Angel II
AKA: Midnight Angels 2, Hong Kong Police Madame 2, Fighting Madam 2, Iron Angels 2
1988
Director: Teresa Woo
Action director: Stanley Tong
Stars: Moon Lee, Alex Fong, Elanie Lui, Yuen Tak, Karen Shepard
Angel stands out as one of the best "girls-with-guns" movies, and so it was a bit of a let down to see this film, which besides a few choice bits, just comes off as your run-of-the-mill female-oriented action flick. The film's slim plot has the Angels (Lee, Fong and Lui) traveling to Malaysia for a vacation, where they meet up with two of Fong's friends, who just happen to be a CIA agent and a villain bent on taking over the world. It seems to take the Angels forever to figure out who's who (even though the bad guy has a whole army in the backyard of the mansion where they are staying at), but once they do, it's ass-kicking time as they set out to make things right.
There is just an awful lot of wasted time in this movie -- one sequence comes off as a Learning Channel documentary about Malaysian palm trees, as the villain takes the Angels about his compound and espouses the merits of the plant. There's also the annoying romantic subplot, and some just plain stupid humor, such as one sequence where Fong and his buddies wander into a bar full of transsexuals. However, like many of the action movies of this time, the fights are quite good -- not good enough to totally forgive the crap that surrounds them -- but they're entertaining nonetheless. I particularly liked the finale, which reminded me a lot of the jungle shootout in Police Story 3 (not suprising, since action director Stanley Tong directed that Jackie Chan movie as well). Disappointingly, Moon has only one major fight in the movie. It's a fairly good one against Yuen Tak, but then hypocrisy is committed as Moon has to be saved by Karen Shepard (probably to please international audiences).
Hardcore action junkies or Moon Lee fans might enjoy this movie a lot, but for the more casual fan, it won't offer much that hasn't already been done.
RATING: 6
Note: Xenon's version, Midnight Angels 2, is actually the European Iron Angels 2 and seems to be uncut except for a different title sequence.