terrific dramatic film, The Accident, in which she plays a beautiful
but lonely Cat. III actress. She also made a “Keep Fit” video that was
purchased by a number of men who never had the slightest intention of exercising
along with Almen – the picture of Almen on the cover is explanation enough
for that buying decision. After that she had a baby girl (Camelot) and
seemed to disappear from the screen. Well, she is back in this film and
if anything looks better and more athletic than ever. She has three action
scenes and shows some great moves and high kicks. Unfortunately, the rest
of the film is to put it kindly mind numbingly bad.
It reminds me of some of those low budget “girls
with guns” films of the past and interestingly much of it takes place in
the Philippines, as was the habit of many of those films. The action choreography
is not bad – very Matrix like at times which makes no sense in the context
of the film – but still not too bad to watch – but the script is ghastly
and appears to have been written by someone with attention deficit syndrome.
It’s all over the place and has some elephant like coincidences take place.
Almen doesn’t show up until the 30-minute mark or so (hopefully she was
off making a better film elsewhere!) – but is involved in action almost
immediately. Lets take this one from the beginning.
Three Interpol agents are after some terrorists
and almost have one nailed in Hong Kong when the HK police show up looking
for a weapons dealer (Ben Ng in a small cameo) and mess up the arrest.
The film then decides to jump to the HK cop – a young red-lipped fellow
who pouts more often than Chingmy Yau – and he later tries to kill himself
for a lost love as a treackly love ballad plays in the background. Regretfully,
he survives - and his Internet pen pal, Grasshopper, tells him to go look
for a woman. He picks up a girl in a bar – but she is one of the terrorists
(and a very efficient killer) and she seduces him into going to the Philippines
with her. It’s a set up of course – and in his escape he jumps into a car
trunk and then walks into this person’s house.
It’s Almen’s house and she beats the crap out
of him with a few flying kicks to the head – but it turns out that Almen
is – yes – Grasshopper. What an amazing twist in this script. Anyway, they
bond except Almen is a lesbian and her girlfriend soon grows a bigger pout
than the fellow. Eventually, they all meet up with the terrorists. Along
the way though may be the two worst death dialogue scenes in the history
of cinema – one in which the dying guy grouses that he hasn’t seen “Accidental
Spy” yet – and another in which the wife tells the guy that she will need
to have “monkey affairs” after he is gone. How the actors kept straight
faces is simply astonishing. So its great to see Almen again – lets hope
the next time will be in a better film.
My rating for this film: 3.5
Thanks to Dan of the Almen
Wong site for letting me know of this film and for the good work on
his site.