Yes, Madam! aka In the Line of Duty II (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jan 01, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Corey YuenRelease Date(s)
1985 (June 11, 2024)Studio(s)
D&B Films (88 Films)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: B-
- Audio Grade: B
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
Some franchises are born; others are made. Still others are... well, made up out of whole cloth. That’s especially true of international productions, where dubbing, new titles, and creative editing can connect dots that were never intended to be connected in the first place. The most notorious example of that might be the American Robotech saga, which awkwardly stitched together three completely unrelated Japanese series: Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. The same thing has happened in the world of Hong Kong filmmaking, where dubbed export versions have been tied together retroactively. Further complicating matters, the feedback loop of the import/export process has resulted in that kind of revisionism working its way back to Hong Kong, resulting in plenty of entertainment value for fans, but confusion for anyone who tries to create a straightforward catalogue of all the films. Such is the case with the In the Line of Duty franchise.
Turning In the Line of Duty into a series was an afterthought from the original production company D&B Films, so the confusion is exacerbated by the fact that the franchise doesn’t actually start at the beginning. The first film in the series, Royal Warriors (aka Wong ga jin si), had been moderately successful when it was exported as In the Line of Duty. D&B wanted to cash in on that success quickly, so they took a completely different film that had been released the previous year, Yes, Madam! (aka Huang jia shi jie), and retitled it In the Line of Duty II (or some variant thereof) for other markets. That was followed by two films that openly used the same naming system in Hong Kong as well: In the Line of Duty III (aka Huang jia shi jie zhi III: Ci xiong da dao) and In the Line of Duty IV (aka Wong ga si je IV: Jik gik jing yan). Yet even that moderate level of consistency was quickly discarded, with the next three films once again carrying their own titles in Hong Kong while still being exported as In the Line of Duty films in some other markets.
However confusing all of that may be, one thing is perfectly clear: most of these films have little or nothing to do with each other. Royal Warriors and Yes, Madam! both star Michelle Yeoh, but playing completely different characters. Cynthia Khan did end up playing the same character for the rest of the franchise, but that’s the only real connection between any of the films. The true unifying factor is that they’re all “girls with guns” cop thrillers, most of them on a slightly more serious level than rival studio Golden Harvest’s The Inspector Wears Skirts franchise. These women kick major ass regardless of the titles, and that’s all that really matters in the end.
Yes, Madam! stars Yeoh (credited as Michelle Khan) as Senior Inspector Ng of the Royal Hong Kong Police. When an international agent is assassinated and robbed, Ng teams up with Scotland Yard investigator Carrie Morris (Cynthia Rothrock) to recover a piece of microfilm that was in his possession. The microfilm contains evidence against the crime boss Mr. Tin (James Tien), who desperately wants to take it out of circulation. Yet while Mr. Tin may have been behind the assassination, the microfilm inadvertently ends up in the possession of a pair of bumbling thieves, Strepsil (John Shum) and Aspirin (Mang Hoi), who take it to the fence/forger Panadol (Tsui Hark). That puts a target on all three of their heads, with Ng and Morris racing to recover it before Mr. Tin and his cohorts do whatever they can to wipe it out. Yes, Madam! also stars Richard Ng, Billy Lau, Sammo Hung, and Cory Yuen.
Hung was a producer on Yes, Madam! while Yuen served as director, aided by Hoi as one of the fight coordinators, but there’s no escaping the fact that the film’s biggest claim to fame is that it thrust both Yeoh and Rothrock into the Hong Kong spotlight. It was Rothrock’s first feature film, and while Yeoh had a couple of small roles prior to Yes, Madam!, this was her first time as the lead. While they both acquit themselves admirably, the comic antics of Hoi, Shum, and Hark tend to overshadow them (it’s easy to forget sometimes that Hark is a talented performer as well as a visionary director). Yet Hong Kong cinema has never been afraid to veer sharply from comedy to tragedy, and Yes, Madam! is no exception. The slapstick shenanigans are offset by moments of particularly bloody violence, leading to an unexpectedly dark ending. Justice may still be served, but not necessarily at the hands of the law—which ends up further backgrounding Yeoh and Rothrock in what should have been their own story. Yes, Madam! may fall second with the In the Line of Duty numbering scheme, but as far as “girls with guns” films go, it really acts as an introduction for what follows, so it’s arguably the best starting place for the whole series.
