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Review of The Heroic Trio
It's here because the film reads as if it came out of the anecdotes of someone's campaign. In short, it's a gamer's film. You've got three heroines running around a modern city. They're trying to stop whoever or whatever it is that steals the city's newborn boys, and when it's over there's a showdown with a very powerful demon and a conspiracy to overthrow the Communist regime in the mainland. Along the way there's plenty of action, interaction, melodrama, a dash of angst, and more than a few wonky plot contrivances. Lovers die, siblings reunite, and Things Blow Up. It's great fun.
Where's the gaming connection? Let's start with the plot. A villain demands that the male newborns of a city be taken to him so he may advance a Sinister Scheme. One of the newborns will become his son and heir, while the rest will become monstrous kung-fu mimions for the son to command when he overthrows the People's Glorious Revolution and restores imperial rules. It's a classic fantasy plot, set in the modern city. That's the definition of "urban fantasy", and it's just as easy to shunt this premise into another genre. (Wouldn't this be a good plot for a Star Wars campaign?)
The characters are also classic gamer material. Anita Mui plays a Masked Avenger type dubbed "Wonder Woman" (No, I don't know if DC ever brought suit against anyone for the trademark infringement.) She's quite the goody-goody, even going so far as to play the agreeable wife to her hotshot Maverick Cop husband (He doesn't get much screentime.). Maggie Cheung plays a bounty hunter sort called "Thiefcatcher" (How's that for gamer-style naming!)who got a thing for hogs, sawed-off shotguns, and gold bullion; she's amoral, but only like Han Solo is amoral. Michelle Yeoh is the most interesting of the three. She plays "Invisible Girl", and she gets all of the good subplots in this film. All three are martial artists, and all three get to have fun with the wire-fu in this film.
With this in mind, it's not hard to see how this is a gamer's film. You've got three PCs--the title heroines--and one friendly NPC in the husband to Wonder Woman. You've got a villain who threatens the city with terror, and the whole world with what he plans to do with the children he's abducted. You've got over-the-top action that doesn't try to make sense--one scene has a bullet split in half by a throwing star while in mid-flight--and so much cheesy melodrama that you can make a fondue out of the tape's contents. It's as if you watched a Feng Shui or HKAT! LARP.
So what do the PCs do for most of the film? They run around vainly trying to do by themselves what requires all three to accomplish. They fight each other. They follow red herrings. They miss obvious clues and do things that no sane character from that genre would try. Thiefcatcher carries obscene amounts of firepower into a fight at least once. They get their loved ones hurt or killed in ways that would make Frank Miller's Batman wince. Put another way, they do all of the things that gamers do in this sort of scenario. Somehow, they survive the confrontation at the end and rescue some (but not all) of the missing children.
Oh no, this is not a great film. It is entertaining, and you really don't want to think too hard about the events lest you go mad with the ramifications. (It's a dark film, thematically, but at least all three walked away from this one in triumph- bloodied, but not bowed.) It's good for the $2 rental when you want to get the gang together for Goofy Movie Night. You can see the die rolls behind the acting, much like with "Record of Lodoss War", and that's half of the fun.
There's a reason why this is recommended in the Feng Shui rulebook.
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 3 (Average)
