After a rather bleak holiday season at the Hong Kong box office, the new films lined up for Valentine's Day release seemed somewhat promising. Sad to say that Martial Angels failed to live up to that expectation.

Obvious from the title of the film, was the fact that the producers were trying to cash in on the "Charlie's Angels" ticket. But any similarities end with the title. Indeed the production value of Martial Angels comes no where near the scale of last years American film. (Not to say that "Charlie's Angels" was itself an outstanding film by any means) The Hong Kong film opens with a rather dull jewel heist which introduces some of the cast including Shu Qi and Julian Cheung. The whole hook of the story is based upon the relationship between these two, but the actors do not have any real chemistry together. Perhaps a different lead in either role may have proved to be more suitable, but it is unlikely that it would have made a huge difference given the films many faults.

Later in the story the other Angels are introduced. Sadly none of them, save for Sandra Ng, are given the adequate screen time or personalities needed to make them more than the standard 2 dimensional "Girls with Guns" archetype. Even Sandra Ng for all her talent is not able to bring this script out of purgatory. Terence Yin-Chi Wai's small role as Bone starts off as amusing but soon becomes simply offensive, particularly when the script tries to make the character seem noble.

Much of the fault can be traced to the script. This screenplay has none of the excitement of Sharon Hui's other works like "The Lovers" (1994) or "Once Upon a Time in China and America" (1997). Much of the fault also lies in the action direction. The fight scenes are nothing more than a series of close-ups and quick edits. The type of fight scenes that one might call "Choppy Sloppy". The car chases are sped-up to blatantly obvious speeds and the gunfights are rather dull. Even the opening title sequence (a sort of CG silhouette animation) seems as if it was created on someone's notebook computer.

Had production values been higher (like it's western counterpart), this film might have fared better, but as it is now it will certainly take some divine intervention to save these angels.


Overall review rating : 1.5


Review by Paul Fox

Location:  UA Shatin
Time: Thursday 15  February   6:15pm