Sukeban Deka - The Movie 1 & 2 (1987 & 1988)

While the recent YO-YO GIRL COP was a disappointment, it led to two things: I got myself a yo-yo (and I'm proud to say, I learned some basic tricks!) and I bought the only dvd-releases available with english subtitles of the "Sukeban Deka"-franchise. Since this series isn't widely known outside of japan, here a very short and rough outline (courtesy of wikipedia and the Sukeban Deka entry on Encyclopedia Idollica): "Sukeban Deka or "Delinquent Girl Cop" started as a manga series in the 70s and was made into a tv-series in the 80s. It ran from 1985 to 87 and is divided in three seasons, each of which starred a new girl. The heroine of the series is an girl cop that goes undercover to investigate crimes, committed at schools. Sort of like "Jump Street". But then, "Jump Street" never had pretty girls, wielding a steel yo-yo as their weapon of choice!
When the tv-series ran out, the stars of Sukeban II and Sukeban III were featured in a couple of movies.
When SUKEBAN DEKA – THE MOVIE starts, Yôko Godai(Yôko Minamino),the second Sukeban, has just resigned her undercover job to become a normal student. But then she stumbles into a refugee from a very strict school for delinquent boys and girls. she learns that the pupils in that school are being brainwashed and made into a sort of fanatical stormtroopers for a mastermind who wants to overthrow the government.

Yôko quickly rallies her tough friends - including her successor as sukeban, the enthusiastic young Yui (Yui Asaka) - and forms a plan to storm the school and free the pupils. And so, one night, five girls in bright pink coveralls paddle to the rocky, Alcatraz-like island and sneak to the fortress-like school. Oh, I forgot: before they start the sneaking, they change from their overalls to traditional japanese school uniforms – perhaps not the beast thing to wear in a raid....

Fights, double-crosses and sacrifices follow, including some cool yo-yo-wielding with an utterly ridiculous super-yo-yo.
The plot is very straight and to the point, the action not too shabby (nearly everything is obviously done by stunt-men), and Yôko Minamino and her friends are looking quite good with their yo-yos, marbles and bizarre weapons.

SUKEBAN DEKA - THE MOVIE 2: COUNTER-ATTACK FROM THE KAZAMA SISTERS not only has a long and tedious title, the movie itself is much less fun than the first film. Yui (Yui Asaka), the third Sukeban Deka, has been transferred to new "student police" that aims to stop bad behavior among youths, raids discos and bullies everybody who strays from the straight and narrow. One day, Yui has enough from the fascistic group and resigns. Now her former colleagues go after her and her sisters and Yui must go in hiding. She finds refuge with a group of outsiders that try to live an alternative lifestyle on an abandoned property. From there she starts - together with her new friends - her resistance-fight against the fascistic police-troop that plans - once more - to take over the government.

The action is much less believable than in the first movie and Yui isn't nearly as tough (and nimble) as Yôko. The plot is quite convoluted and the movie slower than the first outing. A nice time-waster, but not much more.

Interesting in both movies is the distrust of authority, they convey: The enemies are always law & order types, the only good persons are outsiders - Yôko's bad-girl friends in the first movie, the group of punk-like squatters in the second feature. Even the only nominally positive authority figure - the boss of the sukeban dekas - is a real bastard: He manipulates his girls and lies to them, only to steer them into suicide missions.

The SUKEBAN DEKA movies can't be compared to the "real" sukeban movies of the 70s. Those earlier exploitation films with Miki Sugimoto, Reiko Ike or Meiko Kaji were gritty films with a lot of blood, violence and even rapes, and the stars were girls with a real bad ass attitude. These later movies aim for a younger audience and entertain them pretty nicely. While I prefer the older flix, these juvenile movies have a certain charm - and a film with deadly yo-yos, thrown by pretty girls can't be all bad, can they?