Cinematographer Bill Wong shot Yes, Madam! on 35mm film using spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. 88 Films describes this version as a “2K remaster from the original camera negative,” with no other information available. The results look clean, although there’s a slightly processed “digital” look to the proceedings at times, and the darkest scenes can appear a little noisy. The detail levels are otherwise adequate, with decent contrast and a relatively natural-looking color balance. Actually, “adequate” is a good description of the transfer as a whole. It’s not bad, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.
Primary audio is offered in two different flavors of 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio: the original Cantonese theatrical mix and an alternate Cantonese “home video” mix. There’s also an English remix in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, and optional English subtitles are available. In this case, the differences between the two Cantonese tracks are striking. The sound effects seem identical, but the dialogue is drastically different. It’s compressed and muddy in the theatrical mix, but it’s cleaner and less distorted in the home video version, making the latter the easy winner between the two. The synthesized Romeo Díaz score sounds the same either way, right down to his blatant lifts from John Carpenter’s Halloween soundtrack. Still, the improvements in the dialogue alone make the home video mix the only viable option.
The 88 Films Blu-ray release of Yes, Madam! features a reversible insert with new artwork by Sean Longmore on one side, and the original theatrical poster artwork on the other. The following extras are included:
- Introduction by Cynthia Rothrock (HD – :09)
- Audio Commentary by Frank Djeng
- Export Version (HD – 87:36)
- A Team Player – Cynthia Rothrock on Yes, Madam! (HD – 17:50)
- Select Scene Commentary by Cynthia Rothrock and Frank Djeng:
- Airport Scene (HD – 4:30)
- Final Fight (HD – 8:27)
- Ladies First – Mang Hoi on Yes, Madam! (HD – 13:46)
- Interview with Michelle Yeoh (Upscaled SD – 15:05)
- Battling Babes (Upscaled SD – 10:23)
- Hong Kong Trailer (Upscaled SD – 4:22)
The commentary features programmer and former Tai Seng Entertainment marketing manager Frank Djeng, who as usual wastes no time diving into myriad different details about Yes, Madam!. He opens with a rundown of the complicated history of the franchise, and then breaks down the production itself including biographies of all the cast and crew, with a natural emphasis on Cynthia Rothrock and Michelle Yeoh (who he helpfully describes as “the only Bond girl who never shagged with James Bond”). He notes all of the locations and offers plenty of stories about the making of the film. He also spends some time breaking down the evolution of the “girls with guns” genre in Hong Kong and the role that Yes, Madam! played in that process. (Note that this is a completely different track than the one he recorded for the 2022 Region B Blu-ray release from Eureka! in the U.K.)
The rest of the extras include the full export version, offering similar video quality with English 2.0 mono Dolby Digital audio. (There are significant editorial differences between the two cuts, with this one running a bit shorter overall.) There’s a new interview with Cynthia Rothrock, who provides an overview of her career and describes her experiences making Yes, Madam!, plus two different select scene commentaries pairing her with Djeng. (Once again, these appear to be different than the ones that were on the Eureka! version.) There’s also a new interview with Mang Hoi. The rest of the extras were originally recorded for the 2002 Region 2 DVD release from Hong Kong Legends: an interview with the luminous Michelle Yeoh reminiscing about her own career, and Battling Babes, which includes interviews with Sophie Crawford, Michiho Nishikawa, Yukari Oshima, Kathy Long, Moon Lee, and Rothrock. (Note that the brief introduction with Rothrock plays automatically when the disc is inserted, and it can’t be selected from the menus.)
Missing from the Eureka! version is the alternate Djeng commentary, where he was paired with Michael Worth; a second commentary with Mike Leeder and Arne Venema; the alternate selected scenes commentaries with Rothrock; a different interview with Mang Hoi; and a different interview with Rothrock. You’ll want to hold onto that disc if you already own it, but for those who aren’t multi-region capable, this 88 Films version offers a good Region A-friendly alternative with a fine slate of extras of its own. I mean, it’s Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock, for God’s sake. What more could anyone want?
- Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).