Supernatural forces do not want me to review these movies. In the first three minutes, Emily (my step-daughter) came in to show me some Christmas cards, my mother-in-law asked for my help with a recalcitrant water-tap, and Emily then required help in taking her medicine. Given that she is the ultimate actress, capable not just of making a drama out of any crisis, but a three-part miniseries, this was quite a performance, involving weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth appropriate to the end of the world — and that was just me. I came back to find the power cord of my PC mysteriously unplugged. Is this the work of God or the Devil? And were they trying to stop me writing, or merely trying to protect me from a needlessly painful experience?

I’m actually a big fan of religious apocalypse movies, which is a bit of a surprise since I’m certainly no fan of the church – indeed, any church. But the Book of Revelations is a fabulous piece of writing, even if you do have to wonder what the author was on when he wrote it – odds are it was significantly stronger than holy water. If it truly is the word of God, then God must be Timothy Leary. Movies like The Seventh Sign and The Rapture serve to demonstrate that religion is no bar to interesting and thought-provoking cinema, and if Paul Verhoeven ever gets the chance to make his long-planned film on the real life of Christ, I’ll be there for it too. That was originally scheduled to be released this year, but he did Hollow Man instead; perhaps he was thinking he’d signed up for Holy Man…

Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, from an Incredibly Bad point of view – most of them fall short of this level of competence, perhaps because they are intended for true believers, rather than sceptics. They take the presence of God as a given, and thus the actions of characters which result from this faith, is usually completely inexplicable by secular standards. I’m pretty much with Sam Goldwyn with regard to the topic of messages in movies – if I want one, I’ll call Western Union – but in the case of religious films, I’m prepared to occasionally make an exception. Here are two samples, one bad, one good…

Left Behind

Dir: Vic Sarin
Star: Kirk Cameron, Brad Johnson, Chelsea Noble, Clarence Gilyard.

The Left Behind books are a publishing phenomena – the latest volume in the series sold 2.3 million in the first week, and the series as a whole is around 15 million. There’s clearly a market for this kind of thing, and it was perhaps inevitable that they would move across into the modern-day Sodom of Hollywood. The production company, Cloud Ten, have previously made a number of Christian-themed movies, with titles such as Tribulation, starring Gary Busey, but Left Behind is easily their biggest production, even at a moderate budget of around $17m. They’ve adopted a somewhat strange technique to promote its theatrical release – put it out on video first, in the hope of building word-of-mouth in advance of its February arrival in cinemas. This explains why there were two money-off coupons in the box. However, I should point out that the last movie with such a religion-inspired campaign was Battlefield Earth.

Left Behind begins in the expectedly po-faced style; even the logo is preachy, depicting a child hesitating before a road which goes in two directions. A man takes the kid’s hand and leads it along the right-hand path, while lighting flashes ominously over the other. Add in an opening voice-over including lines like “We should have known better. But we didn’t…In the end, there’s no denying the truth” and the pious tone is set.

The film proper starts with a surprise Arab attack on Israel, where journalist Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron) is interviewing a scientist in the middle of a wheat field. They take shelter in a nearby village which just happens to conceal the Israeli base of operations – yeah, like they’d really let a random Yankee journo in there without asking any questions – but the Arab planes are smote (smited? smut? smeet?) mysteriously from the sky to the bafflement of everyone. Or, at least, everyone who hasn’t read the video sleeve. Buck sends footage back to his company, beaming his hi-definition – albeit looking suspiciously like 35mm film – footage to his network using a dish the size of a cake-tin, manually perched on a dustbin, as a satellite uplink. Isn’t technology wonderful?

Williams gets a hot tip on the whole smiting thing from paranoid conspiracist Dirk Burton, who blames industrialists Cothran and Stonagal. Initially dismissing the claims as the rantings of a paranoid conspiracist, Williams is forced to re-evaluate them after Burton’s predictions come true (gasp!). So, it’s accurate rantings of a paranoid conspiracist then… At this point, the Rapture occurs, though it’s not until 74 mins in that anyone mentions the R word, which is weird in a supposedly religious movie. For those unfamiliar with Biblical eschatology: the Rapture is when the truest believers are swept up to heaven, thereby avoiding the Tribulation, a rather nasty period on Earth before the second coming.

