★★★
“Ariel assault?”
This feel like it could easily have come out of the nineties, with the distinct whiff of a throwback to the golden age of Hong Kong “girls with guns” movies. That is, of course, not a bad thing. However, this is not really golden. It’s probably not even bronzey. High-quality PVC perhaps? I think the main difference is probably that the classics starred the likes of Moon Lee, Cynthia Khan and Yukari Oshima, who could kick ass in a convincing fashion. The actresses here are largely limited to gun-play, and most of them look like they would be soundly defeated by a stiff oncoming breeze. However, I can’t knock the production values here: this is slick, well-made and looks very nice.
The group of the title consists of six young women, under the leadership of Yang Yi/Moman (Xu) – the subtitles say one thing, the credits another – who go after drug dealers and related bad guys. It’s the usual group of individuals, each with their own special skills. For instance, Qi Xia (Zhou) appears to be the smart girl of the group. Well, she wears glasses and sucks a lollipop, anyway: her intelligence never has much relevance. Similarly, Sha Lv, which I have no idea how to pronounce, is the team’s sniper, and so on. None of them make much of an impression, save for Moman, who is also the one lucky enough to receive a dramatic arc, since her sister was killed during the escape of a captured villain. Or was she?
This runs barely an hour long in the version officially released on YouTube, – maybe there’s a director’s cut somewhere? There did definitely seems to be edits. It’s not so much slim as positively anorexic, with not much room for development of story or characters. Moman and her team work their way up the chain, with some light action, though there is a surprising amount of death on the way. Let’s just say, Mermaid Team will be placing a ‘Help wanted’ advert. I did like Zhu, who plays Mi Lai, a henchwoman to one of the bad guys, and has an appropriately wild-cannon vibe to her. I was hoping for a final battle between Mi Lai and Moman; however, this seems almost totally disinterested in hand-to-hand action.
Not that it’s by any means bad, just competently forgettable, with a lack of many memorable elements – in either good or bad direction. I don’t know what the budget was on this. I suspect, like many Chinese films, it was relatively small by Hollywood standards, yet Ma certainly does a good job of squeezing every ounce of production value out of the price, and the images pop off the screen too. I must confess though, given the title, I was expecting at least some aquatic shenanigans, but these mermaids remain resolutely land-dwelling. On the other hand, while Googling the title, I did learn there is apparently a World Mermaid Championship. Never say this site is not informative…
Dir: Ma Hong-Wen
Star: Xu Zi-Lu, Zhang Da-Ke, Zhou Jing, Zhu Jue