Royal Warriors 
皇家戰士 「Wong Gaa Si Ze」
Release Date: June 26th, 1986
Duration: 98 mins.
Director: David Chung
Writer: Tsang Kan-Cheung (Screenplay),
Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michael Wong, Ying Bai,
After Yes, Madam! (1985) raked in over HK$10 million at the box office, Michelle Yeoh was offered another chance to pay a high kicking hero in the Hong Kong Police with Royal Warriors.
Her second silver screen sortie as the lead action star saw her play a different character from the first film and she was teamed up with Japanese heart-throb/action star Hiroyuki Sanada (a draw for the Japanese market) and newbie actor Michael Wong as the trio bring an even bigger action extravaganza with higher production values than Yes, Madam! To create a thrilling and tight action film.
The story starts with Hong Kong police detective Michelle Yip (Michelle Yeoh) returning from a holiday in Japan. When she foils a plane hijacking with the help of Michael Wong (Michael Wong), a security guard, and Yamamoto (Hiroyuki Sanada), a Japanese Interpol agent looking to retire to be with his wife and daughter, she becomes the target of the remainder of the criminal gang responsible for the hijacking. These guys are deadly army veterans whose brotherhood forged in the heat of war (as told in flashback) means they will stop at nothing to get revenge.
And by revenge I mean the bad guys will commit absolute bloody mayhem dragging innocent bystanders into the crossfire as the characters get locked into a brutal cycle of revenge killings.
The simplicity of a plot devoted to a cycle of revenge leads to puts the focus on each character’s action and so the story tension gets supercharged with every death and this provides the audience with thrills.
This time the movie is all action and features little of the comedy of Yes, Madam!. As such, it provides a better action experience with a greater variety of action sequences that ramp up in intensity. A car bombing leading to an adrenaline-pumping car chase with multiple jumps and crashes from careening cars zipping through the streets of Hong Kong to a gun battle in a nightclub called California where patrons are staff are introduced to viewers only to get mown down by a bad guy spraying Uzi fire before it culminates in a knockdown drag-out fight with a chainsaw, pickaxe, and more over a coffin.
Within this structure the film finds time to subvert gender roles as Michael Wong takes on the role of a damsel in distress as the criminals target him and Michelle Yeoh is positioned as the hero who has to rescue the hapless security guard. She also has to rescue Yamamoto from traps.
Click to view slideshow.That, however, is the extent of any thematic exploration of the treatment of women. Unlike Yes, Madam!, there aren’t moments where Michelle overcomes misogynistic comments or being underestimated based on gender. Her agency is limited for most of the film’s running time as Yamamoto is the person who drives the action. She is also the subject of Michael Wong’s incessant flirting and stalkerish romantic behaviour. This being an 80s movie, is played as funny whereas it comes off as annoying today.
That written, the strong female comes back full force for the final quarter of the film and Yeoh owns the screen for a 10-minute brawl that is pure action spectacle.
Like Yes, Madam! Yeoh’s costume, short hair, and skin tone (darker than expected) all suggest a masculine energy even but she plays cute through most of the film and follows the rules. Once she dons black and rolls into the final fight with what is effectively a tank, she looks like an avenging angel of death. Yeoh takes on a frantic prop weapon-filled final fight in a quarry and the sequence is full of bone-shaking punches, kicks, and power tools and the quarry set is demolished. It is a wild action scene that has a real sense of threat from the full-contact fighting as the actors throw each other around the set, the camera gives POV shots of chainsaws and sledgehammers swinging towards the fighters, and the dust-filled loose prop-filled environment shakes, tumbles, and throws up visuals that further emphasises the violence.
This being a collaboration with Sonny Chiba’s production company, it features a Chiba protege in Hiroyuki Sanada, a big action star in Japan who had appeared in Corey Yuen’s Ninja in the Dragon’s Den (1982) and he provides solid co-star performance with a ferocity of fighting that matches Cynthia Rothrock.
Although not as bleak as Corey Yuen’s Righting Wrongs (released the same year and starring Cynthia Rothrock) it is as intense and merciless and it even comes close to the finale of Police Story (1985) with brutal stunts and lots of mayhem. Yeoh really owns the screen and can be seen performing the action and it looks painful. She really established her action credentials here, hence the reason Jackie Chan had her in Police Story 3: Supercop.
Here me talk about this film and Yes, Madam! on Heroic Purgatory.