Williams is on a plane when “dozens” of passengers vanish; this is pretty dodgy from a statistical point of view. The Bible is obscure on many things, but it’s damn clear about the number that get raptured: “and no man could learn that song but the hundred [and] forty [and] four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth” [Revelations 14:3]. That may seem like a lot, but it’s barely 0.01% of the Christians on Earth, so the odds are heavily against even a single person being raptured off a Jumbo. Perhaps a package tour of Israeli monks was on board, since the Bible also says those Raptured must be virginal Jews [Revelations 7:4 and 14:4], points strangely ignored here. The film at one stage claims 144 million have vanished i.e. the Bible is out by a factor of a thousand. Suddenly, the Feeding of the, er, Five doesn’t seem so impressive.

Back on the plane, the carefully-considered response of pilot Rayford Steele (Brad Johnson) to this catastrophe is…to drop the oxygen masks. This has a strange calming effect on the passengers – maybe they should try it on the ground, where the Soviet leader of the UN, Nicolae Carpathia (Gordon Currie), a pawn of Cothran and Stonagal, takes the reins over the panicking world populace. Steele and Williams team up: Steele’s wife and son have been raptured (repeat previous statistical discussion about how unlikely this is, and never mind the bit about being a virginal Jew), leading to a pitiful scene as he sobs over their belongings, though the most pitiful thing about it is the over-acting on view. Blaming his wife’s religious beliefs, he hurls a bible at the mirror. but then, of course, starts reading it…

Williams finds Dirk Smith murdered (yes, I know he was Dirk Burton earlier in the film, but the computer screen definitely says Dirk Smith – his email address is dirk@isdn.com, if you want to send him some), and is shot at himself while examining computer files. Meanwhile the newly-born again Steele links up with the local priest, helping the latter to refind his faith. I drift on the edge of finding sleep, since it’s painfully obvious where this is all heading. When Chloe gets down her “Teen Devotional Bible” and starts reading it, my worst fears are confirmed – this is truly the stuff of nightmares, albeit perhaps not in the way that the makers intended.

Williams and Steele discover that Burton had decoded the prophecies in the Bible, revealing the Cothran-Stenagal plan. Williams gets into the UN, helped by a former air-hostess whom Steele had been screwing – obviously, before he found God and stopped doing that kind of thing. He reveals the conspiracy to Carpathia, and even turns to prayer. But, oops, Carpathia is the Anti-Christ: all lit from below (right) and with his Russian accent becoming thicker by the syllable. He shoots Cothran and Stenagal and takes over the world, simple as that. It’s a really weird and downbeat climax, despite a desperate attempt to make the ending uplifting, with a closing voice-over which goes, “Our only hope is to join together and trust God. I don’t have all the answers; but for now, faith is enough.” It doesn’t work. I know there’s another half-dozen books to go, but the impact on someone like me who hasn’t read the series, is that Satan has won, and God hates everyone, especially Christians – I don’t think this was the desired effect, but I confess to finding it oddly gratifying…

The Omega Code

Dir: Rob Marcarelli
Star: Casper Van Dien, Michael York, Catherine Oxenberg, Michael Ironside.

This didn’t exactly start in the most promising of ways: the DVD mis-spelled the leading man’s name on his bio, it’s a production of ‘Good Times Entertainment’ (wince), preceded by a trailer for CrossWalk.com – “the intersection of faith and life” – and the first scene (once again, in Jerusalem) has Michael Ironside looking utterly mortified, disguised as a Hassidic Jew assassin complete with hat and extremely fake beard. Meanwhile, motivational speaker Dr. Lane (Van Dien) gets the exposition out of the way on a TV show hosted by Cassandra Barris (Oxenberg). A code hidden in the Torah predicts the future – as well as, incidentally, Princess Diana’s death in a Paris tunnel. Guess God had a bit of space to fill at the bottom of a page. I presume Lane is supposed to be immensely irritating, like all motivational speakers, coming out with phrases like “we are the higher power,” early signs that he’ll undergo a conversion somewhere between here and Damascus.

