Dreaming the Reality (1991)
Dreaming the Reality is an awkward 1991 Girls with Guns/Chicks with Kicks movie made up of pieces of varying quality that don’t quite fit together. Some of those pieces are pretty fun, though!
Directed by Tony Lou Chun-Ku (Killer Angels), the movie reunites stars Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima a few years after Iron Angels (1987). They play sister assassins raised by their evil “Uncle” (Eddy Ko). According to IMDB they are playing Silver Fox and Black Cat, but the dub I watched bizarrely changed their names to Sally and Linda I think? For clarity I will just refer to them as Moon and Yukari. In the hilariously over the top opening, we see the girls as small children practicing shooting. Their “brother” Scorpion (played by Cheuk-Nin Cho as an adult) blows away Moon’s adorable bunny, then Uncle shows up to yell at her for crying and remind them all they live to kill and serve him. Years later, Moon and Yukari are on a hit job that results in them accidentally blowing up a minibus full of screaming children. Moon feels bad about it, Uncle once again admonishes her for her feelings (and the cold Yukari is not empathetic either). Uncle is informed that law enforcement has a disk that details all of their assassination contracts and will ruin him if it makes it to its destination in Thailand.
Meanwhile, in Thailand: Sibelle Hu gets into an argument with the manager of a Muay Thai fighter that results in her brother Rocky entering the ring. After Rocky wins, a shady looking promoter takes interest in him. The siblings argue about him fighting (Sibelle is against it), but he still shows up for his next fight. That turns out to be a loooong fight, which despite a few cool moves and some bloody punches really drags the movie to a halt. Before his next fight he gets a minor injury. When Sibelle goes to the fights to say Rocky is not coming, she pisses off the promoter and Sibelle ends up doing the fight. It is against a giant cartoonish Russian fighter, and she immediately starts it dirty and gets them to turn it into a no-holds-barred, falls count anywhere fight. It's pretty fun watching her leap on and around this giant dude. She wins and makes an enemy of the promoter. This will continue to escalate, including her visiting him at his poolside to threaten him with a grenade (actually a lighter).
Moon and Yukari show up at the Thai airport, looking stylish as hell, of course.
They obtain the briefcase with the disk after some bloody chaos (the briefcase also still has the former owner’s hand attached to it for the duration). Plus two Action Points for Moon grabbing on to a piece of rolling luggage and spinning around, minus one Action Point because she doesn’t shoot anyone while doing it! In the escape, Moon (with the briefcase) gets injured and falls into a stream, waking up elsewhere with amnesia.
Goddammit, the last GwG movie I watched (In the Line of Duty VII: Sea Wolves) ALSO had an amnesia plot! Weirdly enough, both movies also make reference to Sylvester Stallone. The amnesia plot thankfully takes up a lot less screen time here, though. Moon ends up on the run from police and hides out in the bar owned by Rocky and Sibelle, who take her in. The crooked promoter and his gang eventually attack the bar and unleash Moon’s memories/killing skills. Moon tries to give the disk to Yukari and explain that in the last 5 minutes she discovered what normal life and happiness are like, so she wants to leave the killing game. They fight, in a continuation of a cool sparring match they had at the beginning of the movie. Yukari finally shows some emotion and can’t kill Moon, immediately resulting in Yukari dying of a bloody headshot delivered by Scorpion. Rocky also gets his dumbass killed trying to protect Moon (he says he fell in love, I say “Citation Needed”).
Moon wants to give up and go back to Uncle, Sibelle says fuck that, let them come to us. This is when Sibelle reveals she is a former cop, which I guess explains why she has a shit ton of guns and explosives at a house in the middle of nowhere? Uncle and gang show up to get shot and exploded by an absurd number of tripwires around the property. It comes down to Moon vs. Uncle and Sibelle vs. Scorpion in unique and exciting fights involving all those tripwires. Scorpion in particular is a damn Terminator, shot up and burned to shit and still going for a while. Moon frustratingly decides NOT to kill Uncle, and they leave him injured for the cops who just showed up (after Sibelle pulls another fake out with a gun lighter this time). Freeze frame and credits.
The pacing and structure on this one are a mess. The introduction of Sibelle and Rocky’s storyline basically starts another movie (a Muay Thai family comedy/drama?) 20 minutes in, and goes on for a long while before we ever get back to our assassins. It takes until the last act for the stories to intersect, and then they pretty much fast forward to the climax. Rocky falling in love with Moon (and Moon falling in love with life) seems to consist entirely of him handing her an open umbrella inside and her laughing, among a few seconds of scenes of them together that don’t even qualify as a montage. I don’t need an epic love story in my GwG movie, but it seems odd considering this one spent something like 5-10 minutes on that Muay Thai match that was entirely unnecessary to the narrative. The movie could scrub that fight entirely and just injure Rocky before his first big fight, sending Sibelle in his place then. That would leave more time to try and flesh out either narrative or their eventual connection.
When we do get to the action, it hits hard, and all the ladies do impressive hand-to-hand work in between lots of shooting. Yukari Oshima looks sleek, and is as cold as her outfits are cool. Sibelle Hu is a smartass loudmouth with an appropriately schlubby look (baggy t-shirt and cigarette permanently dangling out of her mouth). Moon is an adorable badass as always. This definitely doesn’t need to be at the top of anyone’s watchlist, but it is worth checking out if you enjoy Girls with Guns movies enough to go beyond the most famous/acclaimed ones. I can’t see myself ever re-watching the whole movie, but I might randomly queue up Moon vs. Yukari or the climax in the future.
My GwG Stats:
Leading Ladies (and how many movies I have seen them in):
Moon Lee (4), Yukari Oshima (2), Sibelle Hu (1)
MVG (Most Valuable Girl): Sibelle Hu, for being both a silly smartass and a Chow Yun-Fat-mode badass
Scenes of note: exploding bunny, Moon vs. Yukari sparring match and fight, airport ambush, Sibelle vs. giant Russian, crazy fights at the end surrounded by tripwire
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