Simply Actors (2007)

"Crap Acting!" This note is found on a killed undercover cop, and the police chiefs of Hong Kong decide that it would be good to brush up the acting skills of the troop. As a first try out, they send PC Man Long (Jim Chim) to a drama school. Man Long is thrilled, as he always dreamt of being an actor, but his new co-eds and the teachers are underwhelmed by his constant enthusiastic overacting.

There is another new pupil in class, the soft-core porn actress Dani Dan (Charlene Choi), who has two prominent talents and a very friendly personality. She and Man Long bond immediately and becomne partners for the coveted roles of Romeo and Juliet in the play, the class will stage at the end of the term.

SIMPLY ACTORS s mainly a show-case for comedian Jim Chi, who goes over the top as far as possible as the over enthusiastic wannabe actor. Ironically - or appropriately - Chim is a respected acting-coach, and one of his protegés is Charlene Choi. Choi is the main female lead but plays second fiddle to the Jim-Chim-Show. And she is really fine. I have seen nearly all of her pictures, starting with FUNERAL MARCH, and while at first the enjoyment was more of a "guilty pleasure", in the last couple of movies she really begins to shine as an actress: ALL ABOUT LOVE, DIARY, the not quite satisfactory SUPER FANS - Charlene really starts to widen her range. And playing a porn actress (with obviously fake breasts) is indeed far away from her usual clean cut, innocent girls, even though her "Dani Dan" has a certain lovable spontaneity and naivety that is not incongruous with her earlier screen persona.

But this film is not about Charlene Choi, it is about Jim Chim and - even more - about the art of acting and the love of an actor for his craft. The plot of the movie takes a back seat to (very funny) acting lessons for Man Long and the audience.
and these lessons are delivered by some of the biggest and beloved people in HK movie business: Eric Tsang and Anthony Wong have cameos as teachers (okay Wong plays a janitor, but he is a much better mentor than all the "real" teachers) and even Chapman To, who plays a gangster, gives Man Long very good advise.
But these are not the only cameos. Indeed the movie sometimes seems to consist of nothing but cameos. It starts right at the beginning with the police chiefs, discussing the acting abilities of their subordinates: all of them are played by movie directors. Off hand I recall Ann Hui and Vincent Kok. Later on, Alan Mak plays himself in a funny scene. but this are only the directors. In a street scene we see Sandra Ng, Isablla Leong, Josie Ho and numerous others in very small but funny parts.

The funny cameos and the string of Jim-Chim-mugs-it-up routines are the attraction and the weakness of the movie. One and a half hours of funny acting lessons and wacky over-acting tire you out and you begin to wonder how to wind up the movie in a satisfactory way. Well, the filmmakers came to a quite unfortunate solution: forget all the plot about undercover cops and start a NEW storyline about a gangster (Lam Suet)threatening the father of one of Man Long's co-eds. And that takes another half an hour to conclude.

Directors Chan Hing-Kai and Patrick Leung are too much in love with all the little details, performances and cameos and forget the movie as a whole. A much tighter script, more substantial roles and less cameos and primarily a better constructed story would have benefited the movie and we would have a really good film and not only SIMPLY ACTORS.

Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000)

Yun-ju (Lee Sung-jae) is an unemployed professor and lives in a depressing, shabby apartment complex. His pregnant wife is the breadwinner, while Yun-ju sits brooding at home, tries to figure out, how to get the money to bribe his way into a job - and gets slowly mad over the constant yelping and barking of a dog somewhere in a neighboring flat.

One day he just snaps and decides to kill that noisy mutt. Alas, Yun-ju is not the greatest of he-men and lacks the true killer's instinct: Not only he gets the wrong doggie, but the poor mutt ends in the cooking pot of the delighted janitor. But at last Yun-ju catches the guilty dog and throws it from the roof – and is watched by Hyeon-nam (Bae Du-na), a bored young estate clerk in the apartment complex. Luckily he escapes unrecognized, but his troubles are not over: Hyeon-nam does the Sherlock thing and tries to find the presumed serial dog killer, and Yun-ju is confronted with his wife's new pet: a dog…

