56 | S2Ep8: Angel Terminators 2 (1992) w/ Rob Hunter
SEASON TWO: SHINING STARS - Celebrating the Badasss Women In Martial Arts Cinema
It's time for your Couch Potato Ninja crew to get TERMINATED... but no, not by our returning special guest, film critic cyborg, ROB HUNTER, but by ANGELS. Though there are in fact several badass women in our film this episde, ANGEL TERMINATORS 2, the hero we are celebrating is the great MOON LEE! Join as as Rob helps us explore why Moon Lee is so freaking awesome, and why her films are underappreciated, which will hopefully inspire you to seek them out- just like he almost inspired Mike to watch this actual movie!
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Mentioned in this episode:
Mind of Magnus
Artist Magnus Champlin Interviews guests sharing the stories and life adventures with the goal of expanding minds.
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Behind the Glass
Behind the Glass, hosted by Richard B Colón and Quajay Donnell, is a monthly talk with the current month’s BTG Roster. Artists are interviewed about their submissions and we dive deep into their process, inspiration and thought process centralized around their artwork in the Behind the Glass Gallery located in the heart of Downtown Rochester NY. https://behind-the-glass-gallery.captivate.fm/
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Couch potato style.
Speaker C:Punches and popcorn.
Speaker D:Welcome back, punchy pal, to another episode of Punches and Popcorn, a martial arts movie podcast where we explore the best, the worst, the history and the science of martial arts.
Speaker D:Cinematic.
Speaker D:I'm your host, Michael Huntone, and with me today are the illustrious genius, Jason Vils.
Speaker D:Hey there.
Speaker D:Hey there, Jay.
Speaker D:And we of course have our own professor, the walking weapon, Dr. Dominic D'.
Speaker D:Amores.
Speaker E:Hey there.
Speaker D:We have a very special guest with us tonight and the reason we're watching this film, very excited to dig into that.
Speaker D:It's our friend, the illustrious Bill, film critic, extraordinary member of the Critics choice Association.
Speaker D:Am I saying that right here?
Speaker D:Yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker D:Whose writing has appeared on flash film and a bunch of other awesome places.
Speaker D:Without further ado, Rob Hunter.
Speaker B:Hey there.
Speaker A:Hello.
Speaker D:So Rob is joining us because we are in the middle of our second season, Shining Stars, where we're celebrating the badass women of martial arts.
Speaker D:And of course, our movie tonight celebrates one of those badasses.
Speaker D:I have to say that, like when we announced this season, Rob like responded right away and was like, you better be profiling the person we're profiling tonight.
Speaker D:So I, of course, anytime I get that type of challenge, I respond by saying yes, as long as you are on the show because, you know, I got to bring them in.
Speaker D:So, Rob, thank you for answering that call.
Speaker D: So in the early: Speaker D:But that is not our movie.
Speaker D:And Linda Hamilton is not our star for now.
Speaker D:No, our shining star today is Moon Lee.
Speaker D:And the sequel we are talking about is Angel Terminators 2.
Speaker E:Oh, it's Angel Terminators misspelled.
Speaker E:And watched a very different movie.
Speaker D:A sequel, really a name only.
Speaker D:And while not having the acclaim of Terminator 2, this film is one of the best examples of the girls with guns era in Hong Kong film and features not only Moon Lee, but other standouts from this era, including Yukari Ashima and Sabel Hugh, as well as a couple legendary kung fu stars, Lo Lay and Jason Paypal.
Speaker D:So, guys, I'm excited to talk about this, Rob, but I have to admit, until you brought this to our attention, I have never heard of this movie.
Speaker A:Same.
Speaker B:And, and that's just sad.
Speaker B:There's so much sadness in this world.
Speaker B:I could, I could list it off for days and days and days, but somewhere in there would be the lack of awareness of girls with guns movies of Moonly, of all these just wondrous cinematic joys.
Speaker B:That are out there.
Speaker B:I'm glad I was able to suggest it.
Speaker B:You guys were able to watch it.
Speaker B:Hopefully you found some enjoyment in it.
Speaker D:Yeah, I again, I'm a little familiar with the Girls with Guns.
Speaker D:I know we talked about it a little bit with when we did.
Speaker D:Yes, Madam.
Speaker D:I think that movie's kind of considered the start of the era relatively.
Speaker D:Yeah, right.
Speaker D:But yeah, I'm excited to find this.
Speaker D:It's funny, I was talking with the guys looking at it.
Speaker D:I like this is a movie that again, this is the level of professional research that I am at.
Speaker D:It doesn't have a Wikipedia page.
Speaker D:So I was definitely sweating.
Speaker D:Like how am I going to research this if I don't have Wikipedia?
Speaker C:And how can you watch it?
Speaker C:Because you can't just like put on peacock and watch this.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:Oh man, that's when I start sweating.
Speaker E:Also I typically write up a summary and finding the names of the characters and the names of the actors and putting them together was very, very difficult.
Speaker E:But seriously, you know, like IMDb was useless.
Speaker E:Honestly, a lot of the research I did to find out like, you know, who was what was from like fan write ups and there's quite a few of those and that's where I had to go.
Speaker E:Some of them disagreed with one another, which was a little concerning.
Speaker D:So yeah, there's a lot of, I'll say looking at the different like Asian movie blogs, martial arts movie blogs.
Speaker D:Dom's right, there's a lot of write ups.
Speaker D:It's clear that this is one that has a passionate fan base.
Speaker D:And to speak to that, I was talking with the guys and I was like, this has got to by far be the most obscure movie we have ever covered.
Speaker D:So I looked it up on letterbox because that's my go to for everything and it has just over 700 ratings check ins, whatever.
Speaker D:Which is actually more than the amount of two other films by this movie's same director that we have covered in the past and that is the Black Dragon and the Black Dragon Returns, also known as the Death of Bruce Lee.
Speaker D:Both, both of those check in at about 200 check ins.
Speaker D:So compared to those, this really is Terminator 2.
Speaker D:So clearly the fault is ours for not knowing and we're glad that we have Rob.
Speaker D:Rob.
Speaker D:I feel like this is a, a frequent chain of our conversation here where you know, we, you came to our attention years ago with your best of action list and we always say like, oh, you find all these films that we've never even heard of and have no idea how to watch.
Speaker D:And the first time we got you on, we talked about Police Story, which is very easy to find and watch.
Speaker D:So, like, I feel like this is more an authentic Rob Hunter movie to talk about.
Speaker D:And I'm very excited for that.
Speaker B:I feel like my.
Speaker B:My niche.
Speaker B:One of my niches is recommending movies that people can't find.
Speaker B:And so it's.
Speaker B:It's a heavy crown I wear.
Speaker E:But.
Speaker B:Sometimes the challenge, you know, the search, the journey is.
Speaker B:Is a part of the fun, so.
Speaker C:It's true.
Speaker D:It is.
Speaker D:And at least you were kind enough to give us the breadcrumbs to find that bad.
Speaker B:So this is.
Speaker B:We're in a.
Speaker B:We're in a. I mean, I don't know how long it'll last.
Speaker B:We're in a good time now, at least, because.
Speaker B:So the Internet Archive is a.
Speaker B:A fantastic resource.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker A:For.
Speaker B:I mean, a lot of nonsense, but also a lot of, like, hidden gems.
Speaker B:And so.
Speaker B:Yeah, in this case, it was easy to find there.
Speaker D:Yes, sir.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:So I'm excited to talk about it before we dive into this movie.
Speaker D:Just want a kind of an open question to get our conversation going here.
Speaker D:And my question for you is, what is the best or worst karaoke experience you've ever had?
Speaker D:Dom, I feel like you're gotta be dying to go first on this one.
Speaker E:So I haven't done karaoke in a long time, but I would say I am kind of a.
Speaker E:A karaoke.
Speaker E:What's the word I'm looking for?
Speaker E:Player, if you will.
Speaker E:And hear me out.
Speaker E:So in my Youth, in my 20s, a way to get girls to, you know, talk to me or whatever or just, like, interact with girls.
Speaker E:One thing I would do is if I was in a karaoke place and there were a couple girls I wanted to get to know better, what I would say is, can you be my backup singers for karaoke?
Speaker E:And then they'd be like, who's this guy?
Speaker E:What song?
Speaker E:And the song was always the same thing.
Speaker E:It was Love shack by the B53.
Speaker C:Okay, that's pretty great.
Speaker E:I would sing the guy part, and they would sing the girl parts.
Speaker E:I'd be like, folks lining up outside just to get down.
Speaker E:And then I'd hold the microphone of the girls.
Speaker E:Like, everybody's livid.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker E:It was a good icebreaker.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D: bar in Panama city in, like,: Speaker D:And it's one of the most amazing.
Speaker A:Things I've ever seen.
Speaker D:It was all good, clean fun.
Speaker D:Jay, Rob, how about you?
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:My.
Speaker B:Mine won't be able to compete, mostly because I. I don't sing.
Speaker B:I just will go enjoy and drink.
Speaker B:So instead I'm going to say that my most memorable karaoke experience, the film Killer Karaoke from Thailand about a.
Speaker B:A high school girl who's murdered, dismembered, and then her heart.
Speaker B:Her heart is put inside of a karaoke as like, punishment, saying, oh, you like to sing?
Speaker B:You can stay here for the rest of your life.
Speaker B:And then the machine.
Speaker B:The machine is reactivated during a hotel's grand opening.
Speaker B:Oh, my gosh.
Speaker B:She comes back to life and haunts the hotel and she challenges everybody, you know, can you sing?
Speaker B:And she hands him a microphone and it becomes this big set piece where they're in costumes and they have to sing.
Speaker B:And if they sing well, they live.
Speaker B:But if they get the lyrics wrong or they're off key, she slices them in half with an ax.
Speaker D:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:That's my.
Speaker C:I have to see that immediately.
Speaker E:I feel like this is scientifically accurate thing.
Speaker E:If you take a person's human heart and you stick it in a machine, they inherently haunt that machine.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:That's just science.
Speaker C:Science segment done already.
Speaker E:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker E:That's actually how it works.
Speaker E:It doesn't rod or go bad.
Speaker D:Anomaly needs to cover that movie.
Speaker D:This is screaming an Anomaly movie.
Speaker D:Amazing.
Speaker D:All right, That's a good one.
Speaker D:Jay, how about you?
Speaker D:You have big shoes to fill or follow or.
Speaker C:Yeah, I would just quickly say I've done it one time because I don't like public speaking.
Speaker C:I was drunk enough and I did Metallica's one and it went poorly as.
Speaker C:As you could imagine.
Speaker C:It would like.
Speaker B:I got like.
Speaker C:I was trying to be Kirk Hammond and it just.
Speaker C:I didn't know it was a bad thing.
Speaker C:I powered through, though.
Speaker C:I finished the song and have never gone back on stage.
Speaker D:There you go.
Speaker E:Let me get this straight.
Speaker E:You decided to do one of the longer and more epic.
Speaker C:It was a bad decision.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:Well, sometimes you really learn a lesson up on the stage.
Speaker D:Stage at a karaoke bar, Jay.
