I've found myself watching a few different movies now from Hong Kong schlock maestro Godfrey Ho, and I think it's safe to say that sometimes the term "B-movie" is a generous descriptor of his work (however entertaining it might be). And still I'm wholly taken aback by how flagrantly, absolutely low-grade 'Angel the kickboxer' is: could there be anything more dubious than re-editing footage from one of your own previous movie to insert into another? I for one dearly love 1992's 'Honor and glory,' starring Cynthia Rothrock and Donna Jason, and don't get me wrong - I'm happy to rewatch it. Rewatching it by seeing scenes copied and pasted into a different film with new audio? That's stunningly brazen, and the result is not good. Watching this, and earnestly assessing it, becomes a unique and in many ways frustrating experience, not least because as the title's very construction portends, it is astoundingly thin.
It's one matter to churn out features quickly and cheaply. Various filmmakers and production companies do it all the time, and have for years. There are certainly other instances throughout cinematic history of footage being recycled, such as in genre flicks of the 1950s. I think Ho takes this ethos to an entirely new (low) level, however, honestly doing pretty much the bare minimum to slap something together and call it a "new release." For what it's worth, by revisiting 'Honor and glory' we get (in some small measure) the same joy we did from the prior feature: light humor, ham-handedness, suitable plot, and martial arts action that's sometimes silly but always well done. For that matter, let it be said that fight sequences and stunts in the new footage within 'Angel the kickboxer' are very well coordinated, and unquestionably the single best part of the picture. To that point, it's safe to say these ninety minutes are really nothing but a vehicle for the action, and if there were still more of it (with literally everything else further deemphasized), maybe the end result would have been better overall.
I would say that Ho demonstrates capable skills as a director, and his cast, capable acting skills. In the very least, I can say I've seen Ho show his skills elsewhere. Here, however, I'm not so sure that either of these baseline statements are true, because apart from the reused footage and the new fight scenes, 'Angel the kickboxer' is an utter mess. Maybe the actors would prove themselves elsewhere, but in this case it often seems like they're reacting inappropriately to the mood or events within a scene. So far as I've seen to date, Ho's direction has never been more loose, hands-off, aimless, and scattered - in fact, I question if he even had a hand in fight sequences at all, because they come off substantially better than all those moments without violence. (Well, with one exception; one targeted assassination is executed so casually as we see it that it's impossible to maintain suspension of disbelief.) Furthermore, the scenes from 'Honor and glory' (a major portion of 'Angel the kickboxer' - even the climax!) are fitted into this new story very weakly, and for what is cut out, cohesiveness is lost: imagine, if you will, using not Photoshop or other digital software to alter a photo, but physically cutting up additional developed photographs to glue onto the print one wishes to alter. That's the type of amateur hackjob this feature represents; what value we do get from the recycled footage in and of itself is significantly diminished.
That terrible insertion of 'Honor and glory' echoes how the new narrative at large is bafflingly flimsy. Half the plot is merely a slight revision of the preceding title, and the other half is incoherently weaving in new events set in Hong Kong. Those new events, mind you, resurface very suddenly in the last several minutes, as though Ho suddenly remembered he still had plot to resolve, and also seem to introduce plot elements that weren't discussed at all in the entirety of the prior length. In both aspects of 'Angel the kickboxer,' re-edited footage and new footage alike, excruciatingly poor writing and/or sequencing mean that characters are often not introduced at all, and scenes including them may present out of order such that one who is not familiar with the Rothrock vehicle will be quite lost. The new footage does no better, though, giving us characters with little or no explanation of who they are or what they're doing. If the subtitles provided in the Mandarin dub are truly a reflection of the dialogue, then even with allowances for bad translation that dialogue is atrocious and sometimes outright nonsensical.
It really seems to me as though what happened is that Ho had enough new footage for a short film, but decided it needed to be a full-length feature all its own, so he spliced in 'Honor and glory' to round out the plot. It's too bad that no care was taken to ensure that the new plot devised for this amalgamation made any sense. For as woefully poor as everything else is done, what strength the fight scenes might boast becomes meaningless. There are countless other martial arts flicks one could watch without having to suffer from such shoddy craftsmanship as we see here, and the final product isn't entertaining in any measure, even from a standpoint of mockery. I rather feel bad for everyone involved - both those whose work in 'Honor and glory' was chopped up so badly, and those whose contributions to the new footage met with similarly awful assemblage. Whatever it is you might hope to get out of 'Angel the kickboxer,' you can get it elsewhere in far greater abundance and without the confounding deficiencies that present here. Even if you're a diehard fan of someone on hand, this is a title you can totally pass on.