My main reason to watch this movie was Bae-Du Na. I enjoyed her tremendously in LINDA LINDA LINDA and wanted to see more of her. This was her second feature after THE RING VIRUS - and she is great in it. She plays a directionless, lazy and bored young woman who is nevertheless quite lovable, and she fills her role with a lot of life and realism.
Her counter-part, Lee Sung-jae is equally good in portraying the frustrated Yun-ju, while the rest of the cast has to work with more sketchy, caricaturesque roles. Most fun of them is the gourmet-janitor and dog lover (Byeon Hie-bong is the actor's name, I think). But the many, seemingly one-dimensional roles (I have to mention Hyeon-nam's chubby pal, who was a very nice and fun character) form a surprisingly complex picture of the "biotop" they live in.

The movie is equal parts social satire, comedy and drama. It often gets quite absurd and the it becomes touching or biting (but there are no biting dogs in this movie!). First time director Bong Joon-ho went on to make the critically acclaimed MEMORIES OF MURDER and the smash hit THE HOST (with Bae Du-na in an important supporting role). all of his films are more complex and deeper than you would expect from the genres, he works in (comedy, thriller, horror). All undermine these genres in a subtle way and all of them have at least a touch of absurdity to them. While HOST goes the most over the top and MEMORIES has the best characterizations and goes deepest, I prefer his debut. The movie carefully balances his different aspects and is, for me, his most entertaining work - even though I love dogs very dearly (and NOT in the way, the janitor does).

Above the Law /Righting Wrongs (1986)

Prosecutor Jason Chan (Yuen Biao) is fed up with criminals who can't get touched by the law. So he takes it in his own hand to punish the guilty. and the verdict ist death, of course. Enter police woman Cindy (Cynthia Rothrock), a tough as nails cop who is assigned to find the mysterious killer.

Well, so far, so generic. The plot made me a bit uneasy with its theme of vigilantism, but I was surprised to find a movie that handled this subject quite sophisticated for a Hong Kong action flick of the 80s. This goes so far that Yuen Biao, the main protagonist, isn't handled as a true blue hero but as an obsessed, angry man. And the body count isn't only on the side of the bad guys either – there are a couple of violent deaths that I didn't foresee and that are very quite disturbing. Not an all around fun ride, the movie contains some rather bitter tones, that make the viewing more surprising and even a bit richer.

So much for the story, but this is supposed to be an action flick, so what about the fights? Well, if you got Yuen Biao, perhaps THE best screen fighter of the 80s, paired with Cynthia Rothrock in her early prime and directed by Corey Yuen you are in for some rock 'n' roll indeed! And the fabulous trio delivers in spades. Highlights are a fight between the two leads, a fight of Cynthia versus another woman (american martial artist Karen Sheperd) and the 15 minutes climax where the main villain takes on first Cynthia Rothrock and then Yuen Biao.

Between the fights, the movie drags a bit, now and then, and there was at least on time when I was confused about the plot (why are we suddenly in an airplane hangar?). But as a whole the picture is exciting and unexpected gritty. It also is a good showcase for Yuen Biaos skills as an actor, who handles the dramatic and emotional parts of his character very well. Rothrocks role is more constrained, but she is able to put together the feisty, tough and hot tempered character she played in so many pictures after this one. Director Corey Yuen has an important supporting role as Rothrock's police sidekick and shows that he is as good in front of the camera as behind it.

Two remarks about the history of the movie: There exists an alternate version of the picture, that has a more happy ending, but that sabotages the point, the movie tries to make.
The other note is about the title: In Europe the movie was called ABOVE THE LAW, and that is the reason, the Steven Seagal flick of the same title (that came out two years later) is known over here as NICO.

ABOVE THE LAW is a fine example of the golden age of Hong Kong action cinema and helped to launch the career of one of my personal favorites, Cynthia Rothrock. It has a gritty and violent tone that grips you, and the "hand made" action is a lot more exciting than the CGI-fights, that make most of today's action movies look like elaborate cartoons.