Omni's Random Video Noise

Chicken.

WHY ARE THERE NO SEQUELS!? Okay, there are sequels, but they're not REAL sequels, I'm talkin' about more Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock kickin' ass together, there needs to be more of THAT.

Yes Madam A.K.A. Police Assassins A.K.A. In The Line of Duty A.K.A. Police Assassins 2 is a buddy cop movie where relatively peaceful Michelle Yeoh teams up with more aggressive Cynthia Rothrock to track down the killers of the former's husband. In the process they become embroiled in gang plot to silence a trio of comedy goons involved in petty theft and forgery who inadvertently come into possession of microfilm that contains incriminating evidence against them.

Right off the bat I can tell you that it suffers from an unfocused plot; there's way more attention paid to the comedy goons than our two leading ladies and the death of Michelle's husband is never mentioned again past the setup.

There's more than one tasteless molestation joke and continuity suffers when no one notices the back of a guy's head is supposed to have a fresh bullet hole in it or when Michelle and Cynthia (of course) quit the force and give up their guns only to show up armed in the next scene.


There's even one instance of a falling man getting hit by a bullet and suddenly rotating backwards in mid-air.

I'll even be so critical as to complain that there are only really two standout fight scenes in the whole movie outside the CRAZY OVER-THE-TOP opening, but I'd still say it's worth it.

It actually reminded me heavily of Commando which came out the same year, it just BLEEDS 80s cheese from the obvious speed ramping to the overacting to the one-liners to the synthwave background music. There's also a guy with a brutally fake mustache and eyebrows.

Even with only a couple brief tussles to bookend the actual fights, the fights themselves are all good, with the apartment fight mid-way through being particularly creative in it's environmental use and the final showdown kicking LOADS of ass with both Michelle and Cynthia pulling off some seriously wicked looking moves.

Most of the movie is comedic dicking around with the goons and it's entertaining enough to keep me engaged from the door-off-the-hinges opening to the nutso bonkers ending.

BUT, I have to say, there is something that everything else in this movie pales in comparison to... the dubbed Villain Laugh.

Heyhey! No non-humans to be seen!

"Love", Kissing, Marriage, Monogamy Syndrome.

So the description was a bit of a lie. Marketed as B-Boys meets Chinese Drunken Boxing meets Drunken Muay Thai, we really get one prevailing combat style: Drunken Muay Thai.

Which looks an awful lot like Capoeira.

I'M NOT COMPLAINING. After Tom-Yum-Goong, I want to see more Capoeira fights, they can be sick. And they are, when they're done well.

There are 6 main fights in the movie, the first is the strangest since it involves one guy fighting off gang members on really stupid-looking razor-blade spring-shoes which remind me that really ridiculous weapon from Soul Calibur 3, and the second one features a 3vAll drunken b-boy smackdown set to phat beats.

Unfortunately, I think this is the best fight in the movie, the style of fighting drifts way off by the end and the advertised Drunk vs Drunk fight near the end is disappointingly brief and nearly unrecognizable for what it's supposed to be.

The only other fight that stands out to me is part of the second-to-last which features what can only be described as "pair dancing martial arts". Try to imagine the ice skaters from Ranma 1/2, that's basically what you're getting.

Altogether, the fights are refreshingly creative, way more than others, but the couple standouts too little to stem the boredom of the lesser fights and the whatever story.


The story follows Deu who opens the movie as a band drummer before she interrupts a performance to go flipout on her boyfriend who's talking to another woman.

*SIGH* Yeah, she's not a particularly likable character.

She does eventually meet up with more likable characters, Sanim, Pig Sh*t, Dog Sh*t, and Bull Sh*t (yes, those are literally their names).

The four (or 3, we're not aware of Bull until later) are drunk-ass beach bohemians inexplicably blessed with a fancy condo that's always just offscreen. Sanim was late to the alter with his wife to-be Pie (interesting how I remember all these names isn't it?) right before she's kidnapped by the Jaguar Gang who killed Dog Sh*t's wife because he was investigating them.

All 4 of them are miserable and by the miracle that is Meyraiyuth, that makes them powerful martial artists.

Turns out the inexplicability doesn't end there. The Jaguar Gang's ultimate plan is to kidnap smelly women, force them to cry, collect their tears, extract pheromones from them, process those pheromones into an valuable aphrodisiac that causes sex addiction, and this entire scheme takes place in an elaborate underground fantasy dungeon run by THIS WOMAN:

HOLY SH*T.

