On her souped up motorcycle and almost from out of nowhere a lady decked out in a siver costume and cape jumps over the Great Wall of China, speeds down a highway and jumps aboard a mack truck, takes out some guys and rescues baby panda bears. Normally, I would say that’s a funny and entertaining action sequence. Since it opens up the film and I don’t have a clue as to what the heck’s going on, I can’t enjoy the fun to be had. I don’t like Panda – nappers either, but I do like Michelle Yeoh, so I stuck around to see what happens next. Yeoh has had some crossover success, and here as star and producer, she looks to retain that audience, by having not only Blade II’s Luke Goss and Spawn’s Michael Jai White as bad guys, but having helmer Jingle Ma shoot a version in Catonese, and the other in English. It doesn’t quite work, because Goss plays it stright while all the other actors, including White, seem to be in on this joke of a film, and treat it as light fare. Nothing too serious, nothing too harmful. Just an excuse to show off some moves and crazy stunts.

Goss plays more like Eurotrash, and since his character, Alexander Wolfe has a pair of bionic, cybernetic Terminator like arms, it adds no dimension to the character, but it is a sci-fi martial arts no brainer flick, so it doesn’t hurt. But since Goss plays eurotrash and the film cannot make up its mind if it is high camp or not, the picture suffers. Set in the future, Polaris City is not that big of a deal, as some action is still very low tech and locations are lower still (the bad guy’s lair is the basement of a warehouse, for gosh sakes!). How does the film look ‘futuristic’? By washing out colors and keeping a cold steely look, that’s how. The story is secondary, and it deals with some sort of plot to build devices in wireless headset telephones that will result in mind control.

In the meantime, there is some foreplay going on between cop Rich Man (Richie Ren) and celeb/childhood chum Lulu (Yeoh)- and little does he know that the vigilante he pursues- Silverhawk- is his old friend. I did like some of the interaction between Yeoh and Ren, but the fight for fun scenes (specifically when Ren is in drag) isn’t one of them. No, I liked the scene where he superglues her high heels back on her shoes. I also smiled at the ‘Silverhawk Fan Club’ , and where Kit (Brandon Chang) isn’t only the “President Of The Fan Club’ but happens to be the wisecracking scientist’s assistant and tries to not only help Silverhawk and Rich Man on the case, but also wants to foil Rich Man from taking Silverhawk into custody. Get all that? Hope so. I sure didn’t.

The fight scenes are for the most part, well handled, except for the silly superheroine vs, cop in drag I mentioned earlier (note: Rich Man gets teased a little bit for not catching Silverhawk and being handcuffed to a post- the cross dressing thing is not mentioned) and the battles with thugs with bungi cords and (later) hockey sticks are interesting, but these ideas seem out of place. Not to mention that these goons really wren’t needed. All Alex had to do was come down and whack Silver Hawk a few times, or let his two ‘friends’ do it, Morris (White) and Jane (Bingbing Li). Why go through all the trouble? As it is, the bungi deal did not impress me, it was hokey. Compare it to ‘Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome’. While I don’t think Jingle Ma wanted to do better than ‘Mad Max 3′, considering that the bungi thugs in ‘Hawk’ are faceless, mindless and that the scene doesn’t boast any thought or inventiveness, with the exception of one move (our heroine is swooped up like a mouse caught by a falcon) it is hokey. The hockey thing later is choatic and mind numbing. But there is that real strange scene- after the heroine spares someone’s life, these henchmen just…give up and walk away!

For me, I was tempted to do the same.

Silverhawk a.k.a. Fei Ying
Directed by Jingle Ma
Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Luke Goss, Richie Ren, Brandon Chang, Bingbing Li and Michael Jai White

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