geezer cinema: magnificent warriors (david chung, 1987)

This is the nineteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 19 is called "Contemporary Performers: Michelle Yeoh Week":

Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh began her career in Hong Kong action films. She became an international star after appearing in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies and Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She has continued to appear in action, sci-fi, and comedy films, combining all three with her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, for which she became the first Asian woman to win the Oscar for Best Actress.

This week's challenge is to watch a film starring Michelle Yeoh.

It isn't a very big challenge to get me to watch a Michelle Yeoh movie. I'm a big fan ...Magnificent Warriors (also known as Dynamite Fighters) marks the 17th Michelle Yeoh movie I've seen. A biographical summary of Yeoh's career is complicated. She was only 22 when she made her first movie, going under the name "Michelle Khan", a name change suggested by the studio D&B Films. She broke out with her second film, Yes Madam, which was followed by Royal Warriors, and then Magnificent Warriors ... the latter two had the same director (In the credits for the version we saw, on the Criterion Channel, she was listed as "Michelle Kheng"... her name at birth was "Yeoh Choo Kheng"). She made one more movie, then married Dickson Poon (the D of D&B) and retired from acting. She was 25.

Five years later, she got a divorce and returned to movies. She made some of her best movies then, including Police Story 3: Super Cop, The Heroic Trio, and Wing Chun. All that was left was to conquer Hollywood, which she did in 1997 with the James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies (finally listed in the credits as Michelle Yeoh). Her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon solidified her place on the world stage. Finally came Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar.

Magnificent Warriors, with its Indiana Jones feel, is about even with Royal Warriors in terms of quality. Those two, and Yes Madam, are all fun to watch, and Yeoh/Khan/Kheng has clear screen charisma. If you are going to start your Michelle Yeoh marathon, though, start with the post-retirement films, enjoy the "famous " ones next, and then you're on your own. Even a bad movie is made better by her presence.