Princess Madam is a 1989 Girls with Guns action movie directed by Godfrey Ho, starring Moon Lee, Sharon Yeung, Michiko Nishiwaki and somehow doesn't involve ninjas in its plot.
Mona (Moon) and Lisa (Sharon) are both top officers in the police force and lifelong best friends, but they cannot be more different from each other; Mona is a married woman with a feminine streak from her relatively peaceful upbringing, while Lisa is a tomboy and a brute with a troubled childhood. When both women becomes the target of an elite assassin after thwarting an assassination attempt, they are in for the battle of their lives.
Notably one of Godfrey Ho's few movies in a more "realistic" setting (like, say, the lack of ninjas?), combining the elements of Girls with Guns films made popular by Iron Angels a couple of years earlier, Buddy Cop Show featuring Action Girl protagonists started by Yes, Madam, and John Woo's Heroic Bloodshed cinema, especially its plot and themes about brotherhood (or sisterhood, since both protagonists are women) and action scenes lifted from A Better Tomorrow.
The film contains the following tropes:
- Action Girl: Lisa and Mona. And Dark Action Girl Lily.
- Action Girlfriend: Ass-kicking tough-as-nails cop Lisa to nerdy technician Liu. Mona on the other hand is the Action Wife of Dick.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Mona and Lisa, in the shootout against Lily’s mooks, and in the finale against Boss Lung and the triads.
- Badass Biker: A squad of Elite Mook assassins led by Lily, a Badass Biker, and her husband, assaults Lisa, Mona and the witness in the Action Prologue. They manage to kill off all the Redshirt bodyguards, but Lisa and Mona retaliates and takes out most of the entire biker squad.
- Badass Longcoat: Lisa in the final action scene, which is clearly Godfrey Ho’s attempt to ape A Better Tomorrow and John Woo films in general, considering this film came out when the genre is at its peak of popularity.
- Battle Couple: Dark Action Girl Lily and her unnamed husband, who leads a team of Badass Biker assassins. Although the husband is a case of We Hardly Knew Ye since he died with most of his mooks in the Action Prologue.
- Big Damn Heroes: Both leading ladies have their own Heroic Second Wind moments.
- Lisa saving Mona and her husband by staging an ambush on Lily and her minions, taking out several and helping Mona battle Lily directly.
- Mona arrives in the climax (having broken free from being handcuffed to a staircase) just as Lisa is being pinned under heavy gunfire from Boss Lung’s mooks, and firing away at enemies left and right.
- Bulletproof Vest: Lisa dons one of these when taking on Boss Lung and his mooks, but it only saves her from the first few shots and doesn’t protect her back. Also, it’s useless against two machine-guns pointed at her firing at full-auto.
- Concealment Equals Cover: Played straight in the opening action scene, when Lisa took cover behind a garbage bin while exchanging gunfire with several motorcycle mooks. The bin must’ve absorbed 80 bullets from the amount of gunfire from mooks, but Lisa who is taking cover behind it is completely unharmed.
- Contemplative Boss: Early on in a boardroom meeting, Lisa’s father is shown in the pose on his office’s high-rise penthouse.
- Conveniently Placed Sharp Thing: Subverted, Mona can only break free from being tied up using the shards of glass of a bottle that was previously used to beat up Dick, but she needs Dick to kick the shards of glass towards her. It somehow works, though not as expected because a thick shard of glass ends up flying into Mona’s shoulder, which she then used her teeth to grab and use it for cutting the binds.
- Cool Shades: Mona during the final shootout.
- Daydream Surprise: Lisa kills off the witness she’s supposed to be protecting, before being caught by Mona. Both of them ends up fighting each other, firstly using their fists, and then with bamboo poles, before grabbing decorative Chinese swords on walls to slice at each other. The moment Mona manage to cut down Lisa, the next scene is Lisa suddenly waking up in a Catapult Nightmare.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Lisa’s childhood flashback is shown a bunch of times in the second half of the film, between her and her adoptive father, and it's depicted in sepia tone due to being over a decade ago.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Lisa in Mona’s arms in the final scene. It’s takes place in the afternoon though, but it’s still this trope.
- Disc-One Final Boss: For most of the movie, Lily is set up as the overarching threat towards Mona and Lisa, right until Lily gets brutally beaten to death. And then the movie continues for another half an hour with a new subplot about Lisa’s father being implicated into another crime involving Corrupt Corporate Executive Lung’s dealings with the triads, which goes all the way until the end credits.