Speaker D:And that's a good connection with mine because my most memorable experience was when me and Dom's friend Greg, who also loves doing karaoke, we were at a bar in Brooklyn and we decided to do Dream on because we're like, oh, we know this song.
Speaker D:It's a great song.
Speaker D:And about three words into the song, we immediately realized what.
Speaker D:Why Stephen Tyler is the notable singer that he is.
Speaker D:And even though you know these songs, and they seem basic.
Speaker D:What he does with his voice is very, very, very hard to do.
Speaker D:And we basically immediately sounded like we were strangling a cat.
Speaker D:And we just had to power through it because we were like, oh, this is really hard.
Speaker D:Okay.
Speaker D:And what really made it memorable is I didn't know then, but that night, the woman that is my wife Sarah, was at the back of the bar with her friend Melanie having drinks.
Speaker D:And she had said her friend Melanie was like, good God, who are these?
Speaker D:And Sarah's like, oh, that's some.
Speaker D:That works in my building.
Speaker D:I hate that guy.
Speaker D:And now we're married.
Speaker D:So I. I will never sing it.
Speaker D:But hey, if it put her me in her mind, even if it was poorly, somehow, it all worked out.
Speaker D:So that's the magic of karaoke.
Speaker D:And I'm hoping that we can get a little more magic with the gospel of the guillotine.
Speaker D:Jay, are you ready?
Speaker C:Ready to go?
Speaker E:You got it.
Speaker E:Genius.
Speaker B:Genius.
Speaker D:I'm a genius.
Speaker B:He's a genius.
Speaker E:E. Wiley Coyote.
Speaker E:Super genius.
Speaker A:Was it you, genius?
Speaker B:You little genius, you.
Speaker D:Being a genius certainly has its advantages.
Speaker C:Okay, today I want to actually talk about the mockbuster, which is basically independent movie production houses making knockoff versions of Hollywood films.
Speaker C:And I specifically want to talk about a subset called sound alike titling.
Speaker C:At some point, I actually want to dive into mockbusters, though, because I was just doing a lot of research this week and I came across two movies I did not know existed.
Speaker C:One was a 60s Italian ripoff film of basically ripoff of James Bond called Operation Kid Brother.
Speaker C:But why it sounds amazing is it stars Sean Connery's actual brother, Neil Connery as the spy.
Speaker C:And how does that exist?
Speaker C:And how have I not seen it?
Speaker C:Then another one that caught my attention, which is maybe more related to our show is something called Future Cops, which came out in 93 in China.
Speaker E:And.
Speaker C:And it is a straight street fighter ripoff.
Speaker C:They even have like the characters names.
Speaker C:There's Ryu M. Bison's the main character, Chun Li.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker C:It's crazy that that even exists.
Speaker C:And how are they not sued?
Speaker C:Maybe they were.
Speaker C:I. I couldn't find that out.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker C:That's pretty great.
Speaker C:But anyways, let's talk about sound alike retitling.
Speaker C:What this does is it creates a drafting opportunity because the film that's using the title usually comes out around the same time as the actual film.
Speaker C:They want their title to sound alike, in this case.
Speaker C:Tonight, we're talking about Angels Terminator 2, which came out the same year as James Cameron's Terminator 2.
Speaker C:But there's no cyborgs.
Speaker C:There's, there's nothing terminatory in it.
Speaker C:There's not even Edward Furlong, which is a bummer.
Speaker C:But again, it catches the audience's attention quickly.
Speaker C:The name recognition is a huge part of marketing and this is like a super easy way for a movie production house to get, get that done.
Speaker C:And it's been going on forever.
Speaker C:Like specifically like if we think about the exploitation movies of the 70s, we've already already covered black exploitation with Death Promise.
Speaker A:Yes sir.
Speaker C:Also we've talked about Bruceploitation.
Speaker C:They also were crazy about just doing sound alike titles.
Speaker C:It's still happening to this day.
Speaker C:Warner Brothers recently sued, I forget the name of the movie and, but it was something like Age of the Hobbit or something like that.
Speaker C:And they're like, hey, you can't do that.
Speaker C:We own Tolkien things.
Speaker C:And they won that lawsuit.
Speaker C:And Disney's always going after these like small foreign films that are, you know, like, it'll be like small cars just like ripping off Pixar branding.
Speaker C:Because again, easy marketing.
Speaker C:And it's something I'm glad I got to talk about tonight because it's such a, I think it's like of the movie marketing tools, this is really charming because it's like the laziest, like we're just going to use your name.
Speaker C:It's, it's so simple.
Speaker B:This film here was retitled the Best of Lady Kickboxers when it, when it went to like English speaking countries before I got the Angel Terminators because of the whole Girls with guns thing.
Speaker B:One of the things that they glommed on to, to your point about the titles is, is the word angel in titles.
Speaker B:And so you've got Angel Terminators, you've got killer angels, you've got Iron Angels.
Speaker B:Oh yeah.
Speaker B:And the films aren't related except they're these, you know, Girls with guns movies.
Speaker B:They, there's like several of them where they, where they get retitled at some point along the way to have that word in there to kind of let people know which, which itself is kind of riffing off of Charlie's Angels.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker B:To let people know, hey, you know, Girls with guns.
Speaker B:Girls with guns.
Speaker B:And this is, you know, you can, you know what you're going to get here.
Speaker B:And so that premise happened here with just like angels.
Speaker B:Angels.
Speaker B:Angels across the board.
Speaker C:Oh yeah, Fascinating.
Speaker E: s early: Speaker E:I also think that like we're talking about Terminators and you made a point that it's the Term Terminator was popular in the United States because of Terminator.
Speaker E:Right.
Speaker E:But weren't there a bunch of knockoffs of Terminator like your mockbusters, like, wasn't Cyborg a mockbuster?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker E:And also wasn't there like Exterminator like in a bunch of other movies, like Ninja Terminator.
Speaker E:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:Lady Terminator as well.
Speaker B:Yes, I highly recommend.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Oh, nice, nice.
Speaker E:I feel like if you peruse the sci fi horror section of Netflix, you'd find 40 of these really, really quickly.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:The best place to go for that because Netflix has got some good stuff on there, but they're too, they've got a recency bias.
Speaker B:So for this kind of stuff I'd recommend going to like Amazon prime or something like that.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Where you can find.
Speaker B:Because they just toss, you know, everything up there just willy nilly.
Speaker B:And so you get a lot of these, these kind of movies where it's just like, you know, you never heard of it, but here it is and clearly it's, you know, referencing, you know, Star wars or this or that, whatever it might be in visuals in title and everything.
Speaker B:It's like.
Speaker B:But you can find like a ton of them on there that I found.
Speaker A:Tubi is pretty good with that too.
Speaker A:They've got a pretty good selection.
Speaker A:Well, speaking of something cool, we should get into this movie to start again.
Speaker A:I just want to give a little background to our star that we are profiling again tonight and that is Moon Lee.
Speaker A:So just a quick background.
Speaker A: as born Moon Lee choi Fung in: Speaker A:And she found early on that kind of like what we heard with Michelle Yeoh that she found even though she didn't have martial arts experience going in, all that dancing helped and she was really able to get comfortable in martial arts roles pretty quickly.
Speaker A:Age 18, she signed a contract with Golden Harvest and Asia Television.
Speaker A:And for the next like 10, 20 years, she was really active in both television and movies at the same time.
Speaker A:So earlier in her career, especially with those Golden Harvest films, she was in a lot of like really big films from that era, from Golden Harvest, a number of the big Sammo and Jackie movies.
Speaker A:She was in winners and sinners, Mr. Vampire, twinkle, twinkle Lucky Stars.
Speaker A:She was also in Zoo warriors of Magic Mountain.
Speaker A:That was huge.
Speaker A:And a lot of those.
Speaker A:She's a, a side player some of them.
Speaker A:She was a stunt woman, so just side part.
Speaker A:But the girls with gun movement that came about, you know, that really launched or started arguably with yes, Madam is where she really came into our own.
Speaker A:And she was in a number of the movies that we talked about before, like Angel, Angel Enforcers, Devil Hunters.
Speaker A:And she found her partner in those movies often was her partner in this movie Yukari Yoshima, who.
Speaker A:Yukari is from Japan and, and she like grew up with significant martial arts experience.
Speaker A:I think has a number of black belts.
Speaker A:So I'm sure that's something we'll talk about in this movie.
Speaker A:Like she's a legit martial artist that came into her own, but together, those two were in a number of movies together.
Speaker A:And one notable event is when she was in Devil Hunters, she got third degree burn during a stunt because I guess from what I had read there was like, she was in a house that she was supposed to jump out of when it exploded, but the pyro went off early and it blew up with her in it.
Speaker B:It's the end of the movie.
Speaker B:It's the two of them, it's her and S. Hugh.
Speaker B:They're in a.
Speaker B:The camera's like down here and they're jumping out of a second story window.
Speaker B:It's like the big stunt at the end of the film and they're at the window like the bad guy's behind them and blah, blah, they're supposed to jump out and then as they're falling, the explosion goes off.
Speaker B:But yeah, there was a timing mishap and.
Speaker B:And so they're still in the window frame when the explosion goes off and they, they jump and you can see like the, the flames kind of enveloping both of them a little bit.
Speaker B:Like it's, it's terrifying to watch if you watch the movie.
Speaker B:It's a great movie, by the way.
Speaker B:I mean it's, it's.
Speaker B:The action's phenomenal in this movie.
Speaker B:But the thing is that that stunt was filmed because they, they film out of order, obviously whenever they can.
Speaker B:That put both of them out of commission for a little bit.
Speaker B:And so like for half the movie, Moonly is clearly.
Speaker B:And not all that smoothly doubled because she's just not available.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so you see a lot, you see her doubling is a lot more obvious in the movie because of that because, yeah, she Burned part of her face, part of her body.
Speaker B:And so about.
Speaker B:You also got burned a little bit.
Speaker B:But the movie, when you watch it, it ends with a freeze frame.
Speaker B:It shows it, of course, like two or three times.
Speaker B:And then it ends with the freeze frame and text on this text on the screen basically translated to something along the lines of, they, they're okay, they went to the hospital, they're fine.
Speaker B:And, you know, it's, you know, celebrating movies.
Speaker B:It's like the most like.
Speaker B:And that's the end of the movie.
Speaker B:Just, like, highly recommend the film, though.
Speaker B:It's definitely worth a watch.
Speaker A:Check it out.
Speaker A:Devil Hunters.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And Civil Hugh, who's also in this movie.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Okay, so, yeah, let's get into the movie.
Speaker A:So when this movie begins, we see Civil Hugh.
Speaker A:Right away, there's a bunch of thugs that are holding up a restaurant.
Speaker A:A really dramatic opening with cops and guns everywhere.
Speaker A:And one of those cops that comes in is Big Aunt, again, played by Sybil Hugh.
Speaker A:But she comes in along with her Uncle Bow, who's played by kung fu movie legend Jason Pay Pie.
Speaker A:So they try to stop the bad guys and the hostages and lots of bodies drop.
Speaker E:I feel like these Girls with Guns movies and also the, like, heroic bloodshed movies, which, by the way, this is like a mash of both of those.
Speaker E:I feel like they always kind of start with this.