Elsewhere, in a laboratory populated with whizzy graphics work-stations, some Russian-sounding dudes are decoding the Torah and coming up with convenient one-sentence summaries which punctuate much of the film like intertitles from the silent era. Stone Alexander (Michael York), a “media mogul turned political dynamo” is now leader of the European Union. Lane wants to speak to him, but is dissuaded by Stone’s personal assistant/bodyguard/part-time Hassidic hit-man Dominic (Ironside). Instead, he has a vision in which one of Alexander’s horses goes all glowy-eyed and berserk. This is just one in a series: as someone asks him, “What kind of visions?”, to which the reply is, “I dunno – weird ones.”. He’s undergoing a divorce, and given his separated and whiny wife, it’s no surprise his small daughter appears to have picked up the Immensely Irritating gene.

The Russians take action to make sure their latest decryption comes true. In another strange echo of Left Behind, a reporter is conveniently right on the scene for the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, as the Dome on the Rock in Jerusalem (or a 1/12-scale model thereof) blows up. Lane assists Alexander’s efforts to keep the peace; “We need an archetypal figure to embody the message,” he says, and signs up as Alexander’s Minister of Information. Alexander proposes a global currency (another common cornerstone of the apocalyptic brigade, tying in with bar-codes as the Mark of the Beast), and Lane is contacted by a defector from the decryption program. Memo to self: if I ever become the Anti-Christ, instruct staff to shoot traitors before they hand over incriminating sheets of paper to my enemies, not just after.

From this point, you can pretty much tick off the Common or Garden Interpretations of Revelations: a seven-year peace treaty between Israel and Arabs; the rebuilding of King Solomon’s temple; miracle food and water technology from Alexander; a global government under ten heads. Skip forward three years, and Lane is still having visions, though he’s not mentioned them to anyone in the meantime. He discovers Alexander’s plotting, as he and Dominic prepare to initiate Phase 2. The latter is miffed to discover Lane is slated as the prophet for Alexander’s vision and tries in a fit of whiny pique to shoot Lane; Alexander takes the bullet, but Lane is blamed for the assassination and is forced on the run. However, Alexander comes back to life, to everyone’s surprise – not least, Dominic’s…

This is where the movie really kicks in; you’re used to seeing Michael Ironside as a bad guy, but Michael York as the Anti-Christ is so delightfully against type that it works completely, and is huge fun. Plagued by voices, “painful yet sweet”, he takes over as world leader. Lane links up with two prophets who have been causing trouble, and tries to spread the not-so-good word about Alexander, but is blocked at every turn. His helpful prophets give him the final code, which Cassandra steals from him – yes, Catherine Oxenburg is evil too! Is nothing sacred? As she says, “Even Satan comes as an angel of light.”

After Alexander’s coronation, he goes totally out into left field: “I have become king and God,” he says, which doesn’t go over very well. Oblivious, he shoots the prophets, following up with, “I want these reprobates put on display. And guarded.” This seems a little excessive, given they’re dead, but in this film, the scythe-wielder is more Slightly Inconvenient Reaper than anywhere near Grim, so you can see his point. Other omens start cropping up, and it turns out the code Lane got wasn’t the proper one. As digital planes fly overhead on their way to a nuclear strike, Lane has another vision, and finds that prayer makes the gates to his cell fly open. The prophets are indeed resurrected – score one for the Anti-Christ – and take their wrath on Dominic. Lane tries to shoot Alexander, but is forced to surrender the final code…

