The titular heroes, starring Michelle Yeoh as Michelle, Michael Wong as Michael, and Hiroyuki Sanada as Peter.
Royal Warriors is a 1985 Hong Kong Martial Arts Movie starring Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Michael Wong (Legacy of Rage). It was one of Yeoh's earliest films, released right after Yes, Madam, and the second in the In the Line of Duty series, even though Yeoh plays a different character (with the same personality and attitude).
Michelle Yip (Michelle Yeoh) is an off-duty Hong Kong police officer who just returned home from a trip in Japan, but her flight is hijacked by a madman, where she ends up thwarting his assault thanks to assistance from Peter Yamamoto (Hiroyuki Sanada), a Japanese Interpol agent returning to his wife and daughter in Hong Kong, and Michael (Michael Wong), a sky marshal who is quickly smitten by Michelle. But unfortunately for them, the hijacker is just one of four villains and murderers - a band of former Vietnam veterans, who had turned to a life of crime after the war, and with one of them dead, the others will tear Hong Kong apart to have Michelle, Peter and Michael killed.
Michelle Yeoh bowed out of the third film, In the Line of Duty III: Force of the Dragon, and for the rest of the series the female lead is played by Cynthia Khan.
Royal Warriors provides examples of:
- Avenging the Villain: The criminals’ reason for trying to kill Peter, Michelle and Michael is to avenge their friend, the hijacker on the airplane, who died because the three protagonists interfered with his hijacking and got him killed. Talk about Moral Myopia…
- Badass Bystander: Subverted. During the nightclub shootout, Bull had run out of bullets for his Uzi, and Michelle thinks it’s a good time to Leap and Fire back. However, another bystander behind her thought she is one of the bad guys, and trips her, nearly causing Michelle her life.
- Belated Love Epiphany: Michelle ignores Michael’s advances and often thinks of him as too childish, and doesn’t pay much attention to him because he tends to speak up at the most inappropriate moments. She suddenly realize how much she misses Michael when he dies.
- Blood Knight: The four ex-veterans, who enjoys killing a little too much, and won’t hesitate to gun down civilians and bystanders to kill Michael, Michelle and Peter. Heck, their Accidental Murder of Peter’s wife and child only drives them to becoming more bloodthirsty and murderous than anything!
- Buried Alive: One of the killers, Bull, tries to do this to Peter using an excavator. But Michelle attacks him and stops him before he can do so.
- By the Hair:
- In the fight against the hijacker, Michelle gets temporarily subdued when her opponent grabs a fistful of her hair. But just temporarily.
- Happens to Michelle again (twice!) in the nightclub scene, when Bull sneaks upon her and grabs her hair during fighting up close.
- Car Bomb: The villains attempt to use this to assassinate Peter, but only succeeds in blowing up his car containing his wife and daughter.
- Casanova Wannabe: Michael tries hooking up with Michelle when they first meet on their flight, only to continuously bumble in her way and embarrass himself. Although once he helps Michelle fight off the hijackers they started hanging out.
- And he continues being this trope, trying to constantly flirt with Michelle at the wrong times, sending her flowers and love letters, and trying to set her up on dates, even when at inappropriate moments ( like, say, after Peter's family died? Or after a brutal shootout in public which more than a dozen innocents gets killed?).
- Chainsaw Good: Bandana tries to kill Michelle with a chainsaw in the final battle, even managing to draw the blade damn near to Michelle’s jugular. She manage to throw him off in the last minute though, and relive him of this weapon after it got Left Stuck After Attack.
- Cheerful Child: Peter’s daughter, who gets several scenes of her bonding with her dad and happily playing with the giant stuffed toy Peter got for her. There's even a rather adorable scene of her crying for her dad to "don't leave me and mommy again" when Peter tries leaving, only for him to kiss her and assure her that he will be back for dinner. Say, I wonder is there a reason for this movie to show us … aw damn, I *had* to ask, didn’t I?
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Michelle in her first action scene doesn’t have a reason to save the man being chased by katana-swinging Yakuza mooks. Except she just wants to. In fact, she practically breathes this trope the entire movie.
- Continuous Decompression: The hijacker in the airplane battle dies this way when Michelle causes his head to go through an open window, although unlike most examples of this trope he didn’t get his entire body sucked out of the window (only his head sticks out, his body gets stuck from the shoulder, but the external cold air is enough to suffocate him).
- Deadly Dodging: During the fight against arm dealers, Peter manage to trick one of them into smashing his partner’s gut with a badly-timed swing of a sledgehammer.
- Desecrating the Dead: Bandana, after failing to kill Michael personally since Michael choose the way of Better to Die than Be Killed, instead decide to dig out his casket ( and wrap it in bundles of dynamites) to taunt Michelle.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Bull, the second most bloodthirsty of the four killers, was finally taken down after a lengthy fight in the nightclub which culminates with Peter shooting him down.
- Empathy Doll Shot: After the scene where Peter’s entire family gets blown up by a car bomb, the police briefing scene had to show Peter (and the audience) his daughter’s badly burnt stuffed bunny to rub it in on how tragic the loss of his family is…
- Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Michelle finally taking down Bandana after kicking the crap out of him in revenge for causing Michael’s death and stealing Michael’s casket.
- Facial Horror: After the Continuous Decompression example, the movie is kind enough to show us an external shot of the plane, where we see the results of the hijacker’s entire face frozen alive by the cold air, skin peeling off, eyes sunken in and cheeks cracking apart.
