Martial Angels (2001)

The movie is another Wong Jing's classic style that makes no apologies about its intent to just entertain. If you read the subtitles, the story isn't so bad. Shu Qi's old boy friend returns after 2 years, but he gets kidnapped. Now Shu Qi and six other girls goes out to get him back.The movie is bit like Charlies Angels in that all girls team performs action. But the girls are much better looking than the real Charlie's Angels (US movie version that is), although their skin exposure remains low.The movie is bit comical because of the outrageous plot of six women working together to perform theft as their profession, and all other plot being outlandish as well, but it sticks to it's purpose to entertain. I found this movie to be pretty good entertainment, and the chemistry of members of the team interesting. Not a bad movie to be part of the mix of other light hearted entertainment that are not only made in Hong Kong, but also from Hollywood.

If you are a fan of beautiful women, this is definitely something to rent. If you cannot stand (at times) really crappy special effects, don't check this one out unless you've seen everything already. I'm a big fan of Shu Qi as well as a chinese student, so for me this was a no brainer. I'm also someone who can just rear back and laugh at either bad acting or bad effects. At times this movie was really engaging. The story was interesting enough - although nothing too special for Hong Kong cinema. The fight sequences were interesting. The characters to watch in this movie are however worth it. The interaction between Bone and Spider (god i love names in chinese movies) is unforgettable. That and Shu Qi is lovely and a damn fine actress like always. out of 10, eh, i'd have to say the movie was about a 5.5 - 6.5, depending on who you're watching it with, like an utter intellectual, 1.0 or if it's a good friend who likes to laugh as much as you at cheesy things, 8.0

Sometimes you need to see a bad movie just to appreciate the good ones. Well, that's my opinion anyway. This one will always be in the bad movie category, simply because all but Shu Qi's performance was terrible.Martial Angel tells of Cat (Shu Qi), a professional thief turned straight after leaving her lover, Chi Lam (Julian Cheung), two years before. But her past returns to haunt her as Chi Lam is kidnapped for the ransom of security software belonging to the company Cat works for. In order to rescue him, she calls on her old friends from her orphanage days, six other feisty women, to save the day...I may have told the synopsis cheesily, but this is a cheesy story. In fact, the whole script and direction lacked any quality at all. Much of the dialogue was meaningless and coupled with a plot that was as thin as rice-paper in water. If I could sum it up, take a bad Jackie Chan movie, remove the comedy, remove the choreography, throw away the budget, and you have Martial Angels: a formulaic piece of work with no imagination at all.Mind you, I do have to give credit where credit's due, and Shu Qi was probably the only person to emerge unscathed from the terrible action, as it was her performance that shone through. Okay, you can't say she was excellent - after all she had absolutely nothing to work with - but she did manage to dig some character out from her role. Other than that, only Sandra Ng and Kelly Lin made any other impression - although these were mostly glimmers and very brief.Elsewhere, the film just fell to pieces. Scenes and dialogue were completely unnatural and unbelievable, special effects were obviously done on the cheap with no attempt to clean up edges between persons and the mask of the blue screen, poor editing involving numerous discontinuities in fight scenes, camera angles that were elementary and unflattering, and direction I've seen better from a lost dog.I guess this film was a too many cooks affair. Most probably, the budget was blown away on the over-enthusiasm to have seven babes on the same silver screen. That didn't leave much else.Frankly, the way this film was made was like a cheap porn movie without the porn. Charlie's Angels, it ain't. In fact, while sisters can do it for themselves, none of that was really that apparent here.Definitely one to forget.

Reasons to avoid this film: bad script, bad action, bad effects, low budget, and just generally stupid. Reasons to see this film: Shu Qi, Kelly Lam Hei-Lui, Teresa Mak Ga Kei, Sophie Ngan Wing Sze, Sandra Ng Kwun-Yu, Rosemary, and Amanda Strang. This is basically Charlie's Angels meets Mission Impossible 2 on a shoestring budget (but they can afford to blow a few small things up and rent a helicoptor). Perhaps good for a rental or if you're obsessed with Shu Qi (in which case you would do better renting "Sex and Zen 2" or "Shu Qi - Body Show".