Speaker E:Like, there's no real setup.
Speaker C:They're just like, yeah, there's no title card.
Speaker C:There's nothing.
Speaker C:Just like, you.
Speaker C:Almost like when I started online, I was like, oh, did it cut off the beginning?
Speaker C:And I was like, oh, this is the beginning, right?
Speaker A:To, like, three different links of, like, that said they had the movie, and I was like, oh, no, they all start here.
Speaker A:This is really the beginning.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker E:And one thing I like about, Like, I noticed some similarities between this and yes, Madam.
Speaker E:Right?
Speaker E:Because there's a lot of.
Speaker E:I've noticed a lot of similarities with this Girls with Guns movies, but I noticed that yes Madam has a much lighter tone than this.
Speaker E:And I mentioned this on the podcast before.
Speaker E:I find that a lot of Hong Kong humor is lost on me.
Speaker E:And so I like this movie actually better than yes Madam because it is a consistent heavy tone, and it starts off with that right away.
Speaker E:And there's only a few moments where they add levity, but it's.
Speaker E:It's not goofy.
Speaker E:Or at least it's not as.
Speaker C:As goofy.
Speaker C:I would say there's some goofy.
Speaker E:There's some goof to it, but it.
Speaker E:It's.
Speaker E:It's not Enough to really kind of shape the movie in any way.
Speaker E:It's just kind of a sprinkling.
Speaker B:Think the goofiness here works character wise, I think, I think a lot of it.
Speaker B:Syelle Hughes character, I think is I, I love her to death.
Speaker B:She's.
Speaker B:She's not a martial artist, but she is a great actor.
Speaker B:But she's also just very funny.
Speaker B:She's very, she's got a lot of character, a lot of personality to her.
Speaker B:And so she's got, you know, some stuff with, with, with her, her cop partner and Uncle B.
Speaker B:But then also that group of friends that you'll get to in a minute, there's some silliness between them that feel, to me at least, you know, feels natural as far as.
Speaker B:Because it is just a group of friends and they're kind of like randos and they're celebrating, you know, their friend getting out.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so there's silliness to it, but it's not to your point, Dom.
Speaker B:It's not like, like some of these movies you can get like, you know, over the top comedy bits and then we're back to the action again, you know, back and forth.
Speaker B:That's what it feels just more like just actual, like, you know, dumb, dumb young people hanging out.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Kind of goofiness.
Speaker B:So to me, it definitely feels, feels more natural than you sometimes get.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Well, like the silliness that was in Lucky Stars with Civil Hue, who.
Speaker A:That's basically played around.
Speaker A:How can all these guys, like sexually harass her the most until she kicks one of them in the throat, but then she is massaging.
Speaker A:I think, I think it's Sammo.
Speaker A:She massages him the very next scene.
Speaker A:So I'm right.
Speaker A:This feels a little more authentic.
Speaker E:So also, I have to say I'm still traumatized by the quote, comedy, end quote, in my young auntie.
Speaker E:I'm still trying to figure out what the heck happened in that movie.
Speaker E:So the further away I go from Hong Kong comedy, the happier I'm gonna be.
Speaker E:At least until, like I get over having to watch my young auntie.
Speaker A:Well, thankfully that's not the movie you're covering today.
Speaker A:All right, so as Rob said, the we move here and we're introduced to, I don't know, to me really feels like the star of the movie Bullet, who's played by Yukari Yoshima.
Speaker A:She's released from prison.
Speaker A:Her dad is the Uncle Bao that we met before, and he tries to pick her up, but she's intercepted by her old friends, including Chitty, who is played by our hero today, Moon Lee, along with May, another friend of theirs, and three basically useless guys.
Speaker A:One of them with a fantastic ponytail, which I've got to say, there's some pretty good ponytails in this movie, man.
Speaker A:Ponytails.
Speaker A:So these guys are chick Turkey.
Speaker A:And I don't know who the.
Speaker A:The other guy is.
Speaker E:I was looking.
Speaker E:I was like, what other bird is in this?
Speaker E:Speaking of.
Speaker E:Yes, madam.
Speaker E:That whole theme of making, like the backups have all these consistent westernized names like Panadol and those things.
Speaker E:This is another example of that.
Speaker E:We got Chick Turkey, and I'm gonna call him Goose.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:Let's go, Goose.
Speaker E:Does anyone know for real?
Speaker E:Because I'm having.
Speaker E:I. I looked everywhere and I couldn't find it.
Speaker A:Well, it.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:No clue.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:They go out for a night of karaoke.
Speaker A:So sadly, Dom was not there singing Love Shack that night.
Speaker E:They would have been my backup singers.
Speaker E:Totally.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And I can't remember at this point is.
Speaker A:Is Bullet wearing her slut pants?
Speaker A:Because that's my favorite part of the movie.
Speaker C:I don't recall.
Speaker B:They make a statement.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think she's pretty much wearing them through most of the movie.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But you know, when you.
Speaker B:When you make a strong fashion choice, you want to stand behind it.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker B:And she does.
Speaker C:You got to commit.
Speaker C:And she does.
Speaker A:Yeah, she does.
Speaker A:She does.
Speaker A:And I'll say, I was looking through the letterbox reviews of this, and it is frequently brought up how much people love the slut pants.
Speaker A:So it made a statement amongst many things.
Speaker B:And it's a choice.
Speaker A:It is, it is.
Speaker A:So, you know, they're having this nice night out.
Speaker A:While they're there, their friend May is approached by a quote unquote movie producer, which, if you thought this sounds like a plot from a porno, it just might be.
Speaker A:Turns out that he's actually a triad member.
Speaker A:If they insult somebody, and I can't remember if it's one of his guys, but outside of the club, after this has happened, they're leaving and this guy and what, some of his friends jump them.
Speaker A:And so we get a great fight scene outside.
Speaker A:We get to see Yukarioshima and Moonly especially start kicking ass.
Speaker A:But they also beat the living out of this car.
Speaker A:And it is one of my other favorite things from this movie.
Speaker B:It's a good scene.
Speaker B:It's a good introduction to them.
Speaker B:It's a good introduction to, like you said, how the guys are pretty much useless.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:It's just the.
Speaker B:The two women who are, you know, The.
Speaker B:The protectors of the group.
Speaker B:And then, yeah, they just take it out in the car until they all, like, just, you know, skedaddle off into town.
Speaker B:Whatever.
Speaker B:It's a great scene.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:I'd like to think this was Vince Vaughn's inspiration for brawling cell block 99.
Speaker C:When he beats up that car in the beginning.
Speaker C:This was his muse for that.
Speaker E:Or Walter from.
Speaker E:From the Big Lebowski.
Speaker B:Oh, even better.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:That's more.
Speaker A:I tried to push Jay to make his gospel about famous car beatings in movies.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I know we talked about that with.
Speaker A:With righting wrongs because there's the Yanbiao versus, like an army of cars.
Speaker A:And of course, John Wick 4.
Speaker A:There's Car Foo.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker E:But those cars are on the offensive.
Speaker E:This car was a harmless bison.
Speaker E:There was no reason.
Speaker E:It was just there.
Speaker B:This guilt by association.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It knows what it is.
Speaker A:This is.
Speaker A:That's an excellent call, Dom.
Speaker A:That this is closer to Walter and the car.
Speaker A:You see what happens, Larry or cell block 99.
Speaker A:Innocent car gonna get ass beat for no reason.
Speaker E:While we're talking about fights, let's talk about the style.
Speaker E:Style of fighting.
Speaker E:Because I think it's pretty.
Speaker A:Please do.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker E:Actually pretty consistent throughout this movie.
Speaker E:It.
Speaker E:It definitely has that.
Speaker E:It feels more Jackie Chan esque.
Speaker E:And I've noticed this as we've watched more movies.
Speaker E:I found, like, I feel like the movies.
Speaker E:The 70s, like Shaw Brothers kind of movies, feel like a dance.
Speaker E:And once Jackie Chan shows up on the scene, I feel like he's a big catalyst in the change.
Speaker E:That it's more of a stunt fighting with.
Speaker E:Very flashy and it's very choreographed, don't get me wrong.
Speaker E:But it looks more violent and more acrobatic.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker E:I'm thinking, like, I compare this to Lau Carlock.
Speaker E:You got Lau Karlong movies where it looks like I'm watching theater.
Speaker E:A lot of jumps and a lot of it's very beautiful.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker E:I think that's the best way to describe a la car long fight scene is it's beautiful.
Speaker E:These are not beautiful.
Speaker E:They are, like, impressive.
Speaker E:Like, I'm constantly impressed by them.
Speaker E:Is it real fighting the realism?
Speaker E:Kind of half and half, like Jackie Chan fights don't look real to me because they're just not gritty enough.
Speaker E:And this goes along with that.
Speaker E:But they're just so impressive with the flips and the kicks and the jumps and the somersaults and just like in the use of the environments.
Speaker E:And I found what's interesting is they didn't use a ton of environmental things to actually hit each other.
Speaker E:But I just noticed, like, the way they'd land on a couch and she'd kick up and then down and then flip back and forth and there's just.
Speaker E:They utilize the environment so well.
Speaker E:And I think this is really one of the better examples I've seen of that.
Speaker E:I like to call post Jackie Chan style fighting.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, it doesn't use as many tools as weapons like a Jackie movie will.
Speaker A:But you're right.
Speaker A:I like that thought about using the environment to like, launch their attack.
Speaker A:The thing that stuck out to me was Moonly, but especially Oshima.
Speaker A:Her kicks were ferocious.
Speaker A:Like, she just.
Speaker A:When she started kicking dudes, I'm like, holy.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker A:And again, it was just great to see.
Speaker A:Like you said, these are excellent fights.
Speaker A:These are.
Speaker A:These are excellent moves that they're pulling off.
Speaker A:I think you really get to show the athleticism of these women and beating up a bunch of jerks.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:While Ponytail and his buddies are off to the side, like.
Speaker C:So I don't want to, like, have an aside here, but did you guys get like, teen movie vibes from this?
Speaker D:I feel like, very.
Speaker A:Yeah, I would.
Speaker C:I kind of like that.
Speaker C:Like, it came out in the 90s.
Speaker C:Like, teen movies were big at the time.
Speaker C:It's completely unrelated, but this was like the first Hong Kong action film.
Speaker C:I've been like, this feels like a 90s, like, teen movie cast or.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker C:There's something about it where I. I found it very, like, refreshing almost because usually, like, more adults in these type of films that I have tracked.
Speaker B:It is on.
Speaker B:It is unclear what their ages are because Moonli's character is in school.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:She then starts skipping, and when we see her in school, at first she's there, like in gym class, basically.
Speaker A:Oh, right.
Speaker B:So it's.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:I'm not quite sure what, but it's.
Speaker C:Sometime at times it might be also 30, so it's just really weird.
Speaker B:Or late 20s American teen movies like Porkies and stuff like that.
Speaker B:Those kids are all 30 older, so it really makes sense.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker E:I guess we'll just agree to youth.
Speaker E:They are youthful.
Speaker E:Like, I feel like that's what they're going for.
Speaker E:They're youthful as opposed to these old grizzled cops.
