As Pink as the Movie's logo...note
"It's an omen! The dying man will see the Heartbroken Man!"
Pink Force Commando is a schlocky Taiwanese B-movie directed by Kevin Chu, starring Brigitte Lin, Sally Yeh (who played Jenny in The Killer (1989)) and a plethora of Taiwan's B-tier names in late-80s action cinema.
Set in an unspecified era where Nazis exist alongside samurais, ninjas, rejects from Mad Max, and the Ku Klux Klan, the titular commando team is an all-woman fighting force led by Jackal (Brigitte), who got their hands on a cache of stolen gold but is being pursued by the Nazi army. After a brutal Action Prologue which leaves most of her team dead, Jackal orders her team to leave, allowing herself to be captured by the Nazis led by their commander, simply called the "Pig Commander"... only to reveal that she's actually working in cahoots with him, for they are secretly lovers.
After a Time Skip, Jackal ends up being betrayed by the Pig Commander, and have to seek her former friends where she needs to prove her allegiance by cutting off her arm (not making this up) before they ends up as a team again, to recover a gigantic diamond from a bandit gang for a La Résistance army. But when the diamond turns out to be a dud, a confrontation results in Jackal getting dropped into a river, where she is rescued by a mysterious, nameless stranger called The Heartbroken Man (not making this up), who then makes a robot arm for Jackal for self-defense. Now returning as a badass killing machine, with her robot arm upgraded to a Gatling Gun (not making this up), Jackal must rescue her friends and join a La Résistance band of soldiers to fight off the Pig Commander, who had allied himself with the aforementioned bandits, ninjas, and every fictional evil army in an epic final battle. The plot kinda just forgot about itself for the sake of the 15-minute long war sequence.
This film, together with Fantasy Mission Force and Golden Queens Commando, would form a Thematic Series of sorts, being a trilogy of schlocky war-action films sharing the same director and with Brigitte Lin as a key player.
This film contains examples of:
- All That Glitters: The immensely valuable Diamond of the Sun, which Jackal and the commandoes battle their way through an entire bandit camp to obtain? It's a dud, the shine emanating from the diamond comes from a light inside connected to a wire.
- Amazon Brigade: The titular commando force, played by Brigitte Lin heading an entire ass-kicking team of stuntwoman and action film regulars.
- An Arm and a Leg: Jackal, in order to prove her allegiance to the commando team and pass an initiation, had to use a bushido to whack off her arm.
- Anyone Can Die: As the film gets closer to its end credits the La Résistance suffers more and more casualties, and even the titular commandoes aren't spared. Dynamite Susie, Devil Angel, the Woman in White all dies one after another.
- Arm Cannon: Jackal, after being rescued by The Heartbroken Man, ends up having a revolver gun fused to her stump, which after a Training Montage is upgraded to a Gatling gun. Her onscreen kill-count notably spikes through the roof once she gets this weapon.
- Badass Biker: A henchman simply called "The Biker" is among the villains' ranks, and kicks ass while riding a motorcycle.
- Badasses Wear Bandanas: Leading Action Girl Jackal does in her opening scene. As does the La Résistance leader, the Woman in White in her entire screentime.
- Big Badass Battle Sequence: The last 12 or so minutes of the movie.
- Big Damn Heroes: The Heartbroken Man ends up being this combined with Chekhov's Gunman in the finale; when Jackal left him after their first meeting he promises to be there for her when she needs it, and right at the end of the movie he shows up in time to assist the losing La Résistance to kick ass and provide a Heroic Second Wind single-handedly, even killing off the Ninja Leader and the Biker.
- Boom, Headshot!: Combined with You Are Already Dead, this is how Jackal's chess-playing partner gets offed in the opening scene. Jackal declares, "Check, your move..." before suddenly realizing she has a bullet hole in her forehead. She then collapses immediately.
- Boyish Short Hair: Dynamite Susie.
- Co-Dragons: The Ninja Leader and the Biker are both given equal amounts of screentime as the Pig Commander's left and right-hand minions.
- Combat Medic: The Heartbroken Man, besides being capable of nursing Jackal back to health and giving her a replacement arm, turns out to be a bona-fide badass capable of taking names as well, showing up in the end of the movie to turn the tide of battle around.
- Dastardly Whiplash: The Nazi Commander Big Bad, named "Pig Commander".
- Decoy Protagonist: Played with. Jackal, being played by Taiwanese A-lister Brigitte Lin, is apparently shot dead right in the opening scene by the Nazi commander after ordering her remaining teammates, Dynamite Susie and Rebel Angel to leave. She then gets up, revealing her to be working in tandem with the Nazi Commander, and they start celebrating.
- Demolitions Expert: Dynamite Susie. With a name like that, it's no surprise.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: The villainous army in the film, whose ranks consists of Chinese bandits, Japanese samurai, ninjas, Nazis, bandidos right out of some Spaghetti Western film, a bunch of Mad Max rejects, The KKK... It Makes Just As Much Sense In Context.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Some of the characters, notably The Heartbroken Man (a mysterious wanderer who lost his love years ago and is still not quite over it), the Ninja Leader (a... lady ninja warrior) and the La Résistance leader called The Woman In White (yes, she wears black throughout the entire film).