My biggest problem with the whole movie is two-fold:

1.) Not enough breakdancing. Never enough breakdancing.

2.) It takes itself too seriously, they needed to cheese the **** out of this.

Hopefully This Girl is Kickass!! can see us some peak Yanin.

Camels, Oxen, Bearded Dragons, Dung Beetles, Scorpioooooooooons.

Pretty bog-standard Jackie Chan movie, which is decent... but decent is still pretty forgettable.

This time we got a Jackie Chan take on Indiana Jones with a hunt for nazi gold and I'd say it's slightly funnier than what I've come to expect from his movies, but simultaneously much more reserved in it's action sequences.

There's still PLENTY of action to be had, make no mistake, a couple sequences are pretty darn good and the base fight followed by the giant elaborate fan chamber stage at the end is played with to full effect, but save a couple instances we don't get a whole lot of Chan's A-game, which is to say we don't see much of his hyper-creative prop-heavy action choreography.

Again, there's good stuff to be had, but still toes the line with it's plot which is as routine now as it is boring with occasional exception for the over-the-top middle-eastern stereotype.

Horses, Sheep, Horses, Chicken, Horses, RABBIT, Horses, FISH, Horseseseseseseseseseseseseesebbblllleeeeegegggghhh

So the nerdpocalypse continues and really I can't help, but wonder, who but the most anal retentive geekhard would prefer the books over the movie? I mean other than the HORSES.

Seriously, when we see Helm's Deep finally realized I can't help but roll my eyes hardcore at people who insist that "the book is always better".

You must have a crazy vivid imagination buddy because I've read the book and it was nowhere near as funny, badass, and engaging as this, loyalty to source material be damned.

I distinctly recall one prevailing complaint with this movie walking out of the theater all those years ago and I still can't forget it: They skipped Shelob.

The giant spider that terrorizes Sam and Frodo actually appears in the Two Towers novel to my wildly unreliably memory, so I was really disappointed that the movie ended before she came up and she got shunted into the third movie.

Despite, the movie's still what, 3 hours long? AT LEAST? Still and incredible credit to one of the most frustratingly overlooked qualities in a movie: the pacing. It kept me engaged the whole way through EXCEPT for one bit...

Aragorn's flashback's to Arwen. No, movie, really. I REALLY don't care about this romantic subplot. I am totally uninvested in this relationship and no amount of flashing back to both of them kissing and glooming over mortality is going to suck me in. This is the perpetual dead spot for all 3 of these movies, all of the Aragorn/Arwen scenes. At least when Elrond's onscreen I give somewhat of a crap, cause Hugo Weaving actually brings some weight to the character. Somehow. Maybe it's just that I like seeing Hugo making an intense face and arguing with people.


We've got a TON of new characters so I'm gonna devote a good chunk to this review just going over them in brief.

Gollum
Despite what's been said of his quality as a CG character and despite my admitted tendency to quote him ("My owwwnnn... my... PRECIOUSSSSSS...") I gotta admit he's really not a favorite of mine. He's got the odd moment of brevity and he works well as an object of sympathy to Frodo and a foil to Sam, but his tendency to make raspy shrieks alongside his incredibly unpleasant moments involving fish and rabbits require a degree of endurance. I will say Andy Serkis does a fine job acting him out and as I've seen by the special features he was one dedicated bastard to mess around in that mocap suit out in the cold.

I rather prefer Caesar from The Planet of the Apes reboot though.

Wormtongue
Brad Dourif. The guy's a creepy looking weirdo like Steve Buscemi, but just like Steve Buscemi he's great at playing creepy weirdos. I'll remember him best from *pulls out official geek card* Myst 3: Exile. NOW THERE'S A ROLE that's perfect for him. He plays the the main villain, driven mad by revenge and isolation and in a static point-and-click game he's legitimately one of the only ways you can die. You're just playing this (admittedly very challenging) story-driven puzzle game when SUDDENLY IT GOES REAL-TIME ON YOU and you have to flee screen by screen to escape Brad Dourif beating you to death with a mallet.

If the idea of a Warg battle doesn't sell you on this movie, then The Siege of Helm's Deep should. I really can't think of another movie that pulled off the medieval fantasy siege concept so well or in such a grand scale (even if it does take a few clear liberties). It's one of the most memorable action sequences I can think of in a movie and there's no shortage of stakes, inventiveness, and the off dose of humor.