Speaker E:Even though, like, how much older is she than the rest of them?
Speaker E:She looks like she's the same age, just the rest of them.
Speaker B:Yeah, she's like.
Speaker B:She's like five years older than Moonly.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker E:But she's supposed to be like this older, grizzled, cynical cop with this kind of like snarky sense of humor.
Speaker E:Con.
Speaker E:And then of course, you know, Uncle Bow is, is.
Speaker E:He's just like, my wife was a crook.
Speaker E:My daughter's a crook.
Speaker E:I'm a cop.
Speaker E:Like, the irony just kill me.
Speaker B:I. I would say this, though.
Speaker B:If you name your kid Bullet, that's on you for her getting into crime.
Speaker A:Right, right, right.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's interesting that it starts with this, as we said, kind of typical, like, big cop showdown scene to start.
Speaker A:But then after that we're introduced to Bullet just getting out of jail and that's.
Speaker A:She's really the heart of the movie and like her story and her action is really consumes most of the rest, you know, at least until we start getting into like the climactic parts.
Speaker A:But I mean, right after this where we get the fight, then her and Shitty go to see her old triad boss Chin and go to see if they can get money.
Speaker A:But instead he's not that interested.
Speaker A:He's more interested in getting Chitty trying to get her to horror herself for him.
Speaker C:It seemed like it.
Speaker E:Yeah, there's a kind of a glaze of sex trafficking with this trio.
Speaker E:No, no, it's true because they don't actually come out and say.
Speaker E:And they don't actually show it.
Speaker E:Like, I feel like movies where this a sex work, sex trafficking kind of angle, you typically see like Southeast Asian women in like cages dressed like strippers, being like, save me being facetious.
Speaker E:It's a real thing.
Speaker E:But in the movies they depict it in such a like, icky, gross way.
Speaker E:And in this movie, they're just like, we steal jewels, porn.
Speaker E:They're just like this general kind of like, if it's just illegal, we do it kind of like triad and.
Speaker E:Yeah, I mean, this comes up later on as well.
Speaker E:It's just kind of like we.
Speaker E:We dabble in exploiting young women.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That's just the very taste.
Speaker A:But plants the seed of exploitation.
Speaker A:That's going to happen.
Speaker A:We're also around here, we're introduced to another triad boss, Maddie, who we see him shoot a couple guys, take those jewels, as Dom was mentioning, and then later he ends up giving those jewels to Jyn.
Speaker A:So we kind of get into the world of the triad here that Bullet seems to have come out of and seems like she's going right back into it.
Speaker E:Yeah, there seems to be some superfluous stuff, but not a ton.
Speaker E:Like, I was watching this movie and I remember being like, why Are they doing this scene?
Speaker E:Why are they doing this scene?
Speaker E:And they wrap them up actually pretty nicely.
Speaker E:I was kind of impressed it moved.
Speaker A:They keep the paces pretty on point.
Speaker A:Like they don't linger on a lot of that.
Speaker A:It moves pretty quick.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:We go back to Big Ant.
Speaker A:She gets in a fight with Maddie that results in her getting suspended.
Speaker A:So a little bit more there.
Speaker A:And then we go and see.
Speaker A:We get back to May and this is.
Speaker A:Is probably the most awful part of the movie.
Speaker A:She goes to that quote unquote movie studio which turns out to be run by Chin.
Speaker A:And instead of being in a movie, it's a involuntary casting couch situation.
Speaker A:He drugs her, assaults her on camera and forces her into prostitution.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's a.
Speaker B:One of the things I like about this movie is that whereas you could find these exact kind of scenes, but played a lot more graphically in a lot of Hong Kong movies, especially like the Category 3 stuff.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But here it's.
Speaker B:It's kind of.
Speaker B:It's made clear what is going to happen.
Speaker B:You know, what's going on, but it.
Speaker B:It doesn't.
Speaker B:It doesn't start leering into it or, or kind of leaning into that exploitation nature of it.
Speaker B:It's clear what's going on and what's going to happen, but it doesn't need to show us.
Speaker B:And then I think that afterwards, I think you get even more of an impact from it when you get May's reaction when she has to, you know, tell her friends.
Speaker B:I know I'm jumping ahead a second, but I mean, where you get the emotion of it.
Speaker B:So that.
Speaker B:That's all you need.
Speaker B:You don't need to see the actual event, basically playing it.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker E:Right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's nice that it helps us under.
Speaker A:Just like you said, we.
Speaker A:We understand the seriousness of what's happening or about to happen, but we don't have to get our noses rubbed in it.
Speaker A:So it helps.
Speaker E:I find this to.
Speaker E:In my.
Speaker E:This is a.
Speaker E:Guess this might be an influence of American cinema.
Speaker E:We've talked about this a lot because we did the 80s season and we joke about how.
Speaker E:Well, it's not a joke.
Speaker E:It's actually kind of sad.
Speaker E:We talk about how rape and sexual assault is often used as a plot device in 80s action movies and 80s martial arts movies, which we found less in Hong Kong cinema.
Speaker E:And I noticed as time moves on, and especially with the heroic bloodshed and the.
Speaker E:The more modern stuff, they.
Speaker E:They kind of incorporate that a little bit more.
Speaker E:And I feel like they're responding to like The American movies, like, for example, Kickboxer.
Speaker E:Main theme in that movie is the fact that the bad guy assaults, you know, Jean Van Damme's girlfriend.
Speaker E:You know, totally unnecessary for the plot, but they had to throw it in there to make him seem even more villainous.
Speaker E:So I feel like maybe, maybe doing this a little bit more might be something that, like, is a reaction to the 80s style.
Speaker E:The 80s American movie.
Speaker B:It's possible.
Speaker B:I think part of it too is that the.
Speaker B:For the Hong Kong genre films, 80s even, and then into the night, like early the first half of the 90s, there's typically a pretty clear distinction again, between, like, the stuff that is aiming for an.
Speaker B:A purely in action audience, which is something like this just compared to something that's aiming for a, you know, in action, slash, exploitation audience or something like, like her vengeance or something like that, where it.
Speaker B:So it has exciting, fun action in it.
Speaker B:But then the movie, the filmmakers also, you know, rub your faces in.
Speaker B:In just the.
Speaker B:Go for it.
Speaker B:Go for the hardcore stuff as far as, like the Cat 3 stuff as far as like, you know, like, like, you know, nudity, you know, sexual assault, degradation, all kinds of stuff like that.
Speaker B:Because there is an audience for that.
Speaker B:I mean, the best ones, like I said, balance it.
Speaker B:The worst ones, ignore the fun stuff and focus just on the exploitation and don't give any kind of.
Speaker B:Any kind of catharsis, whatever from it.
Speaker B:So this is.
Speaker B:Is, yeah, is.
Speaker B:Is arguably a softer take, I think, partially, like, to your point, you know, following along with the trends coming out of Hollywood and partially because the filmmakers knew that, okay, we're here on a budget.
Speaker B:What's our focus?
Speaker B:Our focus is going to be, you know, the action.
Speaker B:And so that's.
Speaker B:That's where it goes.
Speaker B:Either way, I'm.
Speaker B:Again, I mean, I. I can handle the Cat 3 stuff.
Speaker B:I love a lot of it.
Speaker B:A lot of like, terrible, terrible things.
Speaker B:But in this kind of movie, I'm not here for that.
Speaker B:I'm here for these, you know, these characters kicking ass.
Speaker B:And so that's what the film focuses on, thankfully.
Speaker C:There's even like, regular, you know, like, cop movie tropes in this that are just so cemented already.
Speaker C:Like, Big Ant, she's like, almost like Jack Slater in this for it's.
Speaker C:She's just like, oh, I'm gonna get suspended because I'm a hothead.
Speaker C:And she shows up on the scene in the beginning just like Last Action Hero and Arnold struts across those cars like, what's going on?
Speaker C:What do I Need to do like the whole.
Speaker B:The whole thing where she turns in her badging gun is.
Speaker B:Is great because it's such.
Speaker B:Such like a familiar scene from where.
Speaker C:Ex.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:She of course, take off her jacket and do that.
Speaker B:She's very.
Speaker B:Just very demonstrative with it.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:But I.
Speaker B:Like I said before, I. I love her, so I can watch her for days, so.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:She sells it for sure.
Speaker E:That was totally unnecessary.
Speaker E:There was no need plot wise for her to get her badge and gun taken away because the next time you see her, freaking uncle Bow's like, oh, yeah, you're reinstated.
Speaker E:Don't worry about it.
Speaker B:What are you talking about?
Speaker B:We need to know if she's a tough cop.
Speaker B:She plays by her own rules.
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker E:That's why she l. Two minutes into the movie when she slaughters these criminals.
Speaker E:Slaughters.
Speaker E:And then.
Speaker E:And then she's like, you do the paperwork and drives off.
Speaker E:I'm like, okay, so great.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, also the film, at any chance, the Hong Kong film gets to kind of like, you know, knock it to the.
Speaker B:The British authorities and show how, like, stuffy they are?
Speaker B:Oh, take.
Speaker B:So this is them also showing, like, the white chief of police, you know, doesn't understand her style and what crime is like, so.
Speaker A:Exactly right.
Speaker A:Excellent point, excellent point.
Speaker A:All right, well, I think this is a good place for us to take a break here.
Speaker A:So, yeah, let's.
Speaker A:Let's take a few and get ready for the rest of the awesomeness here.
Speaker A:So we'll be back and welcome back to our Shining Stars episode of Angel Terminators 2 with our guest and buddy, Rob Hunter.
Speaker A:Rob, again, thank you for introducing us to this movie and coming on to talk with us about it and its star, Moon Lee.
Speaker E:Can we.
Speaker E:Before we jump back into the movie we're actually talking about, can we talk about its namesake Angel Terminators?
Speaker E:What is that movie about?
Speaker E:I hear it's like the totally different cast, totally different crew, totally different everything.
Speaker E:And they just slapped the name on.
Speaker E:On this, right?
Speaker B:You guys are talking about.
Speaker B:Yes, Madam.
Speaker B:That movie kicked off that movie got to the third movie in the series and where they decided to call all the entire franchise is called in the Line of Duty, right?
Speaker B:So, yeah, so yes, Madam is basically this.
Speaker B:This happens in movies around the world, but Hong Kong in particular, every time it gets, you know, readjusted or sent to a new market, whatever, or somebody comes up with a new marketing idea, they'll mess around with the title.
Speaker B:So similar with the Angels thing we mentioned earlier, you know, these aren't always the original.
Speaker B:Someone develops like a.
Speaker B:A theme, and so, boom, you know, it becomes this.
Speaker B:So, yeah, Angel Terminators and Angel Terminators 2.
Speaker B:It brings together some of the same cast.
Speaker B:But, yeah, the characters are totally different.
Speaker B:The story is totally different.
Speaker B:There's no actual direct connection other than, hey, you liked him in that movie.
Speaker B:They're in this movie, too.
Speaker B:And so let's call it the same.
Speaker B:Let's call it the same thing or call it a sequel.
Speaker B:It's similar with, like, the Iron Angels movies.