- Excuse Me While I Multitask: In the opening scene, Jackal and her first team of commandoes are fighting off a horde of Nazis... while in the middle of a game of Chinese chess. Jackal even stops playing for a second to shoot a Nazi outside a window, before going back to her game.
- Genre Mashup: Girls with Guns, Spaghetti Western, war / millitary, conspiracy thriller, heist film, kung fu...
- Good Hair, Evil Hair: Both mustachioed badasses are on different sides.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The Ninja Leader, who took a bullet fired by The Heartbroken Stranger, meant for the Pig Commander. The commander doesn't bat an eye.
- I Surrender, Suckers: In the opening scene, when the Pink Force Commandoes are apparently cornered by the Nazi army, Jackal immediately orders them to hoist a White Flag. As the Nazis approaches their cabin, Jackal and the all-female commando team immediately bursts out on their jeep, firing away using their vehicle-mounted machine-gun in a quick getaway.
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: One of the most incoherent action films ever made which feels like it's some director's fever dream, that the scriptwriter doesn't have a clue what kind of movie he's trying to make (see Genre Mashup above), so the production crew ends up mashing maybe a dozen different films together and patching the missing segments together with as much action as possible, hopefully to distract the audience.
- Kunoichi: The Dark Action Girl female ninja warrior whose name is simply the Ninja Leader. In the final battle, she kills more redshirts than the rest of the Pig Commander's army.
- La Résistance: The millitia army led by the Woman in White, who serves as the Redshirt Army when the villains united army attacks in the finale.
- Mercy Kill: Jackal has to do this to the captured Cat after she gets captured alive by the Pig Commander's forces and crucified on an X-shaped frame which is being twisted to put her through Cold-Blooded Torture.
- More Dakka: When Jackal's Arm Cannon gets upgraded from a revolver to a gatling gun...
- Mutual Kill: Subverted, the last confrontation between Jackal and the Pig Commander ends with both of them shooting each other at the same time. While the Pig Commander dies first, Jackal ends up with an Agonizing Stomach Wound, but she is still moving when The Heartbroken Man arrives and the credits roll. Leaving her in an Ambiguous Situation since it isn't made clear whether she died or not.
- No Name Given: The Heartbroken Man, the Woman In White, the Ninja Leader. The directors apparently spent too much effort on putting them in action scenes that they've forgotten to assign them with names and / or personalities.
- Off with His Head!: The Biker henchman lose his head from being sliced off by The Heartbroken Man. Via Razor Floss.
- One Last Smoke: Moments before Angel, shot and falling through two floors before being reduced to a crumpled heap, requests for Susie to give her a cigarette... and a dynamite. She then lights the dynamite, use its fuse to light her cigar, and allows several mooks to enter so that she can blow up herself with everyone else trying to kill her.
- Shout-Out: Dynamite Susie's first scene, in which she have to fight a group of martial artists and challengers, including a Bruce Lee Clone, a one-armed sword-fighter and a swordsman in a poncho. She simply blows up all of them with a stick of dynamite, non-fatally. The Bruce Lee Expy notably had his entire face black with soot and his pants shredded, before collapsing last in a comical way.
- Small Girl, Big Gun: Invoked in the first shootout scene, when Jackal and Devil Angel makes their getaway on a jeep, Jackal behind the driver's wheel, and Angel manning the heavy machine-gun mounted behind and using it to take names, cutting a bloody chunk out of Nazi soldiers.
- Stripperiffic: The Woman in White's outfit
is a mere white makeshift bra with tight white pants, and a flowing white headscarf. - Take It to the Bridge: The confrontation between Jackal, Dynamite Susie and The Pig Commander is on top of a suspension bridge, hundreds of meters above a raging river. The Ninja Leader suddenly interrupts, and in the ensuing fight Jackal ends up falling over, but thankfully the river is full of Soft Water which allows her to survive and be rescued by The Heartbroken Man.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: Dynamite Susie's preferred method of attacking mooks,m true to her name, is to fling dynamites at everything she sees.
- Too Dumb to Live: The bandit guarding the Pink Force Commandoes, sans Jackal, when Jackal is trying to break her friends out. The commandoes decides to start a sing-along (of Are You Sleeping, Brother John?) and for some reason, the guard decides to chime in, until he gets close enough for the commandoes to suddenly grab him and drag him into the cell's bars, knocking him out cold.
- Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: Invoked when the commandoes finally retrieves the Sun Diamond, a massive jewel the size of a watermelon, where upon being removed from its casing will unleashing a powerful, glaring light which illuminates the night... it's a dud, there's a lightbulb inside the diamond connected to a power cord.
- Troubled Backstory Flashback: For The Heartbroken Man, when he narrates how bandits massacred his village and killed his girlfriend years ago.
- Waking Up Elsewhere: Jackal, after falling off a bridge and rendered unconscious after being washed ashore, wakes up in The Heartbroken Man's home.
- World of Action Girls: Almost all the female leads are ass-kickers, most notably Jackal, but Dynamite Susie, the Woman in White and Rebel Angel also counts. As does the Dark Action Girl simply named the ninja leader.
