Silver Hawk (2004)

Very well executed

Truly Dreadful Film

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I won't lie. I LOVE Michelle Yeoh. I would watch a ninety minute movie in which she simply reads a phone book (not two hours, though...I'm not that big a fan). From the beginning of this movie to the end, they give you what you want: Michelle Yeoh, kicking butt...Her Silver Hawk costume is simply silver cloth and hotpants. The best special effect is her motorcycle. My son was immediately reminded of Batgirl.But, Yeoh is fun...smiling as she beats up villains, giggling with her female friends...far from the solemn character that she was in Crouching Tiger. Her personality was much more like Wing Chun.The martial arts sequences are good and you can see that Yeoh did a lot of her own stunts. The villain looks particularly villainous. There is very little death in this and the violence is cartoonish.A joy to watch!

I've been looking forward to this for over a year, and it's region 2 DVD release finally came a week or so ago.It's an Asian take on the traditional superhero movie, with Michelle Yeoh as a Batman-esquire crimefighter. Of course, there is also more emphasis on martial arts. And although it's Asian, all the actors speak English.The Good points...The action scenes. Great martial arts, all sorts of different weapons and situations, all number of different fighters, and the actors all know how to fight properly. You know the problem with modern action movies is the too-fast editing? Silver Hawk gets that just right, so you can see exactly what is happening in one shot, but no more than that, and then it changes. It's perfect. There is a fight on top of a moving truck, a fight with men on bungee cords from the ceiling, and a fight with guys on rollerblades with hockey sticks. This shows Batman & Robin how it's done - but Christopher Nolan could learn a lot from it too.The music. Surprisingly good and lush sounding.Silver Hawk's background. Her history is told in flashbacks throughout the film, Highlander style. It's simple but effective, nicely creating the relationship between the two principal characters as children at martial arts school.The Bad points.The actors speak English. This is not as bad as dubbing, but it's very obvious some of the actors don't speak English whatsoever.Comedy. Very, very bad. And even Silver Hawk is messing around and making jokes by the end. One of the characters has a very bizarre, supposedly funny martial arts stance with a weird noise he makes, and we're shown this repeatedly, much to the audience's dismay and embarrassment.Tone. Silver Hawk is good when it's serious, it's dramatic and exciting. Silver Hawk is no way near invincible, and she has to escape from the bad guys at one point. But then we have jokes and Silver Hawk smiling during the climactic fight. There is a silly scene where the main police officer tries to catch Silver Hawk - by dressing as a woman. And then they have a fight. Which is taken seriously. Silver Hawk is only good when it's serious, and that's only for the last thirty minutes.The bad guys. Michael Jai White (Spawn) and Luke Goss (Blade II) are wasted on very 2D cartoon characters. They are decent for a fight, but White doesn't even talk, and Goss plays an English Blofeld with bionic arms.Finally, Michelle Yeoh as Silver Hawk is debatable. No question she has the charisma, as well as the physical and actorly skills to pull off the role. But she is much too old for the role, as Silver Hawk seems to be about thirty in the narrative.So my verdict on Silver Hawk is......meh. It's entertaining enough, and the action scenes are exactly what you wanted to see but didn't in all those Batman/Catwoman/Daredevil movies. But it's just not serious enough to take seriously most of the time.Of course it's much better than Supergirl (1984) or Catwoman (2004), it's a solid 7 out of 10 movie, which makes it the best female superhero movie so far. A dubious honor.

Asia doesn't have many bona-fide superheroes in their fantastic fiction; they tend to have kung fu masters and such, but apart from Black Mask (which was very mediocre) I don't think I've seen any other real Asian superhero movies except for this one; Silver Hawk. It is a true combo of kung fu and super-heroics, as the main character, Lulu Wong (Michelle Yeoh), has excelled in the martial arts since childhood and have found a way to use her martial arts for the good of all society as the silver-costumed hero Silver Hawk.The movie takes place in the future, where they have holographic mahjong and some brand-new mind-reading devices. Stylistically, everything is entirely kept in ice-blue glass and metal, which all looks sleek and cool, but also rather cold and inhuman.A human dimension is added, however, in the childhood flashbacks, where a lot of connections are drawn to Silver Hawk's adult life. For instance, the reason she wears a mask is because she did so as a kid, too, to disguise her identity when she was kung fu brawling in defiance of her teachers' orders. This cross-time dimension with her childhood works very well indeed, also because she runs into her childhood friend again as an adult, his having become a police chief. Initially he wants to catch Silver Hawk, but as soon as he finds out who she is, he starts working with her.The bad guy (supervillain, really), Fire Wolf, is quite dull, and his plan not very well described. There are a couple of plot holes in the story, too, and while the action is pretty good, the fighting isn't spectacular. But still a relatively good and watchable movie. I rate it a 6 out of 10.I'm very interested in movies that combine kung fu and science fiction. My list so far includes Silver Hawk, Avenging Fist, Jet Li's The One, and, of course, the Matrix Trilogy, and Equilibrium. And also, Star Wars, sort of, since the Jedi abilities are a form of martial arts... I hope to discover more movies with kung fu and sci-fi combined.

I wasn't expecting much after Michelle Yeoh's last flop "the Touch". "Silver Hawk" doesn't have such a great story, but the action scenes were really well done. the part where Yeoh flew over the Great Wall with her motorcycle was particularily amazing. Jingle Ma once again proves his talent as an action movie director a few years after "Tokyo Raiders" (skip "Goodbye Mister Cool" and "Para Para Sakura" unless you're really desperate). Another good reason to go see "Silver Hawk" is the absence of Ekin Cheng from the cast. That guy seems to star in too many HK movies since the mid 1990s. Worth mentioning is "Yin Xiong"'s Chen Daoming, who delivers a great performance. "Silver Hawk" is by far the most successful HK attempt at adapting a comic superhero to the big screen after "Hak Hap" and the mediocre "Hak Hap 2: City of Masks". Just for that I would give it a 7/10.