Speaker B:There's three of those, you know, not related really, other than it's the same filmmaker and some of the same cast members, but again, totally different stories, different characters.
Speaker E:So.
Speaker B:So it's more just for, you know, ease of identification, I guess, for.
Speaker B:For viewers to say that you can tell at a glance.
Speaker B:Oh, you know, okay, I. I remember this movie.
Speaker B:This movie got a 2 after it.
Speaker B:You know, I recognize these faces, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B:And that's all it is.
Speaker B:You'll find a lot of that over there.
Speaker B:They make very little effort to connect him other than the title.
Speaker E:That's interesting.
Speaker E:It almost feels like an anthology, you know, like.
Speaker E:Like, I think of, like, the Fargo series, where every season, like, the only thing that's related is it takes place place in the northern Midwest.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so the in the Line of Duty series became a rarity in that because they.
Speaker B:Once they retrofitted it to become, like an entire franchise.
Speaker B:Cynthia Khan takes over, I think, from part three onwards, and she's in them going forward as a steady.
Speaker B:As Basically as a steady character.
Speaker B:So that one became like, okay, they.
Speaker B:They kind of locked it down again retroactively and said, okay, we're going to make this.
Speaker B:And I think so from that point point forward, they made it like a more legitimate film series.
Speaker B:But before then, yes, it was exactly that.
Speaker B:Just like an umbrella title.
Speaker B:And then, you know, here's these different stories unfolding.
Speaker A:What about the Inspector Wears Skirt series?
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:I know that has some of these same actors.
Speaker B:It has.
Speaker B:So, yeah.
Speaker B:So Belle, he was in.
Speaker B:Is in those.
Speaker B:Those are in an ongoing series.
Speaker B:She's a recurring character throughout them.
Speaker A:Oh, okay.
Speaker A:So that's a little more connected.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But beyond that, it's, you know, the stories take kind of take off in different ways.
Speaker B:That's what.
Speaker B:That's an interesting one because that one kind of like goes off the rails a few times as far as, like, you know, not understanding how to maintain a tone.
Speaker B:So there's some good stuff in There.
Speaker B:But it's.
Speaker B:There's also some not.
Speaker B:So they.
Speaker B:They make some choices there.
Speaker B:There where they kind of like say, okay, well, we're going to push the action to kind of like the background a little bit in a couple of those.
Speaker B:And it's a huge mistake because, like, then they focus on, you know, the comedy, which is, you know, comedy.
Speaker B:A lot of cringe stuff, a lot of misogyny.
Speaker B:And then like, you know, they will wrap it up with some kicks to the face and like, it's just not enough.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:Well, speaking of tonal shifts, we'll get into some of that or mood changes maybe.
Speaker A:I don't know if it's total tonal shifts, but we're gonna have some interesting stuff coming up as we move into this movie.
Speaker A:So when we left off, we had that really difficult scene where May, who thought she was going to get her opportunity to get into movies, unfortunately finds herself being exploited for a different kind of movie and basically forced into sex trafficking.
Speaker C:Didn't you guys get like a.
Speaker C:Were people more naive back then?
Speaker C:Because I've never seen a creepier fella and just, oh, yeah, this is.
Speaker C:This is legit.
Speaker C:Let's do this.
Speaker C:It's just like, come on, this.
Speaker C:Red flags, man.
Speaker E:That's a big thing.
Speaker E:Is like the naive girl meets some guy that says he's gonna make all our dreams come true.
Speaker A:And then, Jay, I know because we discussed this last month that you are a fan of Body Double.
Speaker A:Isn't the producer in that movie like the skeeziest looking guy that you're like, this guy screams porno director.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:I love Body Double, so, so kudos to that.
Speaker D:But.
Speaker B:But Jay, also, I will say that you're saying they're naive, but if.
Speaker B:If you take yourself back to, you know, going up on the karaoke stage and singing, if that song ended and a guy walked up looking at Skeezy, this guy, but said, hey, here's my card.
Speaker B:You got it, kid.
Speaker B:Give me a call.
Speaker B:You absolutely would have called that number.
Speaker A:So Bullet and Shitty get jumped by Chin and his thugs and all of them end up getting arrested, which brings Bullet into confrontation with her dad, Uncle Bao, who slaps her and drama ensues.
Speaker A:So we really leaning into like the melodrama at this time, right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Which is interesting.
Speaker E:Well, I mean, if we can step back, the characters in this movie aren't exactly deep, with the exception of Bullet.
Speaker E:Bullet's character is the complex character.
Speaker E:And when you said she's kind of the crux of the movie.
Speaker E:She is.
Speaker E:Because she's the only character that isn't, I don't want to say isn't predictable.
Speaker E:Yeah, I'll say isn't predictable.
Speaker E:She's not a predictable character.
Speaker E:Like she wants to be good.
Speaker E:She wants to be with her friends.
Speaker E:She loves her dad, she loves her friends.
Speaker E:She's got all this support, but she just keeps fucking up.
Speaker E:Like totally.
Speaker E:Like when she's like, I need money.
Speaker E:I'm going to go back to my triad boss.
Speaker E:Why?
Speaker E:Why?
Speaker E:Like your dad's a copy.
Speaker E:Your friends will, will literally die for you.
Speaker E:You have this amazing support system, yet the person you go to is the sleazebag that got you put in jail in the first place.
Speaker E:And you.
Speaker E:And they even say that she's like, I went to jail.
Speaker E:I took the fall for you.
Speaker E:Now you owe me.
Speaker E:I'm like, dude, what makes you think that that guy's gonna be like, oh, you're out.
Speaker E:Here's everything.
Speaker E:No, like, just cut your losses.
Speaker E:But she just can't help it.
Speaker E:And I feel like the melodrama is kind of like once I try to get out, they pull me back in.
Speaker E:But they're not pulling her back in.
Speaker E:She's putting herself back in.
Speaker E:She just can't get around it.
Speaker E:She's a very self destructive character.
Speaker E:Which also makes her the most interesting character.
Speaker E:This, this poor father, Uncle Bow, this poor guy where he's just like, what the.
Speaker E:It's like, what, what, what, what did I do wrong here?
Speaker E:Why can't you just.
Speaker E:Right, right.
Speaker A:So really the, this movie is really about Bullet trying to adjust to life post prison and the good and bad, almost all bad choices that she makes.
Speaker A:That to me like brings it in with other movies of this.
Speaker A:The same kind of story that are great, something like everything from like the Boxer to like King of New York.
Speaker A:But yeah, so it's, it's interesting to see kind of where her journey leads.
Speaker A:And I in our story, like again, Uncle Bao is still trying to connect with her.
Speaker A:They end up taking her Chitty and being Big Aunt all out to dinner.
Speaker A:But that's where they run into May with the triad guys and they find out what happened to May.
Speaker A:So if we weren't sure before about what was happening, them seeing this and then getting May, they quickly realize, like quite bluntly, this is what happened to her and it's awful.
Speaker E:They take her back, which is the interesting thing.
Speaker E:Like they run into her and they're like, we gotta save her.
Speaker E:And they do.
Speaker E:These are good friends.
Speaker A:Agreed.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker E:There she's missing for how long?
Speaker E:Not very long.
Speaker E:And they're like, we don't know where she is.
Speaker E:And they see her, they're like, holy.
Speaker E:And then they beat up a bunch of freaking gangsters and steal her back.
Speaker E:I don't understand why Bullet can't leave her life of crime.
Speaker E:Because these are really good friends, especially the women, the dudes, they're, they're kind.
Speaker B:Of, I like, I like that.
Speaker B:The only time they judge May is when she won't explain what's going on.
Speaker B:She won't let, let them help her, you know, that's the only time they judge her.
Speaker B:Once it's actually revealed what it is, they're immediately, you know, warm with her, helpful with her, you know, lover.
Speaker B:But it's when she's pushing away from them, you know, when Turkey, you know, gives her a little slap.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:To kind of like, you know, what's going on here.
Speaker B:You know, that's their concern.
Speaker B:That feels genuine and, and real.
Speaker B:And then again, once they realize what it is, there's no judgment, which is what she was afraid of, you know, instead they're just automatically there for her.
Speaker B:And I, I, I love that dynamic because it, yeah, it can, you know, the emotional feel of, it can kind of like, you know, go, go high at times with the melodrama, but that friendship still feels grounded, even with these goofy character names.
Speaker B:So it's, I think, I think that's like the kind of the heart of the film.
Speaker B:And Two to Bullets, not defense.
Speaker B:But I mean, again, if we're talking about these people being theoretically right, teens or late teens, early 20s, I guess, who knows really?
Speaker B:You know, she's young, her cortex isn't fully developed yet.
Speaker B:She's, she's, she's making these poor choices.
Speaker B:Her mom, there's that, know, one line about the moment had died, you know, seems to be a tragic situation as well.
Speaker B:So, I mean, she's, she's a messed up kid, you know, and I'm sure at some point the tribe people were giving her attention and affection.
Speaker B:That's what drew her to it in the first place.
Speaker B:So I can understand a lot of it.
Speaker B:And not that the movie needs to get into the nitty gritty of it.
Speaker B:Obviously it's not the focus of the movie, but I feel like it's something that you can fill in blanks and say, okay, you know, she's, she's a, a dumb kid who, you know, had the bad card dealt to her and then kind of just started, you know, rolling.
Speaker B:And like, you Said, I mean, she comes out of it.
Speaker B:She has just the best support, but it's just not what she's used to or comfortable with.
Speaker B:Instead, she just sees, like, the.
Speaker B:The quick connection, which is why she grabs that jewelry, which is why, you know, she makes these impulsive choices.
Speaker B:Even if she, you know, stopped to reflect on it, she know they were poor choices, but she's not stopping to reflect.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And that jewelry thievery, that snatching happens right when she's going to do the good thing.
Speaker A:When the six of them, the.
Speaker A:All of those friends go to basically beat up Shin and get that tape back to some degree, that could have been the end of it, but instead she also takes the.
Speaker A:The jewels and they get chased through a mall, and we get some fighting and running in a mall, which feels very 90s authentic.
Speaker A:Let's go to the mall.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So, like, a police story homage, almost.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:It's fun to do action in a mall.
Speaker B:It's Police story on a budget, though.
Speaker B:So you notice, like, no glass breaks, right?
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:They don't have the sugar glass.
Speaker E:Well, you know, I find that funny because, like, I was talking about how good friends these are.
Speaker E:I want you to think about this.
Speaker E:So let's say there was a tape of me doing something gross, which no one would want to see anyway.
Speaker E:But let's say, would you guys.
Speaker E:Would you two be like, you know, there's some gangsters with a tape of Dom that he would really want to get back.
Speaker E:Let's raid their pad.
Speaker E:Like, you're raiding a mobster's pad?
Speaker E:Like, never?
Speaker E:Yeah, no, I'd be like, whatever, dude.
Speaker C:Yeah, not gonna happen.
Speaker C:Sorry.
Speaker E:No, we're gonna go in there, beat the crap out a bunch of gangsters, raid their place, and steal the tape.
Speaker E:It's still a lot to ask of anyone.
Speaker E:And they're like, sure, let's go.
Speaker E:Just go.
Speaker E:Let's just.
