Fantasy Mission Force (1983) Movie Review

Mi ni te gong dui (Fantasy Mission Force: Dragon Attack, Jackie Chan - Fire Dragon) is a 1983 action martial arts fantasy movie directed by Hong Kong action filmmaker Kevin Chu, previously featured in the blog for directing the classic Golden Queen's Commando (1983). It was written by Wei Hsin and is known for featuring Jackie Chan in a somewhat small role alongside Brigitte Lin, Adam Cheng, Jimmy Wang Yu, Jimmy Wang Yu and Jing Fang.

The film is a typical "men on a mission" story with a ragtag group of misfits enlisted by the Allies to rescue some unorthodox generals kidnapped by Japanese forces in this fantastic and anachronistic version of WWII. The team finds a gang of cannibal Amazons, ghosts and the Axis army on their way.

You can tell this is a Kevin Chu movie because of the delirious and fragmentary narrative, the collection of genre movie elements put together in a rather impressionistic and non-coherent matter, as well as a disregard for copyright laws since this movie features stills of Snake Plissken, Rocky and Roger Moore as James Bond in a scene. Everything is just a jumble of crazy fights and nonsensical slapstick comedy done in an action movie fashion with enough blood and sexuality to make it mature but silly enough to entertain all audiences.

While Jackie Chan is considered to be the star and has top billing in some internet sites, the reality is that it is Brigitte Lin the one who steals the show, playing Lily, a tough girl with a grenade launcher and a black jacket. She kicks everyone's butts and has to save the day in just about every other sequence. Lin had previously played Black Fox in Golden Queen's Commando and her character has a cameo in the film as one of the possible heroes who can pull off the dangerous mission but it is said that she quit and started a family, pretty funny. Unfortunately she doesn't make it to the end, a lot of characters don't, but she is the shining light of an already curious movie.

There are a lot of very dynamic and fun battle sequences involving several acrobatic feats caught on camera and perfectly staged to make the stunts shine. There are many memorable stretches such as when Lily pulls one of her trick contests at a bar at the beginning of the film, shooting the dress off a tied up girl, as well as a whole middle section with the male characters trapped by an all-female army that ties people down with cloth and is lead by a guy in a tuxedo with his wife. The final battle with the Nazis is also awesome. There's very little in between that doesn't work either so i would say that this is a well balanced and always fast-moving picture.

Very recommended for Hong Kong action movie fans, this is one of the weirdest and most delirious films in the canon and with its good stunts, starpower and constant crazy scenarios it will entertain for all of its length.

Gall Force: New Era (1991-1992) Anime OVA Series Review

Gall Force: New Era is a science fiction anime OVA series that was released from 1991 to 1992 and has only two episodes, forty minutes each. It 's the sixth entry in the Gall Force media franchise. and is the last one to feature the same creative team that involves writer Hideki Kakinuma and director Katsuhito Akiyama. Voice actress Naoko Watanabe returns as Catty but we also have in the cast Miki Ishioka, Chisa Yokoyama, Yuri Shiratori, Kaoru Shimamura and Nozomu Sasaki.

In a futuristic Earth in the year 2085, reincarnations of all of the girls (now called Ruby, Crys, Pearl and Diamond) with slightly different designs (by Kenichi Sonoda again) meet after a disaster caused by the GORN, AI that wants to destroy humanity, rises after 200 years to attack the new world. Led by Catty, the group escapes their city in a starship and must now battle the machines.

Going from space battles to post-apocalyptic ground combat, we now found ourselves in another conventional setting: the futuristic, technologically advanced world on the edge of crisis. While several space operas and pulp stories had space as setting, we never quite saw anything like the original Gall Force setting and world, but by the time we arrive at the sixth entry in the series it's very evident that it slowly turned more and more traditional and borderline indistinguishable from other science fiction stories like Dirty Pair or Bubblegum Crisis (the Kenichi Sonoda designs help to make it feel part of that series as well), but while it manages to find some ways to relate it to the Gall Force mythos and lore, it does feel like a natural evolution.

If you noticed, the girls resemble their original versions a lot more in their designs, and they were also given more outward gestures or reactions that add personality to the girls with their exaggerated expressions (this was never “missing” from other entries but it was increased here). Their roles are also more faithful to Eternal Story but since we now get to have a "fall of civilization" type of story we get to see some of their previous normal lives before joining the war against the robots. This context was pretty much missing from almost every other entry since all of them dropped us in the middle of their armed conflicts. With this in mind, I can see why some people might get more invested and might enjoy this one if they felt Eternal Story lacked explanations and strong characterizations.

The conflicts and clashes between the characters are a bit more pronounced than in Eternal Story but it usually doesn't really go anywhere particularly new or different, they are mostly there to give you a sense of how the team behaves and what they are able to do in such an extreme situation. The villain isn't anything interesting and he's the lamest part of the two episodes. Also, the animation from episode to episode is inconsistent and there’s a drop in quality in the second episode, things look flatter, movements are a bit stiffer and the colors arent quite there. This isn't a dealbreaker for me because I thought the designs were cute and I understood that the budget issues and time constraints are normal in anime so I was more forgiving but it could be distracting for others.

New Era highlights an idea inherent to Gall Force and that was an important subtext to its stories: the value and importance of human life (as a collective, a group, a race) on earth, and the sacrifices we are willing to make in order to fight for our species. The ending is kind of bittersweet, in part because of the nature of the story but also because, while a beautiful idea, it's not really much of an ending, it's more of a way to do the same set up we have seen in the first three movies. So it feels sort of like a lot of steps just to get to the same place or repeat the same old thing.

I can probably recommend this one if you had some issues with the first movie. This one has a few drawbacks, mostly because it’s a long set-up rather than a complete epic storyline, but it’s more than watchable. If you liked the previous series and OVA’s then you will most likely have a good time with New Era as well.