Yes Madam! New Lady Enforcers (HK 2018)

Rating: *
Review Date: 6/18/22
Cast: Cynthia Khan

Ugh. Why do I continue torturing myself with low budget drek that desperately tries to rekindle the spirit of late 80's Hong Kong filmmaking? The genre is dead and it's never coming back. This time my excuse was to see a 50 year-old Cynthia Khan come out of retirement to play Madam Yang one more time, but much like Jade Leung's recent roles, she's nothing but a stone-faced drill sergeant. The version of the film that I saw wasn't subtitled, but even so, it's obviously a misguided and misdirected mess. It opens with five vignettes that introduce five bad-ass babes who get recruited into Madam Yang's special unit. Whether this is a promotion or a punishment is unclear. They're also joined by a stereotypical chubby girl and a trans girl, who offer comedy relief and then inexplicably disappear in the second half. Similar to the "Inspectors Wear Skirts" series, there's also a horny male unit that wants to get into the girls' pants, but their role isn't entirely clear and a botched training exercise leaves them absent for most of the film. After much tomfoolery, one of the girls is sent to infiltrate a terrorist group that's been planting bombs around town, and when her cover is blown, the rest of the girls (including Madam Yang) come to her rescue.

No matter how you look at it, the movie is a complete embarrassment and nearly unwatchable. The production values are low, it's poorly lit, the cinematography is weak, and it's just downright ugly. The visual effects are appallingly bad, and I'm actually glad it wasn't subtitled because I could tell that the dialog and attempts at humor were cringe-worthy. The action scenes are exceedingly lame, and only one actress in the group can throw a decent punch and kick. I wouldn't mind seeing her in a good movie. Sadly, I couldn't identify her name, and details about this film are hard to come by. I'm not sure how Cynthia Khan was lured out of retirement by this project, but she has less than a minute of screen time. She still looks good, but all she does is scowl and spout a couple of lines. She has one brief fight scene (which is shown in its entirety in the trailer) which shows a glimmer of her former glory, but invasive editing obscures most of it and it's over way too quickly. I know I shouldn't have been expecting much, but it was still a huge disappointment.