Speaker D:Dom.
Speaker A:I definitely would because on a previous episode, I said that I would use my powers of invisibility if I had them to break into Jason's house and steal his Legos.
Speaker A:I feel like I have a big.
Speaker A:A big friendship debt to overcome.
Speaker A:So, yeah, I'd be ready to break in for you.
Speaker A:All right, so May and Chick are apprehended by the Triad, and in comes to help here, Chitty's Uncle Tiger, who is played by the great Lolay.
Speaker A:Now, we met him a little earlier in the film in a really memorable scene where he's telling his war stories about the past.
Speaker A:I think, like, he was involved with the triad before.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:That's the impression I got.
Speaker A:And that's how he gets all these scars that he shows off all around his body.
Speaker A:So, again, impressive scars.
Speaker A:And he goes to swap those jewels for May and Chick.
Speaker A:But things don't turn out that well for any of them.
Speaker B:That, that whole sequence where they all kind of like, you know, he goes to kind of trade the jewels for them, it goes sideways.
Speaker B:And the next time we see the three of them, they're just dead and hanging from a pole.
Speaker B:I mean, obviously it's a.
Speaker B:It's a, you know, a.
Speaker B:A violent movie, whatever.
Speaker B:But that is where the movie becomes.
Speaker B:I think it ratchet things up and says, yeah, this, this is life or death.
Speaker B:This is not just, you know, like, little punk kids here and like, you know, you know, a dad and daughter, you know, reunion story.
Speaker B:This is life and death.
Speaker B:This is the kind of stuff these kids have gotten into because they were.
Speaker B:I mean, they were alive and breathing last time we saw them.
Speaker B:And then bam.
Speaker B:It just is a stark shift change.
Speaker C:I think even just as a viewer, you're like, oh, this movie isn't playing by any rules, really.
Speaker C:I don't know what to expect next.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think, right.
Speaker A:This is where it really turns from.
Speaker A:Being a movie about this young, you know, kid again would define, like how much of a kid or adult she is, but trying to figure out life in prison to know she's kind of flirted back and forth with the sides of the law.
Speaker A:But now, like, it's.
Speaker A:Things have escalated and yeah, for me, like, I was really shocked by the scene where you see them all hanging from that pole.
Speaker A:Like, this is serious.
Speaker A:And again.
Speaker A:And that's where it felt like for me there was a shift.
Speaker A:I don't think it was a tonal shift like we've seen in other movies where we get like, you know, silly Sammo and these guys are splitting apart a chicken in a nursing home to now a family's getting killed.
Speaker A:Not that, but again, there's kind of the melodrama.
Speaker A:And now it's going to get serious with the highest of stakes and a pretty high body count is about to happen, really starting with these guys.
Speaker E:So what I'm hearing is this is not a Corey film.
Speaker A:That's true.
Speaker A:It is not a Corey.
Speaker E:Well, actually, it's kind of funny we brought this up.
Speaker E:It was definitely.
Speaker E:This is where they ratcheted up and.
Speaker E:But I have to say I. I was surprised that it happened here in particular, but I was looking for it.
Speaker E:I find that with These kind of movies, the motivation.
Speaker E:It's not like your typical revenge movie where the bad thing happens in the beginning, right?
Speaker E:And then the rest of the movie is the pursuit, right?
Speaker E:I feel like in these kinds of movies you ratchet up more and more and more the motivation.
Speaker E:And at some point, like you said, Rob, there's a point where it's like, this is the point of no return.
Speaker E:This is where it gets bad.
Speaker E:And I was kind of waiting for it in this movie and when it happened, I was like, okay, here it is.
Speaker E:Here's the part where there's real, real, real tragedy that makes the characters do the craziest.
Speaker E:Because that's really it in these movies.
Speaker E:The characters do crazy in these kind of movies.
Speaker E:And this is the scene that makes them be like, it.
Speaker E:I don't care about my life.
Speaker E:I don't care about the law.
Speaker E:I don't care about anything.
Speaker D:You.
Speaker E:It's time to go commando on these.
Speaker E:And this is the point where that happens, which literally leads to a lot of fire and knives and awesomeness, right?
Speaker A:Because after this Bullet goes on a rampage, essentially with Molotov cocktails, she attacks Shin.
Speaker A:And I think this is the point, right, where she gets the machete and is like killing dudes with the machete, including her old boss, Gin machetes, plural.
Speaker E:She goes, that's right.
Speaker A:That's two handed machete work.
Speaker E:It's like, yeah, she goes all Ginsu on this and just carves up these guys.
Speaker E:That was a great scene.
Speaker E:Like, I was like, yes, now it's delivering it delivered before, but like now I was like, oh, now they're getting creative.
Speaker B:Her whole attack on those guys is presented basically.
Speaker B:They show it like in slow motion.
Speaker B:And I, I'm typically not a fan of that in action films because the most basic of reasons, which is it's, it's instinctually less visually impressive for me if it's slow motion because I'm not seeing, you know, the speed, the moves, the impact, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:But this one is one of the exceptions for me, because one, you still see impact, you still see like, you know, it moves.
Speaker B:You still see like there's still gravity to it and weight to it.
Speaker B:But because of the emotional layer, I think going across this entire sequence, that's what carries it and makes this emotion dragging out makes it sound bad.
Speaker B:But stretching it out like that again, ratchet things up and holds you there throughout, where if it was played regular speed, it'll be over like in 30 seconds.
Speaker B:But stretched out like that, you're in her intensity.
Speaker B:You're in her rage, her hunger for revenge.
Speaker B:And then obviously, you know, it doesn't quite go the way she planned, which I think gives even more of an impact.
Speaker B:So it's, it's one of those scenes where I, I really don't mind the slow motion action because it's of what you're getting out of it, emotionally speaking.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker E:Rob, you don't like slow motion.
Speaker E:I figured you're the kind of guy who loves Zack Snyder movies.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:I'm not gonna go rescue that tape of you doing deplorable things either.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And in this, I think this is the moment, right.
Speaker A:Her dad shows up in this to help out and he gets shot, she gets shot.
Speaker B:And then he, he's, he's kind of stunned by it.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:Yeah, then he gets shot too.
Speaker E:And then the bird guy's there, right?
Speaker E:Question mark.
Speaker E:Bird guy.
Speaker E:Goose.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:I love that.
Speaker B:Mad gives the gun to his henchmen and says, we'll take care of your family.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Those hands of.
Speaker A:It's so good.
Speaker A:And then we go back to Big Aunt.
Speaker A:So she's trying to figure out what's going on, Right.
Speaker A:She beats info out of an informant.
Speaker A:Does she shoot him too?
Speaker E:Shoots at him.
Speaker E:She shoots at him.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker E:His name is Mouse.
Speaker E:Right.
Speaker E:He actually meets her.
Speaker E:Her.
Speaker E:Like he comes up to her and he's like, hey, I'm sorry about what happened.
Speaker E:Keep in mind, we, we kind of glossed over a very dramatic scene where she's crying in the hospital.
Speaker A:Ah, yes, right.
Speaker E:Dies.
Speaker B:It's a great scene too because again, you get the time lapse of her in the hallway waiting to find out about Uncle Bell's surgery and then comes out we couldn't save him, walks away.
Speaker B:It's like just one line done like h, so good.
Speaker A:But from what I remember, this is about where they all go to their super fun day at the beach.
Speaker A:No, they all meet.
Speaker A:There's a weapons deal going down.
Speaker E:Yeah, that's coincidental.
Speaker E:So they don't really explain too much how Shitty and Turkey get there.
Speaker E:I think they follow them because I don't recall what their reasoning or they just happen to.
Speaker E:They just for some reason knew to go there.
Speaker A:I think they were all just going for a day at the beach.
Speaker B:Yeah, I, I, I think they're on the hunt for revenge.
Speaker B:So they, they just smelled the trail of vengeance and they made it there.
Speaker B:And then of course, that track.
Speaker A:I thought that they were going to go to the beach to race each other in the surf until, like, that's how Chitty would, like, redeem herself by, oh, she could finally beat Turkey in the race.
Speaker E:And then.
Speaker A:And they hug.
Speaker A:And then she'd be ready to fight Clubber Lang.
Speaker A:Anyways, you're fire.
Speaker E:No.
Speaker A:So they all meet up with this weapons deal and we get this big firefight.
Speaker A:And now Civil Hugh has the Notre Dame hat and the shotgun, which is badass.
Speaker A:Absolutely badass.
Speaker A:And this amazing firefight and kung fu fight happens.
Speaker A:And it's like everything is coming together here.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:Apparently, even though, you know, I just said Civil Hue has the shotgun, it really is actually appears to be a grenade launcher because every time she shoots that thing, the ground or anything behind them just explodes in like.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker A:I'm not like a major firearms expert, but I've shot a lot of shotguns and I've unfortunately never had a shotgun do that to any dirt that I've hit, which happens.
Speaker B:You're using the wrong shells, Mike.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:I need the grenade shells, but they're awesome.
Speaker A:And again, the firefight of many kind.
Speaker A:We get this.
Speaker A:This blonde girl that shows up and we got M16s.
Speaker A:And this to me is just like, this is everything we.
Speaker A:So much action, so much fighting, and so many deaths.
Speaker E:I'd actually like to like to ask Rob, because you're really an aficionado with this kind of thing.
Speaker E:I feel like there were a lot of silent cameos from a lot of pretty impressive extras here.
Speaker E:Do you.
Speaker E:Are you familiar with them in this one?
Speaker B:I honestly would have to go check again.
Speaker B:I needed to re watch it and I didn't get to re watch it.
Speaker B:But yeah, you guys already mentioned a couple earlier ones, but yeah, I mean, these movies, if you look at them, if you go to any of these movies and you.
Speaker B:Especially on letterbox, it's the easiest way to do it.
Speaker B:And then click the actor or the director, whatever, you're going to see a lot.
Speaker B:And a lot of crossover because these things.
Speaker B:These things were all made like, on a low budget, one after the other after the other.
Speaker B:So you had a lot of people kind of like just like, you know, working on multiple things at the same time.
Speaker B:In a lot of instances, people coming in for one day, you know, just like.
Speaker B:Because they're all in the studio system, independent studio system over there.
Speaker B:So they're.
Speaker B:Again, they're all just showing up for a little bit of work here and there.
Speaker B:Here and there.
Speaker B:And so you do end up with a lot of crossover.
Speaker B:We would call them cameos, but they're they were just, you know, it's another day of work.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But yeah, so there.
Speaker B:I'm sure there are more in there, but I. I have to go look at the list again to refresh myself.
Speaker E:Well, it was.
Speaker E:There were two.
Speaker E:I remember there were two women who.
Speaker E:They didn't say a word and they were awesome.
Speaker E:Asian woman with rather short hair and she did all these splits and kicks.
Speaker E:And then there was a blonde woman, a Westerner.
Speaker E:And she was awesome too.
Speaker E:She was just like casted as blonde, but she kicked a lot of ass.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, she's Sophia Crawford.
Speaker B:She's been in a ton of stuff again, mostly like directed video stuff in the US as well as overseas, man.
Speaker A:Yeah, she was in US Seals too.
