The Dragon Fighter is a 1990 Girls with Guns action movie starring Sibelle Hu, Michiko Nishiwaki, Alex Fong and Alex Man note .
Supercop Officer Ho (Sibelle Hu, in one of the many, many Cowboy Cop roles she portrayed throughout her career) is investigating the actions of triad boss Lung Sei (Eddy Ko). But when an attempt on Lung Sei's life from an unrelated third party occurs, Officer Ho ends up getting dragged into a triad war, which can only end with guns blazing all the way.
This film provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Officer Ho, Jessica, and the unnamed Japanese henchwoman played by Michiko Nishiwaki.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Manchild Ngau spends much of the movie acting like a buffoon and is treated as a joke by most of the characters, but at the end of the final shootout, Ngau ( who takes part because the little boy he’s close friends with ends up unintentionally killed in a hit meant for his life) manage to take plenty of names by sneaking up on Lung Sei and his mooks from a rooftop and lob grenades repeatedly at them, killing several mooks whom are taken by surprise.
- Blow Gun: Jessica, in a fight with Lung Sei’s number two and on the verge of losing after being Punched Across the Room, managed to get the drop on him by whipping out a hidden blowpipe and firing a dart into his forehead.
- Board to Death: During Lung Sei’s meeting with his board members, a disloyal underling ends up getting his head smashed repeatedly against a table by Lung’s number two, right in front of a dozen horrified audiences.
- Boom, Headshot!: Thomas kills more than one mook by shooting them in their foreheads.
- Boyish Short Hair: Officer Ho, this time with Sibelle Hu sporting even shorter hair than any of her other roles.
- Chairman of the Brawl: During one of her stakeouts, Officer Ho gets attacked by a thug who swings a chair at her.
- Cowboy Cop: Officer Ho, who has no qualms about firing her gun in public, engages a suspect on a high-speed car chase, and upon making her suspect crash, drag him out for a bit of Pistol-Whipping before the police can arrive. Heck, her partner had to restrain her from beating up her target after police reinforcements came to take the suspect away!
- Dark Action Girl: Jessica, the henchwoman, played by Carrie Ng (who previously played another similar character in Naked Killer)
- Fat Bastard: The overweight mob underling working for Lung Sei, who frequently extorts money from Ngau.
- Guns Akimbo: Ngau in the final shootout, part of his attempt at emulating Chow Yun-fat. Besides the Badass Longcoat and Cool Shades. Likely an Actor Allusion, since Alex Man co-stars with Chow in Rich and Famous and Tragic Hero prior to this film.
- Human Shield: On one of Thomas’ hits, the target he’s trying to assassinate grabs his girlfriend to use as a shield from Thomas’ silenced pistol. It doesn’t work, Thomas just keeps on firing anyway until his target is nailed down.
- Interesting Situation Duel: During the Chase Fight between Officer Ho and a group of suspects, the leader managed to escape into the highway, onto a moving construction backhoe vehicle. Ho pursues him, and the two of them ends up fighting each other while trying to keep their balance on the moving backhoe. Eventually, because Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress, the vehicle’s operator suddenly stops in a panic, throwing said suspect off into the asphalt where he lands on his face.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Among the various characters in the movie, Manchild Ngau’s best friend is a spunky neighborhood kid he hangs out with in several scenes.
- Machete Mayhem: Ngau is seen sharpening a machete threateningly, after the little kid he frequently hangs out with dies in a hit meant for his life. He later uses this machete to track down and whack the Fat Bastard of a mob underling responsible for the death, with gory results.
- Manchild: Alex Man’s character, Ngau. He spends most of his screen time hanging out and making bets with a 7-year-old neighbourhood kid, tends to joke whenever having conversations with other characters, and rarely takes things seriously. Well, until the aforementioned kid gets accidentally run over by a truck during an attempt on his life…
- Mood Whiplash: For most of the film, it’s more of a comedy-slash-drama with some occasional dark moments. And then, the little kid Ngau frequently hangs out with gets run over by a car after being thrown into the middle of the streets by a bunch of thugs. Unintentionally, since the thugs are after Ngau, and the child just happens to be in the way, and Ngau in the aftermath suffers a massive Heroic BSoD over the incident.
- Ramp Jump: In the end of the movie, Big Bad Lung Sei tries to escape from the scene after all his mooks are killed, by speeding away… only to end up on a ramp which inexplicably launches him over a hundred meters into the air, where he ends up crashing through the second level of a warehouse building before going out from the other side and through another empty building. And then upon landing the car promptly explodes, frying Lung Sei in the process.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: See above. In addition to having his car explode while he’s inside, the demise of the Big Bad also results in the warehouse his car is stuck in blowing up completely, turning the entire area into a massive inferno with him in its center. The warehouse must be filled with substances Made of Explodium.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Officer Ho and Jessica. In an interesting twist, Jessica the Girly Girl is the Dark Action Girl of the film, being an assassin by trade.
- Vasquez Always Dies: Inverted, Sibelle Hu’s Officer Ho, the most Tomboyish of the trio of female characters, is the only one who survives. None of the other named female characters, including the comparatively feminine Jessica, outlives the credits.
- We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: Played straight in the scene where Jessica gets shot in her shoulder. In a painful-to-watch scene where Ngau drives a pair of curved tweezers into the hole in her shoulder.
