Movie Review: Heroic Trio

Heroic Trio (Dong fang san xia)

China Entertainment Films Production, Paka Hill Productions, Hong Kong, 1993. 

Tung (Anita Mui) and her cop husband Lau (Damian Lau) buy a house that needs some serious repairing. Tung has a secret identity as Wonder Woman and she helps the police. Someone is kidnapping babies. Also police chief's (Paul Chun) baby is kidnapped. It seems that the baby kidnapper is invisible! 

Tung and Lau

Wonder Woman

Invisible Woman Ching (Michelle Yeoh) brings the babies to Evil Master (Shi-Kwan Yen). Evil Master's underground base is guarded by Number 9 a.k.a Kau (Anthony Wong). Number 9 does not speak much and he is immune to pain. His favourite food is finger food and his weapon of choice is thrown cage that removes opponent's head (see wiki-page about Flying Guillotine). Evil Master says that one of the babies will be the emperor of China. The rest will be enlisted to his cannibal army. 

Invisible Woman Ching

Evil Master

Number 9

Inventor (James Pax) has invented a cloak that will make the user invisible. Ching was sent to steal the cloak and kill Inventor, but they developed a romance. Ching 'loans' the cloak to do her business but it is still not quite ready as it does not work in daylight. Meanwhile bounty hunter Miss Thief Catcher a.k.a Chat (Maggie Cheung) solves a hostage situation. She offers to find police chief's missing baby.

Inventor

Thief Catcher Chat

Tung and Ching happen to visit the hospital when a crazy man (Patrick Keung Hiu-Man) threatens to kill babies. They temporarily join to stop him and seem to develop a mutual respect. Maybe Ching isn't evil after all? Interestingly another Hong Kong film that had the theme of saving babies, John Woo's "Hard Boiled" (1992) was originally planned to have a plotline with baby poisoning psychopath (and starred Anthony Wong as crime boss). The Hong Kong movies got darker when year 1997 was approaching and people were getting afraid because control of Hong Kong was changing from Great Britain to China.

When Thief Catcher tries to lure the kidnapper using baby as a bait, tragedy strikes. Also the story gets more darker: Inventor is dying of cancer caused by chemicals from invisibility cloak and Lau is injured in explosion. Tung and Thief Catcher must persuade Ching to join them so that they can have a chance against Evil Master. The final battle is a bizarre mix that looks like "Evil Dead" and "The Terminator." 

Number 9 vs the train

Evil master begins to fly

Happy new year!

Heroic Trio has superhero wuxia-action with some melancholic and tragic tones. The stylish kinetic action scenes look like 1990s Tsui Hark- films and weird camera-angles are used effectively. Cloaks flap in the wind and the cinematography looks cool. The music is good with songs by late Anita Mui. Especially the theme song is memorable. When the movie was published in USA the songs were removed, blasphemy!

The movie does a good work showcasing the three iconic Hong Kong female stars. Mui is the traditional superhero with secret identity, Yeoh the tragic antihero who must make a difficult choice and Cheung comic gunfighter. The mood swings between goofy superhero action, sentimental soap-operatic scenes and some disturbing scenes. This is not a Hollywood superhero film, so anything goes. Consider yourself warned if you do not like the idea of cannibal demon kids getting blown up. Still highly recommendable for those who get the wild and unpredictable style of Hong Kong cinema. The scenes with Cheung are more tongue in cheek while Mui and Yeoh are responsible for the melodrama. The backstories of the characters are intertwined with acceptable logic. The action scenes are enjoyable with creative special effects without CGI (some wires included). The plot is barely coherent, with lots of stuff that is just brushed off. The camp aspect is high and the over the top action is just fun to watch.  

Do not bring sword to a gunfight

Heroic Trio

This review is based on the German uncut region 2 DVD-print "Johnnie To Double Feature Heroic Trio Teil 1&2"  published by HDMV that contains also "Heroic Trio 2: Executioners". Although the two movies are on one disc this edition is highly recommended as the picture quality is good and the films contain English, Cantonese and German audio tracks and English subtitles.

Rating: Very good

Starring: Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, Anita Mui, Damian Lau, Anthony Chau-Sang Wong, Paul Chun, James Pax, Shi-Kwan Yen, Cheuk Yan Chan, Siu-Kei Lee, Patrick Keung Hiu-Man, Yat-Fei Wong, Tao Xu, Ruisheng Zheng, Mimi Zhu, Chui To, Louis Yuen Siu-Cheung, Cheng Ka-Sang, Dion Lam Dik-On, Chang Kin-Ming 

Director: Johnnie To