Speaker A:No, you're right.
Speaker A:I'm just doing exactly what you said.
Speaker A:Like clicking through letterbox and it's crazy.
Speaker A:Like, oh, here's a guy Ho Wing chewing was in this.
Speaker A:And I mean, he's also in a diagram pool.
Speaker A:Fighter disciples of the 36 chambers.
Speaker A:And one of the.
Speaker A:My favorite movies I watched for the first time this year as Tears Go By.
Speaker A:Legacy of Ra.
Speaker A:Oh, Legacy of Rage.
Speaker A:There's some Tiger Cage two.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And there's a lot of that.
Speaker A:Like if you just click around it, all these guys in the same this system.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Impressive.
Speaker A:It again, really impressive.
Speaker A:Action.
Speaker E:This was one of the most impressive scenes I've seen in a while.
Speaker E:Like this has like Jackie Chan level.
Speaker E:I don't know about Police Story because Police Story, like.
Speaker E:Like the amount of property Jackie Chan destroys in Police Story, it's like this was still very.
Speaker E:I thought this was very impressive.
Speaker E:I think they choreographed it really well.
Speaker E:I think they paced it really well.
Speaker E:I find some of the other scenes are a little under cranked.
Speaker E:Just a little too much.
Speaker E:This one, because of the firefight, I feel that they didn't under crank because that would look silly.
Speaker E:And I found that this was paced probably the best out of all them because they managed to use both kung fu and bullets in a way that was absolutely perfect.
Speaker B:And the.
Speaker B:The cutting back and forth between it was great too.
Speaker B:Between Moonley's, you know, martial arts fights and then civil Hughes gunfights.
Speaker B:Cutting back and forth, like to your point, is really well done to keep you going on both sides of it.
Speaker E:Yeah, it was excellent Molotov cocktails and just the whole thing.
Speaker E:And then like I said, this movie is borderline girls with guns and borderline heroic bloodshed because there is so much death of main characters.
Speaker A:Yes, right in the scene.
Speaker A:Pretty Much everyone dies except Chitty and Big Anne.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:There's just so many people.
Speaker A:Like when Bullet buys it when she gets shot like through the chest.
Speaker A:I, I was shocked because again the movie really is about her and when, when she gets blasted like holy, what is happening.
Speaker A:I still, I don't think as dramatic as when Cynthia Rothrock takes the giant drill through the chest in writing wrong spoiler alert.
Speaker A:But yeah.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of death and at the end it's just shitty and big and still standing still and began arrests shitty.
Speaker C:Which I kind of found a little surprising.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Like I thought maybe big aunt like give her.
Speaker B:I love that scene though because she did, she did kill an unarmed man.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Who was already wounded, ready to go into custody.
Speaker C:Is a cop.
Speaker C:So yeah, she did her job.
Speaker E:So I, I kind of love the.
Speaker B:Freeze frame of the handcuff.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But then they give you the nice full circle thing where they go to the end where it's like her getting out of jail and she's there for it.
Speaker B:So I, I think it's like thematically it works really well.
Speaker B:And again you've got someone coming out of the system but she's got a support group there and you can only hope that it goes better this time around.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Things are going to be better.
Speaker C:So coming full circle.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Like it's a, it's a really nice ending to this movie.
Speaker A:After all that death, we get some positivity.
Speaker A:Moonly lives again and that's it.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker E:And the police.
Speaker D:And the police.
Speaker A:That is Angel Terminators 2.
Speaker A:All right, slut pants.
Speaker A:What did you guys think about it overall?
Speaker A:What were your thoughts on this movie?
Speaker B:I mean, you already know mine.
Speaker B:I'm again, I'm just stoked that you guys watched it and I hope that you seek out more because I, I do think like I said, I mean I love Hong Kong action movies.
Speaker B:I love, yes, the Girls with Guns, you know, sub genre or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker B:I love all three of these main talents in this movie.
Speaker B:I mean they've got, you know, dozens and dozens of movies and there's several of them where they.
Speaker B:You get at least two or three of them together, which is great.
Speaker B:And there are other, other, you know, amazing female talents over there too.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But this movie, like I said, is one of my favorites basically for all the reasons very talked about.
Speaker B:I mean I think the first and foremost the action is fantastic.
Speaker B:They all get to demonstrate their skill sets.
Speaker B:Civil.
Speaker B:Hugh gets to have some great doubles Doing, you know, flips and bounces all over the place to dodge bullets.
Speaker B:Love it.
Speaker B:But then on top of that, you do get some, I think, some great character beats, which isn't always the case in action movies.
Speaker B:I mean, oftentimes it's very one note, but here you get a little bit more than that with bullets character.
Speaker B:I think Yukari does a great job with the role, the performance.
Speaker B:And again, it's a little surprising at times with obviously who is dying and who's dying when, but it just, it just kind of hits, hits all the marks.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:To your point, Dom.
Speaker B:The pacing on it, I think is really good.
Speaker B:It's never dull.
Speaker B:Again, when they're not fighting, it's character time and fun stuff.
Speaker B:And then when they are fighting, it's just thrilling.
Speaker B:So it's, it's one of my faves of the sub genre.
Speaker B:The same director did Dreaming the Reality, which I would highly recommend as well.
Speaker B:And then he also did Devil Hunters, which we talked about earlier with that bad fire stunt.
Speaker B:So those, those two are also should be like must watches for you guys.
Speaker B:You get some of the same performers as well, but again, they're just phenomenal action movies and a lot of fun.
Speaker C:Yeah, I was just really humbled by this pick because I always like, I'll usually go to a movie because, oh, there's an actor I like or I like the director like this.
Speaker C:I was like, I don't know any of these people, so.
Speaker C:And that's something this good is out there.
Speaker C:Like, I'm shamed by it.
Speaker C:But I'm also super excited.
Speaker C:Like, oh, I didn't even know this was happening.
Speaker C:So I was a huge fan of this one too.
Speaker B:It's great because, I mean, you like, I, it'd be.
Speaker B:I wish I can go back and, and be watching some of these for the first time and know that I've got, I mean, and there's still, there's still tons of movies that I haven't seen yet.
Speaker B:So I'm excited to keep going with it.
Speaker B:But I mean, a lot of these, I mean, you know, I've rewatched again and again, so the fact that you, it's new to you is great.
Speaker B:And again, hopefully, like I said, just check out like Dreaming the Reality and Devil Hunters, Iron Angels.
Speaker B:Just follow, follow some of these, you know, performers around.
Speaker B:It's just some great stuff out there.
Speaker C:Awesome.
Speaker E:So, so to add to this, this movie, this is the first time I'm watching it as well.
Speaker E:And it kind of sucks that I had to watch it on my phone.
Speaker E:I would love to get this in physical media or get it off of some sort of streaming service and watch it on a decent sized tv, sit the whole way through, no freaking kids around, you know?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker E:Because a lot of these movies, I'm like, okay, you know, this is a seminal film.
Speaker E:I'm gonna watch it.
Speaker E:Or I've already seen this, I'm gonna re.
Speaker E:Watch it for the podcast because, you know, this is the work we're doing.
Speaker E:But this one, I, I would sit down and watch the whole thing again and make it more of an experience out of it.
Speaker E:And that's how much I liked it.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker E:I thought it was tight and that's the word I would use, tight.
Speaker E:And I find that a lot of 80s, 90s, like this is very 80s in its feel.
Speaker E:I know it came out in the 90s, but it has a very 80s feel.
Speaker E:I find that a lot of 80s kung fu and even some, a lot of the Shaw stuff in the 70s is not very tight.
Speaker E:There's a lot of plot points.
Speaker E:A lot of them are unnecessary.
Speaker E:Feels like they're only trying to fill time.
Speaker E:This movie doesn't have any fat on it.
Speaker E:And, and I like that the fight scenes are great.
Speaker E:The plot is fine.
Speaker E:You know, we're not there for this nuance plot.
Speaker E:The plot is fine.
Speaker E:It gets the job done.
Speaker E:There's really one complex character and the rest of the characters are just like interesting characters and I think they do that really well and they ratchet up the action in a very regular way.
Speaker E:So, yeah, I, as far as like, you know, heroic bloodshed, girls with guns, or even late 80s, early 90s kung fu in general, I feel like this is, this is one of the better ones.
Speaker E:I'm really happy you recommended it, Rob, so thank you.
Speaker A:Good man.
Speaker A:Well, I really remember what really stood out to me the most.
Speaker A:So I agree with everything everyone said, but I really loved Yukarioshima.
Speaker A:She was just so magnetic.
Speaker A:I thought, yes, there's a lot of melodrama.
Speaker A:Melodrama in it.
Speaker A:But it felt authentic for her.
Speaker A:And as we talked about, like their friendships felt authentic.
Speaker A:I was surprised to see.
Speaker A:I know she's mostly known for a movie that Jay's been telling me for years to watch and I really need to.
Speaker A:And that's this Ricky O.
Speaker A:The Story of Ricky.
Speaker B:So good.
Speaker B:So good.
Speaker A:It's on the Criterion channel, so I will.
Speaker B:It's, it's, it's incredible.
Speaker B:It's a movie that the action's fun, but I mean, just Watching it and seeing what's happened, your jaw is gonna be like just, it's, it's.
Speaker B:I've seen that movie so many times and every time I watch it, there are like numerous, across me numerous moments where I'm just like, you know, just salivating and grinning like a freaking rule, so.
Speaker B:And she's phenomenal in it too.
Speaker A:Yeah, excellent.
Speaker A:Well, that's an even, just an extra reason why I need to watch that movie.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Yeah, this was a lot of fun.
Speaker A:It would be great to be able to watch it not just like on my phone or computer screen.
Speaker A:I would love to see it on a big screen or at least my tv.
Speaker E:What about renting out the little.
Speaker A:Oh yeah, little.
Speaker A:If you guys want to show this, then you can also fly and rob for.
Speaker B:Well, I, I, I fly.
Speaker B:I'd fly back myself to see it in the big screen.
Speaker B:But the things you got to do, one, just start chromecasting this stuff to your tv because that's, that's a huge thing too.
Speaker B:There's a great site called.
Speaker B:So some of these are available, like officially available.
Speaker B:Some of these movies are out there.
Speaker B:Angel Terminators 2 does not have like a currently being pressed official version of it, but a French company recently remastered it and put it out on Blu ray with no English subtitles.
Speaker B:But, but there's a, I got it off ebay.
Speaker B:There's a, I got a bootleg Blu Ray of it that uses that French transfer and they add English subtitles to it.
Speaker B:So that's how I watch it.
Speaker B:So it's a gorgeous picture, solid subtitles.
Speaker B:It's a Vietnamese outfit that does it.
Speaker B:And so like the, the COVID art has like the title, but then also has the title like in Vietnamese and automatically goes to the Vietnamese, you know, language, setting, whatever.
Speaker B:But you change that quick, put it back on Cantonese, put it on English subs, you're good to go.
Speaker B:So most of these are available out there.
Speaker B:A company called far east flicks.com okay, they've got just every movie you can think of, Hong Kong wise available on dvd and they're bootlegs because again, these things aren't really available and they range in video quality.
