Royal Warriors (1986) - David Chung

​David Chung's Royal Warriors is a memorable 1986s Hong Kong action film largely due to its more grim tonal treatment than much of the output of the time-period in which a heavy dose of levity supplemented the dangerous action and acrobatics of the cop-criminal dichotomy. The film's central heroine played by Michelle Yeo effectively rubes the insecurities of masculinity, signaling a female ethos which is entirely independent and largely an affront to the masculine-embedded notions of efficiency often associated in tales of crime and punishment. While this treatment of the female ethos was becoming more commonplace at this point in HK cinema, Royal Warriors' moments of levity remained scarce, and when these moments do arise, they are largely circumvented by the films grim tone, one in which the cold finality of death is presented as absolute and a real danger to the three main characterizations of the film - Yeoh's aforementioned Hong Kong Cop, Hiroyuki Sanada's displaced Tokyo Cop, and Michael Wong's happy-go-lucky Air Marshall. The car bomb sequence early on in the film in which the Sanada's wife and child are eviscerated sets the stage for the film's more grim treatment, but it's the death of Michael Wong's character - who sub-textually was an avatar for positivity and goodness- where the film really signals its intentions, effectively eradicating any notion of a strict binary between good triumphing over evil. The stakes of this film are heightened by this presented fragility of the body, leading Michelle Yeoh's soft-spoken but world-weary characterization down a path of reparatory justice.