Directed by Johnnie To
Produced by Ching Siu-tung and Johnnie To
Fight Direction by Ching Siu-tung
Written by Sandy Shaw
Cinematography by Poon Hang-Sang and Tom Lau
Edited by Kam Wah
Music by William Hu
Starring
Anita Mui as Wonder Woman
Michelle Yeoh as Invisible Woman
Maggie Cheung as Thief Catcher
Damian Lau as Inspector Lau
James Pax as Inventor of Invisibility Cloak
Paul Chun as Police Chief
Anthony Wong Chau-sang as Kau, Decapitator, Landmine Enthusiast
Yen Shi-Kwan as the Evil Master
. . .
"The past is trivial. What matters is the thing you wish to do now."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
The Heroic Trio takes place within an art-directed backlot comic book city caught between a heroic future and an imperial past.Think the Gotham City of Batman '89 and Batman Returns but on a budget, and coming out of the no limits hyperkinetic Hong Kong action/fantasy cinema of the early 1990s. Heroes and villains clash in a swirl of bodies, blades, and bullets. A subterranean villain reminiscent of Danny DeVito's Penguin hatches a vile scheme. A superwoman runs across power lines like early 1980s Daredevil to rescue newborn babies cruelly dropped from a deadly height. There's even a melodramatic pursuit on horseback. It's all here. It's almost all in-camera. Later for those computer graphics cubicle farms. This is the real shit.
The imperial past is embodied by a telekinetic eunuch known as the Evil Master, who employs an invisible agent to kidnap babies away to a subterranean realm of shadows where they are all raised to become future emperors. Back in '93, this may have been a fanciful expression of pre-1997 angst about Hong Kong's looming handover to Beijing; nowadays, this resonates with the Chinese Communist Party's genocide of Uyghur Muslims and/or Vladimir Putin's kidnapping of Ukrainian children. The sinister eunuch kills the babies who cry too much, but this might just be a method to artificially prolong the scheme, to always live in hope of the coming of a true ruler even if that means serving a long-dead regime. You know, I can't exaggerate the impressive gruesomeness of the Evil Master. I mean this eunuch character lives in a strange realm of shadows accessible via a certain manhole that can only be opened by stomping it in a certain way, sorta like a trick video game mechanic. And once you're down there the kidnapped babies are all imprisoned within hanging birdcages. And the eunuch just kinda lounges, not really putting out much effort. He has this gimmick where he can use psychic powers to chase intruders with flying poison needles. He's also got a fearsome warrior monk henchman-Kau-who relishes decapitations and creating fields of land mines. What I'm trying to say is that this Evil Master is one weirdass motherfucker, but he also kinda has his shit together. You're just gonna have to watch the movie to fully marinate in the sinister vibes.
The heroic future is embodied by three superwomen-a hero, a bounty hunter, and a seeming villain. This titular trio brings the heroism although they must first fight out their differences among themselves, Marvel Comics-style, for one of the three is the eunuch's invisible agent, while another is a selfish vigilante mercenary. The invisible woman is known, helpfully, as Invisible Woman. The mercenary goes by the handle Thief Catcher, although she tends to use shotguns, machine guns, and dynamite to obliterate bad guys rather than capture them alive. The pure hero here is known as Wonder Woman-but not that Wonder Woman. So far as I know.
The seeming villain of the trio-Invisible Woman-gets her powers from a prototype cloak of invisibility that she has appropriated from a lone genius inventor who has fallen hopelessly in love with her. That's kinda what happens when Michelle Yeoh shows up in your life in crimson shimmering, form-fitting superhero attire. This inventor guy has devoted his entire life to perfecting the cloak even if he ends up dead due to exposure to the radiation which is necessary to its manufacture. The comic book science is strong with this film. Invisible Woman starts out cruelly using the inventor to further the Evil Master's schemes, but she is eventually won over by his pure hearted devotion. Dig the pages of scientific research blowing on a mysterious wind just like those autumn leaves in The Conformist. Invisible Woman embodies the struggle between good and evil.
Thief Catcher is the comic relief character, who always knows how to make an entrance whether astride a motorcycle or a flying barrel, and never seems to run out of those oh-so-handy sticks of dynamite. It's possible that she has cheats enabled. I wouldn't hold it against her. Thief Catcher is played by Maggie Cheung who would go on to do a deadpan meta-parody of her role in The Heroic Trio and its dystopian sequel Executioners in the Olivier Assayas flick Irma Vep.
The Evil Master's enforcer, Kau, is played by the prolific Anthony Wong, who many will remember from his turn as a hospital-hating archvillain in John Woo's Hard-Boiled. Here, Wong plays Kau as a mute flesh-and-blood analogue of the Terminator. Kau's immune to pain,has no fear, and uses a steel hood on a long chain to rip people's heads off-the same weapon the villain used in Master of the Flying Guillotine.
Wonder Woman is married to an incorruptible Movie Cop named Lau. Inspector Lau isn't a superhero, but he does get to throw some shots into a maniac rampaging through a maternity ward. Lau doesn't know he's married to a bona fide superhero, but he's no dummy. Inspector Lau is almost an unofficial fourth member of the Heroic, erm, Quartet? He has an all time brilliant moment of "cigarette acting" wherein he is so demoralized by certain events that he nearly lights up in the middle of a hospital. Inspector Lau is played by Damian Lau, who, among his many roles, played a noble swordsman in the tragic wuxia film Duel to the Death.
Which brings me to Wonder Woman who is played by Anita Mui, who is a difficult figure to summarize. Mui died of cancer in 2003, and her stature in Hong Kong cinema and beyond is impossible to overstate. I recommend you do a YouTube search of her live musical performances just to take in her power as a popstar, but also read up on her legacy as a pro-democracy activist post-Tiananmen Square. Mui didn't just play a superhero in the movies. She lived it.
The Heroic Trio is also difficult to summarize. The version I watched most recently is just under ninety minutes, and part of me feels like it's just about perfect at that length. The movie uses the lingua franca of comic books to cut exposition down to nearly zero. The movie remixes characters and motifs from Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns,Blade Runner, Master of the Flying Guillotine, Dragon Inn '67, The Conformist, wuxia, film noir, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, the special effects fantasias of Tsui Hark, Evil Dead 2, Dirty Harry, The Terminator-similar to a Sergio Leone or Quentin Tarantino flick almost everything here comes from someplace else. And yet the ruthless pacing and iconic human performers transform it into a hallucinatory epic that makes overlong contemporary blockbusters feel stodgy, formulaic, dinosaurian.
The special effects are minimal. There's wire work where, yes, you sometimes see the wires, but these lapses scarcely detract from the visceral sense of physicality. Every action beat involves actual human bodies in motion. Sure, there's trick editing, out of frame trampolines, clever camera placement, stunt performers; but actual people put their bodies on the line in almost every frame. It approaches the excitement usually only possible in live theater.
And yet there's this other part of me that wants another sixty minutes or so, or a New Game+ mode or something. The Heroic Trio leaves me wanting more which is, allegedly, a good thing.
Of course, there is the sequel, Executioners . . . maybe I'll get to that one before the year's out . . .
BONUS: The final confrontation with the baby murdering Evil Master begins in a nearly abstract shadow realm that always reminds me of the boss fights of many 8-bit NES games wherein you often had colorful boss monsters contrasted against a solid black background. I'm sure it was due to graphical limitations, but this style of presentation became one of the "theatrical conventions" of retro gaming in my imagination. The Heroic Trio hits upon something similar by coincidence, but it still moves me on that level.