Speaker B:I've got a ton of them.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:But so they've got these things available too and they're all good prices.
Speaker B:They usually run sales as well where you can get them for like seven bucks each on dvd.
Speaker B:So I highly recommend it because a lot of these are movies that for me at least I, I will pop in to re watch, you know, to to celebrate somebody or for this kind of purpose or just to, for, you know, to enjoy myself for an hour and a half.
Speaker B:So they're definitely worth having on physical media.
Speaker A:Nice.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:Fari's flicks.
Speaker A:I'll.
Speaker A:You know what, I'll throw that in our show notes, people.
Speaker A:Check that out.
Speaker A:All right, great.
Speaker A:Well, of course we can't end this.
Speaker A:And I dom, I'm really interested to hear where this goes.
Speaker A:Time for some science.
Speaker E:Oh, yeah, with science?
Speaker A:Yes, science.
Speaker A:Science.
Speaker D:It's not rocket science.
Speaker A:Just say yes and we'll move on.
Speaker E:Science, I don't think science knows actually.
Speaker A:Fly with me with science.
Speaker E:All right, so I went through this whole movie and like, I was thinking, what do I do?
Speaker E:Do I do like, what is a VHS tape?
Speaker E:It's kind of lame and, you know, yada yada, yada.
Speaker E:And I could do something with the Notre Dame hat, which my wife would love because she's a Notre Dame alumnus.
Speaker E:But I'm like, moonly, why don't I talk about the moon?
Speaker E:So I'm going to talk about Earth's moon.
Speaker E:Seriously, why not?
Speaker E:I mean, what other opportunity am I going to have to talk about it?
Speaker E:And you might think, oh, well, who cares?
Speaker E:Well, Earth's moon is actually really interesting.
Speaker E:Not only from the standpoint of it's our moon, so that's kind of cool, but also like, it's kind of different than the typical moon.
Speaker E:So first of all, what is a moon?
Speaker E:Well, I'm going to take this from like a natural history standpoint.
Speaker E:So the solar system formed 4.6-ish billion years ago.
Speaker E:Now, solar systems form when you have like a nebula, like gas and dust.
Speaker E:It's just floating around and gravity pulls it together and it starts to spin.
Speaker E:Most of the matter gets pulled by gravity to the center and it forms a star.
Speaker E:Sometimes two stars, which is called binary, but star is in the middle, right?
Speaker E:And the vast majority of the mass in our solar system is our sun, which is our star.
Speaker E:And then the stuff that goes, that forms around the star can be any of the other stuff you find planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, and other orbital stuff, right?
Speaker E:And so the largest things that, that go around the star, planets.
Speaker E:What defines a planet has to be a certain size.
Speaker E:It has to be round, and it has to be the only thing in its orbit.
Speaker E:And it's interesting, the term planet actually means wanderer, because before we knew any of this stuff, like, I think it's a Greek word, the Greeks looked up in the sky and they saw a bunch of shiny Little things.
Speaker E:And some of them moved and they're like, like we'll call them wanderers, hence planets.
Speaker E:Now we know what they are, right?
Speaker E:A moon is a celestial object that does not revolve around the sun, but revolves around a planet.
Speaker E:Right.
Speaker E:If you're looking at moons in the solar system, moons usually are a lot, and I mean a lot smaller than the planet itself.
Speaker E:So like, for example, Mercury doesn't have a moon, Venus doesn't have a moon.
Speaker E:Mars's moons are tiny, right?
Speaker E:And then you have big moons around the gas giants, but relative to their size, those moons are like super tiny because the gas giants are freaking enormous.
Speaker E:Right?
Speaker E:But Earth's moon is interesting.
Speaker E:We only have one moon.
Speaker E:It's a quarter of the diameter of Earth, which mass wise makes it a lot smaller than Earth, mass wise.
Speaker E:But like diameter wise, it's.
Speaker E:It's pretty big, right?
Speaker E:So it's kind of unusual to have a system like Earth and Earth's moon.
Speaker E:Right?
Speaker E:And so scientists were always like, what?
Speaker E:You know, we thought, oh, our moon's normal because it's our moon.
Speaker E:But the more we look out, the less we find systems like ours.
Speaker E:So we're like, how did it form?
Speaker E:The way moons form is typically what happens is moons form, you know, just as a separate body and then they get pulled into the orbit of the planet.
Speaker E:Right?
Speaker E:But our moon is kind of big, so it probably didn't form that way.
Speaker E:So they're like, how did this happen?
Speaker E:Well, the dominant hypothesis on how our moon formed is a long, long time ago.
Speaker E:We're talking, you know, probably early on in the birth of the solar system.
Speaker E:The Earth had no moon.
Speaker E:And then another planet was floating around and crashed into Earth and got smooshed into Earth and absorbed by the Earth and all the dust became the moon.
Speaker E:Now this seems like a crazy hypothesis, but it's actually really well supported.
Speaker E:This is called the giant impact hypothesis, also known as the theia hypothesis, which is T h e I A.
Speaker E:Right.
Speaker E:And what they believed happened, a Canadian scientist came up with it, I believe in the 40s or the 60s, I'm not 100 sure.
Speaker E:And the hypothesis is this the Earth existed and this Mars sized planet smashed into the Earth.
Speaker E:Boom.
Speaker E:And it was this really huge impact and it was really messy and all this matter got spewed up.
Speaker E:Right?
Speaker E:And then what happened is what wasn't reabsorbed by the Earth formed the moon.
Speaker E:Right.
Speaker E:And why would you think this?
Speaker E:Well, there's actually several reasons.
Speaker E:Why?
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker E:For one thing, the orbit of the moon and The Earth is very, very similar, which would suggest that they coalesce together, which we wouldn't expect would normally happen.
Speaker E:Right.
Speaker E:The isotopes of the Earth and the Moon are like identical, so meaning they formed like very, very, very similar times.
Speaker E:The Moon doesn't have a big iron core, whereas Earth has a very big iron core.
Speaker E:And if you expected the Moon and Earth to have formed the same way, you'd expect them to have the similar proportion of iron.
Speaker E:But what they think happened is when Theia and proto Earth hit, proto Earth, which eventually become Earth, absorbed the majority of the iron because it was heavy.
Speaker E:So and the low density stuff stayed outside the Earth.
Speaker E:So the Moon is less dense than the Earth because when this impact happened, the Earth absorbed most of the heavy stuff and the Moon is most of the light stuff.
Speaker E:The Moon also doesn't really have a lot of volatile elements.
Speaker E:That indicates that the Moon was like very, very high heat at some point and probably formed this way.
Speaker E:So our moon is not a typical just celestial body that we just caught.
Speaker E:It was formed from a very, very violent collision between Earth and another planet.
Speaker E:And that formed a very unique and very interesting moon.
Speaker E:So.
Speaker E:And I think most people don't know this, so I think it's really fascinating.
Speaker E:So moonly motivated me to talk about Earth's moon, which is really cool now.
Speaker B:Connected to the slut pants.
Speaker E:So what happened is there were equal amounts of sluts on Earth and Theia, and then when Theia hit Earth, the sluts got pulled in by their excess slutty gravity onto Earth and therefore the moon is slow.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:And that's science.
Speaker A:Well, excellent.
Speaker A:This is fun.
Speaker A:Thank you again for joining us and recommending this reminder audience.
Speaker A:They want to find you, find your writing.
Speaker A:Where should they go?
Speaker B:The only social media I'm on is Blue Sky.
Speaker B:I'm there as fake Rob Hunter and my writing's all over the place.
Speaker B:Uh, screen anarchy slash film, Dread Central.
Speaker B:But yeah, if you go to my Blue sky site though, it's got like a link to like everything though.
Speaker A:Nice.
Speaker A:All right, well, again, Rob, thanks for joining us guys.
Speaker A:Again, thanks for talking about another kung fu martial arts classic.
Speaker A:Just want to remind our listeners you can find us on social media.
Speaker A:We are also on Blue sky and Instagram and a few other places that I probably never look at at Punches and Popcorn.
Speaker A:Or you can always throw us an email@ punchesandpopcorn gmail.com and just want to encourage everyone, check out our fellow shows on the Lunchadore podcast network.
Speaker A:Some of those Shows include the Mind of Magnus, Common Threads, new show coming out right now, Food About Town, of course, with our buddy Stromi, nights and weekends talking about the music scene here in Rochester.
Speaker A:And of course, our buddies, Anomaly Presents, who I desperately need them to cover killer karaoke because, yes, feels like a movie that is screaming for them.
Speaker A:So if they do, Rob, I may reach out to you and be like, hey, do you want to talk with them?
Speaker B:Because I. I'm a fan.
Speaker B:And if.
Speaker B:If they do watch it, they can actually double feature.
Speaker B:There's another one called a Japanese movie called Karaoke Terror, and it's about these older women who go to a karaoke and end up in a feud and with some young punks.
Speaker B:Like, young.
Speaker B:You know, basically like young punks.
Speaker B:And so the entire movie is the young gangsters fighting against the old women.
Speaker B:There's a high, high body count.
Speaker B:They're just.
Speaker B:They're constantly knocking each other off, back and forth.
Speaker B:More good fun from karaoke.
Speaker A:Oh, great.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:All right, Anomaly Buddies, the gauntlet has been thrown.
Speaker A:These are there for you.
Speaker A:All right, friends, until next time, good night.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:This has been a presentation of the Lunchroom podcast network.
Speaker B:Also, Mike, a quick aside.
Speaker B:I recommend you watch Angel Terminators 2.
Speaker B:It's actually quite good.
Speaker B:And you'll.
Speaker B:You'll see we're talking about here.
Speaker A:You think I would remember some of this stuff?
Speaker A:I just remember that I remember the slut pants and the Notre Dame hat.
Speaker A:This is.
Speaker A:That's what stood out to me.
Speaker E:Drunk while watching this movie.
Speaker E:Just don't text any war plans to anyone.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:Okay, so you guys tell me what happened next.
Speaker E:I'm sorry, Rob.
Speaker E:What you said is so funny.
Speaker A:Oh, it's true.
Speaker E:I wrote up this summary so we wouldn't have this.
Speaker E:Okay, we're cutting this all out.
Speaker E:But I gotta tell you, Rob, I started writing summary because we all watched writing wrong and we didn't remember the movie.
Speaker E:And that episode was a dumpster fire.
Speaker E:We're like, what happened?
Speaker E:And then Sugarfoot killed a family.
Speaker A:I think that sounded great with the edit.
Speaker E:Well, in there, I edited it fine, but, like, I'm just like, jesus Christ.
Speaker E:These movies are way too complicated for us to do, so I'm gonna write a summary.
Speaker C:They are very plot heavy, so I'm.
Speaker E:Gonna write up a summary.
Speaker E:It doesn't seem to be doing any good, though.
Speaker A:I'm following what's on the list.
Speaker E:It's.
Speaker E:It's supposed to.
Speaker E:It's bullets.
Speaker A:I know.
Speaker E:You kill me, Smalls.
Speaker A:All right, anyway, okay, so let's come back.
Speaker B:Where the hell were we?
Speaker A:That is Angel Terminators 2.
Speaker A:I desperately need to watch.