Which is where I’ll stop, less for fear of spoiling the end, more because I wouldn’t be prepared to swear to the veracity of my vision. Watching this on New Year’s Day 2001, the only thing I could think of was, “My God, it’s full of stars.” It certainly is an ending, but precisely what it means is something I leave to you. Still, it’s a damn sight better than Left Behind, on a number of levels. Firstly, and most importantly, the religious stuff is actually kept well in the background; the hero never really converts as I expected, and the writers eschew over-zealous attachment to the Bible. If it doesn’t fit in, it gets dumped – there is no mention of the Rapture at all, and it’s much more self-contained, whizzing through the entire Apocalypse in 100 minutes. The presence of decent actors like York and Ironside is an undeniable plus too, and overall, this is not a religious film. Nor is it even really a film about religion, because Christianity is never allowed to get in the way of entertainment, and that realisation by the producers may have been the most important code to crack of all.

It proved a surprising success at the box-office, despite only having a few hundred prints to cover all the cinemas. Opening the same week as Fight Club, The Omega Code grossed more per screen, and also outlasted Messrs. Pitt and Norton, inhabiting the top twenty for seven weeks to gross a respectable $12.6m. As a result of this success, a sequel, Megiddo, is now in post-production, and is due to open in autumn 2001. York and Ironside return, and are joined by cult heroes Udo Kier, Michael Biehn and Franco Nero. With Brian Trenchard-Smith (Leprechaun 4: In Space) directing, it’s safe to say that Incredibly Bad Film Show correspondents are keenly awaiting its arrival…

Footnotes:

• The official sites for Left Behind and The Omega Code.
• An introduction to the Torah Codes…
• …a more skeptical view…
• …and while looking up these sites, I discovered that the Roswell aliens spoke Hebrew.
• Screen It! didn’t like The Omega Code very much…

By the time you read this, it probably will be 2001, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, and writing this in a time zone seven hours behind GMT. Any British readers will likely be safely ensconsed down the pub already, having learned from previous years’ blow-outs, where after 9pm, every venue larger than a telephone booth is packed-out, with the doors manned by gorillas trained in the art of extortion. It’s been at least four years since I’ve bothered to brave New Year’s Eve out in London, and I don’t think I’ll be doing it in Phoenix – not with the local paper having felt it necessary to remind the population that it’s illegal to fire your weapons in the air at midnight. I’ll be staying well away from the windows too.

It has been a momentous year, full of upheaval, at least for me, even if the predictions of doom (largely from the computer industry) about Y2K failed to materialise (largely due to the computer industry – hey, what are the odds against that?). There are still the few who reckon that 2001, being the real end of the second millennium, will be the real test, but no-one is paying them much attention. Which is, in many ways, more worrying than last time round, since I tend to think that when disaster finally does strike the human race, we’re not going to know about it in advance. It will come from an entirely unexpected source, such as a lethal disease carried by vegetables. We can only hope.

No, the upheavals this year were more of a personal nature, and have been well documented on this site over the past months. If you’d told me five years ago that I’d finish the millennium living in Phoenix, without a job, and responsible for two kids and a web-site, I’d have laughed. A high-pitched, slightly hysterical laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. Yet like a jigsaw falling into place, all the various pieces of this lifestyle have turned up, and it all makes perfect sense now. On that basis, I should probably refrain from making predictions about where I will be in 2005, but I suspect the answers will be a) somewhere in America, b) working three days a week, and c) just about to wave the second kid off to college. And the web-site will probably move, Demon having finally buried themselves with the Have I Got News For You fiasco – which I promise I will get round to detailing sometime before 2005.

2001 is closer to home, so predictions ought to be more certain, yet apart from Millennium Dome souvenirs becoming immensely collectable and valuable (please…?), I have little to offer. Tony Blair might win a general election (largely due to the lack of a credible alternative – we’re getting more and more like America in that regard), but I probably won’t hear about it. The only news stories from Britain to reach this side of the pond involve the Royal Family or Madonna, so anything short of Godzilla rampaging through Piccadilly Circus will probably not make the cut here.

