Iron Angels, also known as Angel or Fighting Madam is a 1987 Hong Kong Girls with Guns action film released during the peak of the girl-with-guns craze of the late 80s. The movie, and its two sequels (collectively referred to as the "Angels trilogy") is regarded as the defining trendsetter for the girls with guns subgenre of action films which continues even to this day.
After the Interpol destroys a drug producing farm in the Golden Triangle, the drug lords retaliates by sending their remaining forces based in Hong Kong, led by the sadistic Yang-Lin (played by Yukari Oshima of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky fame) to murder the officers in charge of the drug raid. With the Hong Kong authorities' cover completely blown, a covert unit of their best counter-terrorism elite force, codenamed Iron Angels, is assembled. Led by former police commissioner and expert pilot John Chiang (David Chiang), the Angel members consisting of undercover and espionage expert Moon (Moon Lee), femme-fatale Elaine (Elaine Lui), Chinese-American operative Alex (Alex Fong) and Japanese ex-hitman Hideki (Hideki Saijo) attempts to uncover the drug syndicate's operations. And sure enough, gunfight after gunfight ensues, with more than a hundred baddies dead by the time credits start rolling.
Because you can't give heroes a rest, the sequel would reveal that the drug syndicate, though crippled, is not entirely dead, as Moon, Elaine and Alex would discover during a vacation to Kuala Lumpur. Once again, they are fighting against wave after wave of drug dealing baddies, culminating in the third movie ending with Alex using a friggin' Jet Pack with twin machine guns against a small army of extras.
Now somewhat a Cult Classic among Girls with Guns enthusiasts, the popularity of Iron Angels spawned two sequels, Iron Angel 2 and Iron Angel 3: Midnight Angels. Moon Lee and Alex Fong are the only actors to appear in all 3 movies.
Tropes related to the sequels are here as well.
The Iron Angels trilogy provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Elaine and Moon, hands-down. Yang on the other hand is the sinister Dark Action Girl.
- Bait-and-Switch Credits: The first movie opens with a slow, peaceful scene, accompanied by soothing music, of several farmers in what appears to be a South-East Asian rural setting working in their fields... before panning out to reveal the farms are full of opium and poppies, the area is a drug-producing plant in South-East Asia, and there are guerillas armed with machine guns patrolling the area. Cue explosion and shootout with an arriving platoon of Interpol soldiers.
- Badass Biker:
- Alex's preferred mode of transport throughout the series is his trusty motorcycle.
- The first film have an assassination scene, where an Interpol contact gets viciously hacked to death by mooks riding motorcycles and wielding long knives.
- Badass Crew: The entire Angel team, who can take down armies.
- Badass in Distress: Alex gets captured twice in the first movie, although the second time he did it on purpose in an infiltration attempt.
- The Baroness: Yang-lin in the first movie.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Subverted for the two lead Angels, Moon and Elaine. They do get roughed up several times during fight scenes, but despite some small cuts and scratches they still look really attractive. Most of their injuries are on their limbs, knees, back, and seldom on their faces anyway.
- Blood Lust: Yang in the first movie, who, when facing a captive strung up to be tortured, sadistically rubs her finger over the captive's blood and then licks her fingers.
- Boom, Headshot!: Happens several times throughout the trilogy, notably Yang’s superior and Yang herself
- Captured on Purpose: Alex, who pretends to be taken alive by Yang's mooks and challenges Yang on a face-to-face confrontation.
- Car Fu: Elaine in the first movie drives her vehicle straight through the mansion where the rest of the drug dealers are gathered, crashing through the hall and comes out firing her guns.
- The Cavalry: From the first movie, we have Elaine arriving right on time by crashing her car into the drug gang's mansion hideout just as Moon and Hideki are being pinned down by enemy gunfire, and later on Lieutenant Chiang coming to back them up on a helicopter.
- Chopper on Standby: For the good guys. When the Angels are cornered on a building’s rooftop during the peak of a shootout, their superior, Lieutenant Chiang, comes flying over with a helicopter and drops a rope ladder.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Yang from the first movie is a sadist who enjoys watching prisoners and captives being tortured, whipped, and beaten. When she had Alex by the ropes she deliberately slices his chest open with small needles.
- Combat Stilettos: Yang in the first movie, who wears high heels (that the camera lingers upon in several shots) during her fight scenes.
- Concealment Equals Cover: During a shootout, Hideki manage to hide from bullets fired by a dozen thugs all at once from underneath a sofa. One which is somehow sturdy enough to absorb upwards of 30 bullets.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Elaine in several scenes, where she tends to bumble around like a klutz, slip accidentally and knock things over, but once the action scene comes she can kick a ton of ass by herself.
- Dragon Ascendant: Yang, the moment she double-crossed her superior and took over his drug-dealing ring.
- Designated Girl Fight: Expectedly, the first movie ends with the two sole female Angels, Moon and Elaine, fighting Yang.
- Destination Defenestration: Happens all the damn time during fight scenes. Moon and Elaine likes kicking or flipping baddies over balconies, through windows and doors, and sending them crashing through stationary objects.
- Distracted by the Sexy: In the first movie, Elaine pretends to be a call-girl who have lost her way, asking for directions while lustfully showing her shoulders, thighs and flirting with a few mooks, allowing Hideki and Moon to sneak in and out of their hideout. It works for a while, but then Yang steps into the scene...
