Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The Heroic Trio (1992)

Directed By: Jonnie To


Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung

The Main Review: The Heroic Trio was a 1993 Chinese action movie. It follows three super tough women - The Invisible Woman (Ching), Wonder Woman (Tung), and the Thief Catcher (Mercy) - as they try to stop The Evil Master from kidnapping more babies. Sounds wacky, right?
Yeah, and it just gets better.

The Invisible Woman has been stealing baby boys (whose birthdays all indicate that they will be emperors) for the Evil Master, who happens to be her kung-fu master guy (in fact, he's the teacher of all the Heroic Trio). Wonder Woman - whose secret identity places her as a police investigator's wife - has been trying to stop these heinous crimes. Mercy was commissioned by the police chief - who, himself, lost a child in this infant kidnapping spree - and ends up stealing a baby herself. She figures she can give him that baby and he won't know the difference. Of course, Tung cannot allow this. She and Mercy fight over the baby. The Invisible Woman shows up and joins in. Unfortunately, the baby is killed due to it falling during the battle.


We soon find out that the Ching's scientist husband is creating an invisibility cloak (which is weird, because it seems that the The Invisible Woman is already using one.) The Evil Master has given her orders to steal the cloak and then kill the scientist. There's this whole side thing about some lilies blooming, which seems very important to the two of them.

After some more weirdness and mildly hard-to-follow storyline, Mercy and Wonder Woman team up to save the babies. They've discovered that they're being held in an underground sewer fortress. Mercy tries to get the Invisible Woman on their side, however she refuses and they fight. We realize though, that the Ching is trying to get herself killed. Wonder Woman shows up to stop this from happening. Ching takes off on horseback, but is followed by Mercy and Tung. It appears that her intention is to jump off a cliff.


Here's Where It Gets Spoilerific: Tung and Ching both go over the cliff, but Tung holds onto Ching so she won't fall. We then realize the two of them are sisters. So, they all team up to go stop the Evil Master. They, first, have to go to Ching's dying husband. They save him from Number 9 - a minion of the Evil Master. Ching says she'll stay behind with her husband, so Mercy and Tung leave. Due to the radiation he was exposed to while making the invisibility cloak, he dies in Ching's arms. There's more talk about blooming lilies. She leaves him to go help the other women.
From there, the Heroic Trio go to save babies. They fight the Evil Master and he seems to have them beaten. So, they decide to throw dynamite down into the sewer to blow him up. You know, despite the fact that he's keeping all the babies down there.

While they're all celebrating, he shows up again. Except, he's a grody skeleton monster. So, they have to fight his super strong "essence." He latches onto Ching and uses her body to beat up the other two. Ching decides the only thing to do is sacrifice herself so he'll be destroyed and she jumps off a building. All of the positive memories she thinks of as she's falling makes the Evil Master's brain explode. Tung catches her and everything's okay. The babies somehow managed to survive the blast and all is restored to it's normal order.

Scenes To Watch Out For: When Number 9 starts killing people. He has the coolest decapitation gizmo.

When the creepy Evil Master's essence monster appears. It's really, really gross.

Anything Else: This movie is crazy. The plot seems a little loose, to say the least. Weird stuff just keeps happening. However, it's one of those bad movies that's really fun to watch.

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