8 Michelle Yeoh Martial Arts Movies to Watch on Criterion Channel in March if You Like ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’
Awards season is celebrating Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All At Once leading up to Oscar night. The Criterion Channel is celebrating Yeoh’s martial arts legacy with eight of her Chinese films added in the month of March. Showbiz Cheat Sheet recommends all eight, but here’s a guide to the films Criterion Channel selected.
‘Yes, Madam!’ Was the one that started it all for Michelle Yeoh
Yeoh had supporting roles in two movies before taking the lead of Yes, Madam! The female police actioner launched an entire series that took on the name In the Line of Duty from part three, after Yeoh had left. The first entry teams Yeoh up with Cynthia Rothrock, playing a British cop, with unbelievable fight scenes against modern day criminals.
‘Royal Warriors’ took Michelle Yeoh martial arts movies to the next level
The second entry in the In the Line of Duty series, and Yeoh’s last, takes everything to the next level. From taking out terrorists on an airplane to rooftops, a bar and construction site, Yeoh flies around the screen, wielding weapons in unprecedented action.
‘Magnificent Warriors’ was a little bit of everything
Magnificent Warriors is more like an Indiana Jones movie with Michelle Yeoh. She still does martial arts in it, but there are just as many vehicular and adventuring stunts. This sort of paves the way for some of her latter stunt movies.
‘Police Story 3: Supercop’ was the Michelle Yeoh crossover
When released in America in 1996 as Supercop, this allowed Yeoh to crossover like her co-star Jackie Chan was doing. Hopefully Criterion Channel has the original 1992 sound mix without the English dubbing or rap music Dimension added.
Police Story 3 is less of a martial arts vehicle than you’d expect but the finale is perhaps the most insane stunt sequence Chan ever orchestrated. And it shows with the injuries you can see Yeoh sustain in the outtakes. Yeoh got her own spinoff called Project S aka Supercop 2. All these movies have multiple titles.
‘The Heroic Trio’ and ‘Executioners’ are everything, everywhere between them
Between the two entries in this franchise, Yeoh covers a multiverse’s worth of genres. The Heroic Trio is a superhero movie. Yeoh plays Invisible Woman who teams up with a Chinese Wonder Woman (Anita Mui) and Thief Catcher (Maggie Cheung). They all do martial arts, enhanced by wild superpowered stunts. In the days before CGI, you can totally see the wires pulling them through the air, but that’s part of the fun of Hong Kong movies. It doesn’t make the stunts any less impressive, creative or dangerous.
For the sequel, Executioners becomes a post-apocalyptic movie. The heroic trio return to save the wasteland. It’s… different.
‘The Stunt Woman’ is a martial arts drama
The Hong Kong title is Ah Kam, and that’s the name of the character Yeoh plays. The film itself is compromised because of an actual injury Yeoh suffered performing one of her character’s stunts. So they couldn’t do as many stunts as originally intended, but The Stunt Woman is still not a bad look at the life of a stunt woman with the drama behind the scenes making up for it.
‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ showed the world what Michelle Yeoh could always do
This is the movie most people have probably seen since it got an international release and won Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, Cinematography, Score and Set Decoration. Yeoh had already been making movies like this for 15 years, but director Ang Lee and choreographer Yuen Woo-ping showcased her in the ultimate historical martial arts epic.
If you like these, seek out The Tai Chi Master (aka Twin Warriors) and Wing Chun. You can rent or buy Wing Chun on Prime Video but you’ll have to find Tai Chi on disc.
