Executioners (1993)

"Don't worry, nothing is going to happen"

Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, and Anita Mui returned for this sequel to The Heroic Trio from the same year. While The Heroic Trio was campy and fun, Executioners was dark with an erratic script and zero fun.

Wonder Woman aka Tung (Anita Mui) is now married with a daughter. Her husband, Commissioner Lau, is rarely home as he is dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear strike that has left the people without clean water for several years. An entrepreneur named Mr. Kim (Anthony Wong) has figured out how to clean the radiation out of the water and sells small shipments at premium prices. Invisible Girl* aka Sandy Ching (Michelle Yeoh) turned over a new leaf after the first movie and is helping transport medical supplies. Thief Catcher Chat (Maggie Cheung) is still doing whatever she can to make a buck. Religious leader Chung Hon and a military colonel are both in cahoots with Mr. Kim. The president is vulnerable as well as the government in general with Kim and the Colonel both gunning to take over the country. Somehow the Heroic Trio must find a way to save themselves and the people from the evil men’s machinations.

The budget must have been miniscule for this film. In order to make the cheap sets appear post-apocalyptic they turned down the lights and turned up the fog machine. The strength of the first film was the relationship between the three women. Here, they were rarely together. The main exception being a gratuitous bubble bath scene at the beginning of the film as they played a game of grab and tickle. If there was a Sapphic subplot it might have made more sense but here it seemed to be designed to titillate 15-year-old boys. There weren’t many action scenes and most weren’t memorable. The plot seemed to be focused on the women fighting in skirts or short shorts and having as many people killed as possible. If they had ever planned a third film those characters eliminated should have counted themselves lucky.

It is no secret that I love the beautiful and talented Michelle Yeoh and will watch anything she is in. I also adore Maggie Cheung. The three women combined could not save this movie, actually if they’d had scenes together it might have helped. Anthony Wong as the villain was hampered by having to wear heavily scarred facial prosthetics and a mask on top of that. Kaneshiro Takeshi’s religious leader seemed to be a prominent role until he lost his head early on. Lau Ching Wan’s character had possibilities but ended up all wet. One of the characters that dragged this movie down considerably for me was the daughter. She was always getting lost or making a scene or diving into danger. It didn’t help that the dubbed voice was equally annoying as the character.

Executioners had a wealth of talent and wasted all of it on a dreary, convoluted story. When the three women were together fighting it was exciting. The trouble was the director forgot that key piece and squandered his cast and my time.

5 December 2024
Trigger warning: Rats and drinking of rat’s blood
* In the first film, Michelle Yeoh’s character wore an invisible cloak, but not in this film.

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A strikingly different sequel that swaps pulpy comic book excess and superhero bravado for a gritty post-apocalyptic, nuclear-ravaged wasteland, Heroic Trio 2 takes itself way more seriously than its predecessor, upping the sulky brooding and ultimately losing the fun. While I do respect the film for its ambition in going the complete opposite direction by adding an abundance of grungy, dystopian atmosphere and a fresh dose of anti-authoritarian attitude, it's all done with an oppressive bleakness that saps the mood right out of you. Despite such a dark setting, the film at least reunites Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh as the titular trio, however brief it may be, given they spend nearly the whole film apart from one another, a decision I still can't fathom. This is not a celebratory reunion; it's a story about disillusionment, fractured by trauma and moral compromise, where seemingly every key moment in the film needs to be punctuated by a pop song, usually sung by Anita Mui. The film does at least offer some rather impressive action, given that Tony Ching Siu-Tung shares Johnnie To's director's chair this time, it's blisteringly intense and stunningly executed. Unfortunately, their styles do not mesh very well together as the rest of the film struggles to juggle environmental themes, authoritarian politics and personal redemption, going way overboard with a veritable marathon of montage sequences. Even with the truly magnetic screen presence of its cast and relatively effective musical score in tow, it's difficult to recommend Heroic Trio 2; it's a truly bitter experience with too much emotional bullying, ending not with triumph, but with reckoning. You could tell they really didn't want to make another one after this, after all, you can't have another if your trio has become a duo.

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