- Downer Ending: Mona may have gotten her husband back, but their relationship will be likely tarnished beyond repair even after Lily’s death. Lisa had avenged her father by killing Boss Lung, but dies in the shootout, and considering Mona is the only survivor of the battle she will likely get arrested or detained after the credits.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Lisa shooting the suspect she’s assigned to protect. She really did shoot the suspect later on in the movie.
- Dressing as the Enemy: How Lisa infiltrates Boss Lung’s hideout in a construction site at the ending, concealing her hair with a safety helmet and blending into the crowd until she gets close enough to ambush Lung.
- Elite Mook: The two hitmen who killed Lisa’s father, and tried to ambush Lisa. They nearly defeat her when two-on-one (keep in mind that earlier on Lisa is shown capable of fighting multiple enemies simultaneously) until Mona arrives to assist Lisa, and even with the odds evened out they still put up one hell of as fight before getting beaten.
- Extreme Mêlée Revenge: The fate of Lily, for manipulating Mona’s family life tearing her relationship with her husband apart, and trying to kill both Mona and Lisa. For her actions, Mona and Lisa beats the snot out of Lily, whacks her across the face several times, stomps her down, and delivers a Coup de Grâce by flipping Lily backwards so that she lands her spine on the sharp corner of a metal container. A Sickening "Crunch!" followed by Blood Fromthe Mouth confirms that Lily is Killed Off for Real.
- Fighting Your Friend: Happens twice in the movie, although the first time is a Dream Sequence from Lisa.
- Forced to Watch: Part of Lily’s torment on Mona while the latter is all tied up, by forcing Mona to watch her seduce, kiss, and bite Dick (Mona’s husband).
- Grievous Bottley Harm: When Dick is being seduced by Lily in front of a tied-up Mona, he shoves his knee into Lily using a Groin Attack. Lily, unamused, grabs a glass bottle and whacks his legs with it.
- Guns Akimbo: Lisa does this in the finale, complete with extra pistols strapped to her belt so that emptied pistols can be Throw-Away Guns.
- Happily Adopted: Towards the second half of the film, Lisa confesses to Moon ( after her father’s demise) that she was a street urchin and homeless orphan before being adopted by her father, which is the reason why she’s willing to go through hell and back to eliminate Boss Lung and avenge her father’s assassination, even if it means losing her life.
- Harmless Electrocution: When Liu, trying to fix a faulty electrical socket in front of Lisa, and insisting he "knows that he is doing". He gets shocked when trying to remove a fuse, and ends up being knocked out momentarily, but grins and says "I’m okay!". It’s entirely played for laughs.
- Human Shield: In the final shootout, Boss Lung uses two unfortunate bodyguards, and later a fellow triad senior, as meatshields when Lisa tries to fire at him using dual pistols.
- It's Personal: Mona and Lisa both have their own respective Arch-Enemies in the movie:
- Mona towards Lily, for seducing her husband, breaking up their marriage, kidnapping and trying to kill them, but not before making the helpless, tied-up Mona watch Lily perform a Bite of Affection on Mona’s husband.
- Lisa towards Boss Lung, the Corrupt Corporate Executive who manipulates her father into supporting the triads, killing him and trying to kill her afterwards. Her final action scene is a Roaring Rampage of Revenge towards Lung and his mooks.
- Jackhammered Conversation: Lisa eventually broke up with Liu, her boyfriend, at the third act of the film. But it happens next to a passing train, and audiences cannot hear the conversation between the two of them – the only thing that’s obvious is that Lisa is shouting at Liu, and she is furious.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Boss Lung, shot by Lisa while in the middle of making a threat on her.
- Kind Restraints: Attempted but eventually turned around; when Lisa discovers Boss Lung is behind her father’s assassination and intends to take on Lung and his mooks in a potentially Suicide Mission, Mona tries to talk Lisa out of her idea, culminating in both of them fighting each other as Mona intends to handcuff Lisa. Instead, Lisa uses Mona’s own cuffs to restrain Mona on a set of staircase railings.
- Leap and Fire: Lisa tends to do this more than Mona during the many shootouts, especially in the climax when she takes down Boss Lung’s mooks.
- The Load: Mona’s husband, Dick, whose contribution in this movie is to be seduced by Lily, piss off his wife, and unintentionally getting himself and Mona Lured into a Trap where they both gets captured alive by Lily and her minions. Subverted later on however, when he managed to kick a small shard of glass upwards towards Mona who’s tied up right in front of him, allowing her to use the glass and cut herself free.
