THE HEROIC TRIO
Hong Kong, 1993, 88 minutes, Colour.
Anita Mui, Maggie Chung, Michelle Yeoh, Tony Leung.
Directed by Johnnie To.
The Heroic Trio is part of the martial arts genres of the Hong Kong film industry, especially with the genre of the fighting women. The film has a strong star cast with the late Anita Mui as the wife of a policeman who, at night, becomes a kind of Wonder Woman (with Maggie Chung (Irma Vepp) as a bounty hunter and Michelle Yeoh ([Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as a renegade in the power of a mad magician). The film moves from the fantasy world of the magician, with all kinds of magic powers, invisible capes, to the real world of Hong Kong and police investigation. The rather grim story is about babies being abducted so that the mad magician can find a future King of China - and there are some gruesome scenes of the babies chomping on human flesh as they become power machines.
The film works very well, combining the two worlds - even in the magic world with a whole range of contemporary computers. There are martial arts flights, fights and choreography. Some consider this film and others like it as the Hong Kong version of Charlie's Angels.
1. The Hong Kong martial arts genre, ghosts and spirits, heroic women? The title?
2. The world of contemporary Hong Kong, the police, apartments, the derelict buildings in the streets, the train? The comparison with the magic underworld of laboratories? The world of the Master, the methane gas, the strange visuals? Comic-strip realities? The world of guns, weapons? The world of unreality with powers and magic? The rousing score?
3. The disappearing babies situation, the hospital and seeing the babies lifted in the air, the arrival of Wonder Woman to try to save the babies? Their fate, one to become the King of China, the cannibalistic scenes, their being destroyed? In real life, the mystery being solved and the babies restored?
4. The invisible cape, the warnings to the police, the disappearance of the babies? The doctor and his laboratory work, his friendship with Ching, his illness, being tortured, his achievement?
5. The Master with the mad power, visually, his environment? His aims to make the King of China? The henchmen and the fighting? His power over Ching? The final battle with the three women? His destruction but the skeleton still fighting to its ultimate destruction?
6. The characters of the three women: the housewife, looking at the derelict house, her husband, liking the house, transforming it, the domestic sequences, her heroics and fights? The bounty hunter, her coming to the rescue of people? Strong woman? Ching, the memories of Tung and her holding over the cliffside? The fall? Her being in the power of the Master, taking the babies? Her friendship with the doctor, the commission to get the cape and kill him? Her own emotions? The reuniting with Tung, now the policeman's housewife? Her fights, her red dress, the martial arts? The three women combining to fight, Ching and her finally confronting the Master, killing him?
7. The restoration of order, the evil magic world destroyed, normal life again in Hong Kong?