Overall, remarkably solid, even if admittedly less emotionally engaging given how much thinner the narrative is spread across all of our characters now.

Kissing and a WTF Deer Strike.

A LOT of big names here, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton... I can't pin our female lead though.

She looks like Britney Spears, what's her name? Gina Carano? What has she done?

Eggs and other obvious articles.

Lemme pitch this for ya: In 1957, World War 3 ends in a nuclear apocalypse that brings about Fallout: New Vegas world, ruled by none other than King Elvis.

When Elvis dies, Buddy, armed with a guitar and katana is deadset in going to Vegas and taking his rightful place as king. Along the way he deals with the crazy denizens of the wasteland as well as "Tophat Death" and his heavy metal band who are out to kill him.

If this concept isn't absolute gold I don't know what is. It only really comes into it's own when Buddy starts talking, he looks like a dork, everybody calls him Four Eyes and yet he casually spits stupid serious one-liners like nobody's business. And he does NOT have the voice for it either.

It's intentionally really cheesy and while some of the bizarre comedy falls flat it's got some genuinely funny moments too.

One of my few serious complaints of the movie would be the inconsistent 16:9 to 4:3 aspect ratio squeeze at the beginning of the movie for no real reason.

The fights could have been legitimately more creative too, though big props to the sick guitar duel at the end.

The Kid that ends up following him around serves little than to endear us to the gradually thawing Buddy and the narrative arc ends on an big "PFFFFFWHAT????"

Perhaps the most perplexing part of this movie is just the fact that this is all there is. The main actor, Jeffrey Falcon, apparently did only two other movies after this, which I can't even confirm ever existed, and then just dropped off the face of the map with rumors saying he went to work on movies in China which I also can't confirm have ever existed.

Did the Six-String Samurai really blow away with the wind into parts unknown? Or is he legit just ****in' around with martial arts in China?

THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW, but one thing's for sure, the screen will miss him.

A Cat, a Cobra, a whole buncha Eggs, and Mosquito-cide which... you know, I have very little mercy for parasites, if they're just gonna get swatted anyway, but if you're breeding something with the explicit purpose of killing it, that still rubs me the wrong way so I'm counting it.

ANYWHOOO, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow is pretty darn solid.

We have Jackie Chan playing the bitch orphan at a martial arts school (which would make a lot of sense if it were a Cat's Claw school, but this is never established) who runs into the Drunken Master of Snake Fist style who's on the run from "The Eagle Claws" who think the Eagle Claw style is top of the playground and eventually he learns the art and defeats the Eagle Claw master. Pretty standard stuff.

Fortunately, the story feels well paced and while it can drift into super rough melodrama, it managed to keep me engaged all throughout, with no small credit given to the Snake master Pai, who's funny and introduces himself with what I think is the best part of the movie: the rice bowl fight, in which he takes out multiple martial arts goons with nothing but a bowl and chopsticks.

There are several fights in the movie, the rice bowl fight (classic), the puppet fight (classic), rice bowl keepaway (which isn't really a fight, but an impressively choreographed sequence regardless), Snake vs Eagle 1, Snake vs Mantis, Snake vs Eagle 2, and finally Snake & Cat vs Eagle.

There's a genuine training sequence in the movie, but there's at least two instances where Jackie massively improves his abilities on his own, the first of which being purely thanks to a short poem and foot diagrams. Really?


His ultimate solution to defeat Eagle Claw is by augmenting Snake Fist with Cat Claw after he sees a cat kill a cobra (not sure how that logically clicked) and from that point forward his Cat Claw attacks arrive in tandem with the same loud yowling cat noise which is REALLY ****ING ANNOYING, god this is a 70s Hong Kong movie, the audio quality is WAY TOO **** FOR THAT.

Another highlight? A fake preacher dies by nut clutch. Jackie Chan does his Cat Claw at the guy's coinpurse and he shrieks before dramatic zoom in and orchestra sting--!:

HE'S DEAD.

The first (or second if you'd prefer) fight may be the best or most memorable, but all of the fights in this movie were really solid, not prop-heavy, but certainly creative.

And given that this was directed by Yuen Woo-Ping, who also did Drunken Master and Wing Chun, NO ****, I gotta watch more of this guys' movies.