- Family Extermination: The film deliberately shows us scenes of Peter Yamamoto bonding with his wife and daughter – especially the daughter – to let the audience know how much his family means to him. Also, to let the audience feel his pain when the wife and daughter dies in a car explosion meant for Peter.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Michelle, Peter and Michael started becoming friends after thwarting the opening hijacking as a team.
- Four Is Death: There are four main villains antagonizing the main characters, and everywhere they go expect loads of innocent people to die or be harmed.
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Peter Yamamoto is shown leaving the airplane while carrying a huge stuffed bunny, which Michelle and Michael thought its for a love interest. Later on it turns out its for his daughter.
- Godzilla Threshold: In the ultimate final confrontation against Bandana, as a last-ditch move, Michelle decides to break out an armored, bulletproof vehicle and plow it right through the abandoned construction site hideout where Bandana is waiting.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: The fight in the nightclub where Michelle and Peter take on Bull had all three of them ending up behind the bar counter, next to where the liquor bottles are stored. Guess what happens next.
- Happy Flashback: Peter in the end of the movie, when all the villains are dead, where he reflects on his deceased wife and daughter.
- Innocently Insensitive: Michael’s naivety is further emphasized when he continues flirting with Michelle after Peter’s entire family gets blown up, where he asks her if she’s interested in Peter since Peter is single again without his wife. Michelle is NOT amused.
- It's Personal: Peter Yamamoto holds a personal grudge against the villains because in their attempt to kill him, they end up killing his wife and daughter instead.
- Kick Chick: Michelle primarily uses kicks during her fights. Roundhouse kick, scorpion kick, foot stomp… and yes, there's Leg Focus.
- Kick the Dog: Its bad enough that Bandana captured and crippled Michael, put him through Cold-Blooded Torture, use him as hostage to taunt Michelle, but… stealing the casket where Michael is buried in?
- Knight, Knave, and Squire: Peter is the Knight, Michelle is the Knave, Michael is the Squire.
- Land Mine Goes "Click!": Featured in one of the Vietnam war flashbacks for the four villains. One of them steps on a stray landmine, and quickly urges the others to go on without him, but the other three instead helps him by digging for the landmine and figuring out a way to diffuse it.
- Manchild: Michael have shades of this, with tendencies of being irresponsible, saying things before thinking, opening his mouth at the wrong time, trying to flirt with Michelle even when its not appropriate, and so on. Michelle even (rightfully) tells him to stop being so childish.
- Heck, one scene later shows him talking to his pet goldfish after trying (and failing) to flirt with Michelle!
- Meaningful Funeral: For Michael.
- Murder by Mistake: The villains’ car bomb was meant to eliminate Peter, but only managed to blow up his family. Not that they care much about it….
- Never Hurt an Innocent: Averted, plenty of innocent bystander dies in the movie, especially in the nightclub shootout where Bull goes crazy with his Uzi. Even when making his way up a flight of stairs and seeing two unarmed patrons blocking his way, he simply guns down both without batting an eye. The movie came out 6 years before Hard Boiled, by the way.
- No Name Given: The four villains, whom are Only Known by Their Nickname – Tiger (the hijacker, whose name is revealed after his demise), Bandana, Bull, Cockerel. The only information the movie gives its audience about this deadly quartet is that they used to be Vietnam war veterans who turned to a life of crime for some reasons, but that’s all.
- Oblivious to Love: Michelle is completely unaware than Michael, despite his tendencies of being childish at all times, actually do care for her.
- Outrun the Fireball: In the final scene, Michelle jumps away from her armored vehicle moments before it blows up.
- And later when Bandana blows up the entire site, Michelle and Peter flees from the explosion in a cart on rails.
- Save the Villain: While fighting the hijacker, in a Too Dumb to Live moment, the hijacker tries attacking Michelle with a fire extinguisher while she’s near some windows, causing him to accidentally smash one of them and get sucked towards the now-broken window by internal decompression. Michelle actually tries to save him by pulling him away, but the hijacker (an Ungrateful Bastard) takes advantage of her and tries to push her out instead. The subsequent struggle cause Michelle to instead push his head through the window anyway, killing him.
- Shoot the Television: Bandana, the last villain left, shoots the television he’s watching which is showing a news broadcast featuring Michelle after Michael’s death.
- Sounding It Out: Michael tends to go Thinking Out Loud, such as reviewing the security footage of the restaurant shootout while all alone in his living room, with NOBODY upstairs or around him, for no good reason other than for the audience to know what’s going through his mind. Then again, he tends to be a Manchild…
- Taking You with Me: Bandana, in his final moments, deliberately blew up the entire construction site in a last-ditch attempt to kill Michelle and Peter. He only manage to kill just himself.
- Turn in Your Badge: Michelle’s fate after the restaurant shootout which leaves plenty of innocent people dead, with subsequent scenes showing her as off-duty. Doesn’t stop her from kicking ass in the final battle, though.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Incidentally, it’s the girl (Michelle) who is The Hero, with Peter as The Lancer and Michael as The Heart.
- Unwilling Suspension: Michael after being captured alive by Bandana, firstly from a ceiling, then from the top floor of a high-rise building. He ultimately decide to let himself fall to death rather than be used as bargaining chip by the villain.
- The Vietnam Vet: All four villains of the movie are veterans of the Vietnam war. Though they turn out to be villainous examples.
- Wooden Katanas Are Even Better: In the Action Prologue, Michelle, at a Japanese parade, fights a bunch of thugs using a wooden katana. The thugs are using "real" blades, by the way.
- Subverted that the katana does break, and Michelle continues fighting by kicking and punching.