- Lock-and-Load Montage: When Lisa is suiting up to battle Boss Lung and his mooks, using her personal cache of firearms.
- Magic Countdown: On the Time Bomb supposed to blow up the restrained Mona. There’s less than twelve seconds remaining on the bomb when Mona managed to get her hands on a shard of glass and cut herself loose, then tries to stable herself as she cuts the ropes binding her feet, and when she managed to break free more than ten seconds later, there’s still five or so seconds ticking away on the bomb, enough time for her to kick it aside where it can explode a safe distance away.
- More Deadly Than the Male: Enforced in the opening scene, when Lisa, Mona and a team of male bodyguards gets ambushed by Lily and her gang of bikers. ALL the male bodyguards die in that relatively short action scene, while both Lisa and Mona manage to survive and take out most of the bikers, including Lily’s husband.
- Nerd Glasses: On Liu, Lisa’s boyfriend.
- Non-Action Guy: Liu, the on-off boyfriend of Lisa, and Mona’s spineless excuse of a husband, named Dick.
- Parenting the Husband: Mona’s husband is an absolute useless excuse of a man without his wife, whose role in the movie feels more like a little brother given how easily he gets manipulated and used by Lily.
- Punny Name: The two leads of this movie are named Mona and Lisa. And then there’s also Mona’s easily manipulated scumbag of a husband, who is named Dick.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Lisa as the red, Mona as the blue.
- Revenge Myopia: Lily wants to ruin Mona and Lisa’s lives before killing them both, in revenge for them killing her husband. Never mind the fact that her husband is an assassin trying to kill Mona and Lisa in the first place.
- Samus Is a Girl: Lily, the Dark Action Girl leader of the biker assassins, isn’t shown to be a lady until after the Action Prologue, when she raises the flap of her helmet.
- Shooting Gallery: A scene depicting Mona and Lisa practicing their Improbable Aiming Skills takes place in the police precinct’s shooting range, where they manage to repeatedly nail the bullseye of their targets with every single shot fired.
- Shoot the Bullet: A variant, when henchmen attempting to kill Mona and Lisa hurls grenades, both ladies managed to shoot the grenades using their Improbable Aiming Skills causing the grenades to explode harmlessly in mid-air.
- Shoot the Fuel Tank: How Lisa manage to take out a couple of motorcycling assassins in the first action scene.
- Taking You with Me: In the final shootout, Lisa managed to hold Boss Lung at gunpoint, just as two thugs wielding machine-guns are pointing weapons on her. As Boss Lung gloats about how Lisa couldn’t live to see another day, Lisa chooses to shoot him mid-gloating, allowing herself to be shot by the two thugs in the process.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Rough and tough Lisa (Sharon Yeung), complete with Boyish Short Hair, and the relatively feminine Mona (Moon Lee), although her long hair is often tied up in a Braids of Action.
- Unknown Rival: Lily to Mona and Lisa. Neither of them knew why Lily is stalking them, seducing Mona’s husband, and trying to screw over their lives, until later on when it’s revealed that Lily’s husband is one of the assassins they shot in the Action Prologue.
- Unwilling Suspension: Poor Mona is subjected to this fate after being captured alive by Lily and her mooks, and unlike other examples of this trope, here Mona is suspended around ten meters in the air with her hands and legs pulled apart in an "X" shape. She did manage to break free in the last minute when getting her hands on a shard of glass, but spends around ten seconds getting entangled in mid-air before finally breaking loose.
- The Vamp: Lily, a Manipulative Bitch who seduces Mona’s husband, Dick, in order to rip the newly-wedded family into half. She intends to do the same thing on Lisa after eliminating Mona, because if Lily can’t have a husband, neither can her husband’s killers, right?
- Vasquez Always Dies: Lisa being the Vasquez…
- Workout Fanservice: The suspect Mona and Lisa are assigned to protect, played by Jojo Cheng, is shown having a workout session in tight leotards in one scene. Unfortunately Mood Whiplash and Fan Disservice quickly follows when Lisa shoots her while she’s still in the middle of a workout, leotards and all. And then the whole scene turns out to be a Dream Sequence.
- You Killed My Father: Lisa’s vendetta against Boss Lung, after her adoptive father gets killed by Lung’s assassins because He Knows Too Much.
