Angel's Mission (1989) User Reviews

A mess, with some redeeming factors

[gridoon · 5/10 · 31 August 2007]

Okay, since nobody else has commented on "Born To Fight" / "Angel's Mission" so far, I should probably write a short plot synopsis to give you an idea what it's all about. Problem is, the script of this movie is so disjointed and sloppily thrown-together that it's quite hard to keep track of all its characters and subplots. Let's just say that Yukari Oshima plays a Japanese policewoman who, while on vacation in Hong Kong, is asked to investigate the disappearance of several Japanese girls who were working as strippers / hookers at a night club that Yukari's mother happens to be the manager of. One of those girls is Dick Wei's sister, and he also comes to HK to find out what happened to her. Meanwhile, a local female cop is investigating the activities of a high-profile HK citizen who is actually a crime boss, and whose right hand man (Phillip Ko) is planning to betray him and take over his business. Got all that? Not that it matters much, anyway. What matters is that Yukari is impressive in her several fight scenes (I liked her sporty outfits too), and the other female cop is a bonus babe who looks as good as she fights and shoots.

7 out of 10 for the action, 3 for everything else, 5 in average.

Like a heroic bloodshed stew

[CobraMist · 7/10 · 12 November 2020]

A male cop's sister is kidnapped by white slavers while Cyntheia, a Japanese interpol agent, goes to visit her mother who is incidentally working for a nightclub that is run by the same white slavers. Cyntheia teams up with another lady cop who is investigating something about some rich criminals who are making moves agaainst eeach other. There's a little more to the plot but being a Godfrey Ho production it's honestly pretty hard to follow. What I will tell you is that this movie is almost as if famed Italian director Lucio Fulci (THE BEYOND 1981) directed a heroic bloodshed/girls with guns movie. Fulci was known for placing a priority on the effectiveness of individual scenes and caring less about how those scenes connected together to form a coherent narrative. This movie is in a very similar situation. There are tons of scenes that have great choreography in the fights, bloody squibs errupting from gunshot wounds, memorable villains, or hilariously dubbed dialog. But as a whole this movie only sort of makes sense. It's admittedly well paced as someone is typically being shot or punched. If there isn't any action on screen then you are then treated to unintentional hilarity as an awkward script and some truly hilarious dubbing combine together to create some amazing scenes. The music is surprisingly top notch with some very enjoyable 80's synth playing in many scenes as well as the theme for Stuart Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR (1985).

So if you think you can tolerate almost 90 minutes of effective set pieces but an incoherent plot then I'd highly suggest it.

A punch and a kick can solve anything

[unbrokenmetal · 5/10 · 6 January 2022]

First off, "Angel's Mission" ("Born To Fight 2" in my country, apparently "Born To Fight 5" in others) has nothing to do with "Born To Fight 1", since the merging of separate films into a 6-part "series" is an invention of the cinema distributors at the time.

Anyway, we see Yukari Oshima as a Japanese police officer in Hong Kong on the trail of a girl trafficking ring. In doing so, she realizes that her mother (!) has a managerial role there. We are also watching a Gangster boss who hires a new member as his right-hand man, which insults the previous Number One and leads to his betrayal. Whatever the problems are, Yukari has many opportunities to punch or kick bad guys, and that's really just about it. A mediocre action movie.