★★½
“Dumb but not irredeemable – never mind the quality of the action, look at the quantity!”
Supermodel-thief Mimi (Melanie Marquez) steals an artifact from a Chinese temple, then heads to the Philippines, via Hong Kong. HK and Chinese cops (Khan & Yeung) are on her tail, as is former partner Ko. This is, frankly, a mess. Yeung apparently does no detective work; Khan goes on a date to an illegal street fight; they’re supposedly partners, but only share one scene; and what is the stolen item? It’s only ever called “the precious thing” (at least in the sub version; even we wouldn’t touch the dub [right] with a ten-foot pole). I found it all amusing rather than irritating; your mileage may vary…
Actionwise, it largely explodes in the lengthy finale which occupies about thirty minutes, sprawls across what seems like most of the Philippines, and fails to make much sense either – we certainly lost track of who was doing what to who. While Yeung is hardly allowed to act, she does get a couple of good fights, but the wire-work is poor, with one especially obvious harness. On the other hand, Khan’s martial-arts abilities are underused, and she gets to spend time hanging out with that apparently rare breed, an honest taxi-driver (Ricketts). A couple of decent moments, and Khan’s usual watchability, lift this up to just about acceptable, though only if you are in a forgiving mood.
Dir: Phillip Ko
Star: Cynthia Khan, Philip Ko, Sharon Yeung, Ronnie Ricketts
This is one of those Hong Kong movies which seems to believe that if they cram in enough complications and characters, you’ll overlook the deficiencies. They’re kinda right: if you can let go (I did, Chris couldn’t), you will enjoy this a whole lot more, though here, it’d take five times as much plot to make you ignore the truly woeful titular bird. There would seem to have been confusion in the prop department over whether the request for a “giant crane” meant a bird or a piece of construction equipment: it looks as if they split the difference, building something with feathers, which remains (painfully) obviously mechanical.
At first, this isn’t much of anything, least of all an action heroine movie. Cop Simon Yam investigates a customs officer (Shou) who is smuggling guns; it’s pretty ho-hum until an innocent underling is killed after finding evidence of the crimes. When his sister Moon (Lee) and her husband (Lui) get involved, this swiftly leads to the one scene in this film that 
“I’m working with a man named Monkey Fist. My evil career is 
It does remain a Disney show, hence the irritating musical interludes and, while the action is fast and furious, no-one ever gets hurt – though the sequence where a naked mole-rat comes out of a kid’s trousers is frankly freaky. But assisted by a stellar supporting cast (Elliott Gould, Michael Dorn, Dakota Fanning, Michael Clarke Duncan, Vivica A. Fox and – slightly less stellar – Freddie Prinze Jr.), this is a great parody of the whole genre: as one character says, “Time travel – it’s a cornucopia of disturbing concepts.” The tongue-in-cheek self-awareness is a delight, both heroes and villains having a refreshingly world-weary attitude, cheerfully admitting the paradoxes inherent in the story. Even an evil, golfing, kilt-wearing Scot comes over as endearing rather than insulting – Mike Myers, please note. The expected fluff blends with some surprisingly dark moments, such as the “Re-education Center” which seems right out of 1984. This is what the Tomb Raider movies