Overview: Magnificent Warriors is a high-flying action romp! International sensation Michelle Yeoh (Tomorrow Never Dies, Supercop) stars in this incredible adventure set against the backdrop of World War II.

Yeoh portrays a wisecracking mercenary pilot with a leather jacket, gun, and bullwhip who sets aside personal greed to defend a small town and free its leader from the clutches of the invading Japanese army! Filled with spectacular action sequences, Magnificent Warriors seamlessly blends sly humor with thrills.

Yeoh’s martial arts prowess, comedic flair, and dramatic skills are fully brought to bear in this incredible follow-up to the classic Royal Warriors. The finale, in which the town, armed only with spears and stones, rises up against the heavily fortified Japanese forces is not to be missed!

Aerial battles, gunfights, hand to hand combat, Michelle Yeoh ... Magnificent Warriors has it all!

Blu-ray Verdict: The film is set during the Japanese occupation of China and follows pilot Fok Ming-ming as she tries to help a leading member of the resistance. Things don’t quite go according to plan as she initially mistakes a conman for the agent.

Later they are found by the real agent and the three of them start working together to thwart Japanese plans to build a chemical weapons factory in a remote city.

If you want lots of well-choreographed martial arts action combined with plenty of laughs you could do a lot worse than this. The story is fairly easy to follow and effectively introduces the key characters in an entertaining way before the main action gets underway.

There are numerous action sequences throughout the film with the sense of danger increasing towards the end. These sequences are all impressive with great martial arts, some shooting and some impressive explosions. The cast is solid; most notably Michelle Yeoh who excels as Ming-ming. She really impresses in her fight scenes but also brings a sense of fun to her role without feeling silly.

Yeoh might not be a trained martial artist, but with her background as a dancer, lots of meticulous choreography and more than a little help from Hong Kong cinema magic, she is suitably convincing as a kick-ass kung fu cutie!

Here, she plays a female Indiana Jones-style character, a daring aviator and mercenary who, with help from a secret agent (Derek Yee) and a wacky con-man/wanderer (Richard Ng), and as aforementioned, helps the people of a small Northern Chinese town to fight the evil Japanese invaders who want to build a poison gas plant on their land.

As for Ng, he was a lot of fun as the roguish conman, but I couldn’t help wondering if his character partly inspired The Weird in the Korean film The Good, The Bad, The Weird!

Lassoing into the 1930’s with a war against imperialist Japan, director David Chung makes the action scenes stand out by putting modern fire power aside for historical weapons, whose weight in gun fights and sword play gives the fights a heaviness, neatly balanced by a rip-roaring Adventure atmosphere of slow-motion Kung-Fu moves and colorful explosions.

Overall I’d definitely recommend this to fans of action-packed, but not overly intense, martial arts films.

Brand New 2K Restoration From the Original Camera Negative
2.0 DTS-HD MA English Soundtrack
2.0 DTS-HD MA Cantonese Soundtrack with newly translated English Subtitles
Audio commentary with Asian cinema expert Frank Djeng
Interview with Michelle Yeoh
Interview with Tung Wai

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