- Yang herself flashes Alex as he holds her at gunpoint. It works, and she quickly takes him down.
- Excuse Plot: Let's face it, whatever conspiracy or undercover operations the three films are about, these are all a set-up to have the Angels kick as much ass as possible.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Yakuza subordinate working for Yang is shown bonding with his daughter (a 5-year-old child obviously oblivious to her father’s criminal activities) in the restaurant confrontation scene.
- Everyone Knows Morse: After Alex gets captured alive by Yang and is being tortured, he managed to communicate with the Angels of his predicament and Yang’s hideout by tapping a Morse Code transmitter on the heel of his shoe.
- Evil Power Vacuum: The first film starts with the drug ring's operations seemingly crippled after the Interpol managed to overthrow their operations and destroy the drug-production base in the Golden Triangle... but that only leads to the syndicate's subordinates taking over the operations and begin a violent retaliation.
- Fake-Out Make-Out: Moon and Alex in the first film, in a car when trying to spy on some drug dealers.
- Fingore: Yang’s Establishing Character Moment is forcefully removing four of the fingers of a subordinate that pissed her off.
- Groin Attack: The various Action Girl(s) do this time-to-time. In the first movie Yang does this to Alex.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Attempted in the first movie’s ending; Yang is knocked out by Moon, but turns out to be Not Quite Dead, where she quickly picks up a pointed iron rod and runs screaming at Moon, trying to kill her in a Taking You with Me moment. Hideki then suddenly shows up and shoots Yang in the back of her head.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Moon does this within the first few moments of her screentime. When her colleagues’ requests for her to pass the correction fluid, stapler, documents and various office equipment, she simply flings them towards her colleagues’ tables without looking and lands everything perfectly.
- Injured Limb Episode: By the ending of the first movie, Elaine and Moon emerged victorious against the baddies, but not entirely unscathed. Moon is shown clutching a badly-bleeding arm, and in the next scene Elaine is in a hospital bed with her leg in a plaster cast.
- Jet Pack: The climax of the third movie, where Alex gets to pilot a jetpack with twin-machine-guns installed, which allows him to wipe out what remains of the drug syndicate's army.
- Jungle Warfare: The second movie, which is set in the jungles of South-East Asia.
- Klingon Promotion: Yang took over her syndicate after shooting her direct superior in the head.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: The Angels, after finding out everything Alex risked for their mission, dashes straight into enemy territory guns-a-blazing killing mook after mook.
- Made of Explodium: Among the gadgets Elaine and Moon brought along for the climatic finale of the first movie, are buttons, earrings, and necklaces they wore... which are loaded with C4. These blows up simply from being flung towards some mooks, and the duo manage to kill more than a dozen baddies by throwing button-sized explosive projectiles.
- Manly Facial Hair: Alex grows a really macho moustache in the third movie.
- Of Corpse He's Alive: During an infiltration scene in the first movie, Hideki Neck Snap a Patrolling Mook and positions the guy’s body in a corner, moving the guy’s hand like he was smoking and waving at some other mooks.
- Outrun the Fireball: More often than not, Moon and Elaine does this. May it be exploding vehicles, gas tanks, grenades…
- Pin-Pulling Teeth: Elaine does this at one point in the mansion shootout halfway.
- Playboy Bunny: One scene had Moon and Elaine going undercover in a nightclub wearing playboy outfits, complete with bunny ears.
- Pretty Little Headshots: Yang is eventually taken down by Hideki firing a bullet in the back of her head; she falls facing upwards, and while we see a great deal of blood on her face there isn’t a visible bullet exit hole on her forehead.
- In the third movie, the Big Bad Hickman dies when Alex blasts a very tiny hole in her head.
- Redshirt Army: The Embassy guards in the third movie, who only serves to be killed by mooks in the final shootout.
- Sequel Goes Foreign: The second and third movie is set mostly in South-East Asia. In fact, the Angels going on vacation in Kuala Lumpur in the second movie is a key plot point.
- Skewed Priorities: When cornered by mooks on the balcony of a building overlooking a cliff, guns fired towards them in all directions, Alex immediately told Elaine to jump. Elaine’s response?"But I don’t want to scratch my face!"
- The Sociopath: Yang the Dark Action Girl, whose Lack of Empathy is exemplified more than once in this list.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Tomboyish Moon and Feminine Elaine. Both are almost equally good when fight scenes occur though.
- Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Elaine may be frequently concerned over her nails and make-up, and prefers wearing dresses instead of pants, but she can still kick ass and take names during the action scenes. She only tends to whine about ruining her makeup after the action is over.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Moon, in her introduction scene, is shown painting her nails and wearing high heels, but once she gets into fight scenes she kicks at least eleven shades of ass.
- Took a Level in Badass: Alex, who didn't get much action scenes in the first movie and gets captured twice, finally gets to fight, shoot, and beat up various mooks in the sequels.
- Vacation Episode: The second movie had the Angels going on holiday in Kuala Lumpur.
- Waif-Fu: Every action girl during fight scenes, per the norm. Incidentally, Moon Lee (much like Michelle Yeoh) was a classically-trained dancer before she was an action star, and many of her moves resemble Yeoh’s dance-style fighting moves too.
- Walking Swimsuit Scene: One scene had Yang rising from a swimming pool in a tight one-piece.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Hideki and John disappear in the sequels, leaving the sole male asskicker of the Angel team to be Alex. Good thing Alex Took a Level in Badass between the movies.
