Reviewed by: nsbr1 Date: 12/23/1999 The girls with guns genre is gasping its last breath in this film. For the most part it is pretty awful stuff as they are trying to fool us into believing that Annie Wu (First Strike) is an action star. A blindman would not be fooled. This film does have Yukari Oshima in it - though as a secondary character and looking a little tired and wan. After some 75 minutes of nothing much happening the final fifteen minutes of action kicks in - and Yukari still shows that there is lots of life left in those legs!

Reviewed by: ryan Date: 11/21/1999 Summary: Golden Nightmare, The (1999) Last year New Treasure has been quite active in film production by putting 'Leopard Hunting', 'Faces of Horror' and 'Raging Angels'. No matter how the results these movies are, they are still energetic in movie making. 'The Golden Nightmare' is their production first showing in screens in 1999 with their basic casting like MOK Siu-chung, CHOW Man-kin and WONG Chi-yeung. To get back his wealth and reputation, young Shoichi (LIN Hoi) decided to make a plan for seeking buried treasure in the Philippines which is made during World War II while his Dad (Japanese military officer) was is charge to ask a Chinese coolie group to bury valuables like golds. He also knows the map is at two escaped guys both own half of it. Shoichi subsequently goes to the Philippines and PRC to get the map but in vain. The Chinese map portion is in the hands of an old guy taken care by young cop WANG Chin (Annie WU Sun-kwan). The old guy is being hurt by Shoichi while WANG started the investigation. Finally they find out the facts that the treasure contains Chinese national treasures. PRC Gov't decided to send WANG Chin and Dr. LI (MOK Siu-chung) to the Philippines to reclaim these treasures which led by a Philippine local guy (CHOW Man-kin). However, the whole treasure process is a nightmare ..... Juging from the poster 'The Golden Nightmare', it seems like it is an action movie. In fact, during 'The Golden Nightmare', you can find tons of action scenes like fighting. Unfortunately, it seems that the plot is too intended to put tons of fightings while these fightings are very typical. Some of them even redundunt. For example, they spend two minutes in looking the training of the Chinese Cops which are totally irrelevant to the movie. For the later half of the movie, which starts from going to the Philippines in finding treasures, you will find tons of unncessary fighting scenes. The typical and continuous fightings in the movie does not help to make 'The Golden Nightmare' entertaining, but making it more and more annoying as audience will be tired of watching tones of actions which they cann watch from all other movies. It seems that they should re-design all the action scenes. In view of the plot, due to the need to fill in tons of action scenes, it is extremely typical and predictable. After watching the first five minutes, you can probably tell the rest of the story with no difficulty. As an action movie, though actions are important, at least the plot should be with some surpirse. In terms of performance, it looks like except Annie WU Sun-kwan, all of them are stereotyped. Maybe the main reason is that the movie is too typical that there is no need for actors to act. For Annie WU, she is the only one that is not stereotyped, but miscast. It fails to convince audience to belive that she is an action actress as she doesn't look strong. On the whole, 'The Golden Nightmare' intends to be a movie with lots of action scenes. Unfortunately, the pointless typical action scenes has ruined the whole movie by making it extremely disappointed. However, 'disappointed' should not be the term as such disappointment is expected.