Perhaps the most dispiriting thing is that we will have to endure a lot of fuss about Stanley Kubrick’s movie over the next twelve months. While an undeniable landmark in science-fiction cinema, it remains one of the most hugely over-rated films of all time, with a last quarter that makes sense only if you are on heavy medication, and a first three-quarters that make you wish you were. But Arthur C.Clarke was right about one thing – the big, black monoliths have arrived. They can be found on the doors of the pubs mentioned above, barring the way and saying things like, “Sorry mate, those are trainers.” Clarke just forgot to mention the bow-ties and ear-pieces…

Have a happy new year – if you haven’t already had it!

It’s my first Christmas Day in America – memorable enough, even without the 45-minute power outage earlier this evening… The power is now back on, just in time to prevent the looting and pillaging, and so we present, courtesy of a TC reader…

Things You Can (Finally) Do Now That You’re in America:
[And some suitably British comments from me thereon…]

10. See A Clockwork Orange. Decide if it was worth the wait.
Ah, we got this one an unseemly short period after Kubrick’s death, though I’d watched it in Paris some years previously; bootlegs of it had been doing the rounds for years too. And no, it wasn’t worth the wait, and certainly not a ban for 27 years. N.B. Nor has civilization collapsed into anarchy and chaos since its release. Er, well, actually it has, but that’s more to do with Railtrack and the weather than Stanley Kubrick.

9. Buy the “X-rated” version of Linsey’s Lesbian Seduction. See what Linsey Dawn McKenzie has been up to in America.
Again, our beloved censors finally realised censoring videos was pointless when we could all go on the Net or buy a satellite dish and get our fixes of porn elsewhere. Indeed, they’ve generally been lightening up: The Exorcist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre have both been passed recently, and I think the latter even got shown on network TV. Probably be a while before it makes it onto CBS…

8. Buy and drink Samuel Adams, Rolling Rock, Pyramid Ales or Pete’s Wicked. Grudgingly admit to your friends that no, American beer isn’t all bad.
Things have certainly improved since my first trip to America. Sam Adams is eminently drinkable, and widely available too. That used to be the problem: every area had good beers, but move 50 miles away and no-one had heard of them, so you had to start “sampling” all over again. What a pity. 🙂 Leinenkugel’s is my current favourite, but testing will continue throughout the festive season… However, I have had the delightful revelation that most American beer is in screw-top bottles that simply look like they need a bottle-opener…

7. Enjoy a meal at Roy Roger’s, Jack-in-the-Box, or Carl’s Jr. Grudgingly admit to your friends that no, American fast-food isn’t ALL like McDonald’s — bad.
Four weeks here, and I’ve yet to have a McD-burger — there aren’t many culinary areas my vegan ex-housemates and I agree on, but the (lack of) qualities in that chain probably scores. Not tried any of those you list, I admit, but there’s no shortage of non-major-chain fast food, although I guess see #8 for the problems this could cause when travelling. While places like The Jade Palace here in Phoenix exist, I won’t be troubling Ronald McD.

6. Learn to like Taco Bell in place of Indian curries. Fail.
Spicy Mexican food isn’t too far removed from spicy curries; read tortilla in place of naan bread and you’re almost there. My girlfriend remains one of the few people I know who can consume a chicken phal (beyond a vindaloo) without flinching, so there must be some similarity, since she has been living in Phoenix for a decade. On the other hand, feed her horseradish sauce and she bursts into tears (almost literally!), while I smile sweetly and tuck in…

5. Rent unedited XXX-rated films without fuzzy spots or black dots–legally, cheaply, and guilt-free. Hole up in your home for a week.
Legally and cheaply, I give you, but I think we’re a little short of guilt-free, since they haven’t made it into Blockbuster Video yet. They are only carried either in “specialist” stores, or in entirely separate section behind a curtain at the back. I have yet to pluck up the courage to go beyond the veil… If you want truly guilt-free, check out Amsterdam!

4. Buy a pistol and fire it.
Arizona: a state where fireworks are totally banned, yet you can own a gun at age 12… Go figure. This one may take some working up to, despite my gun range session on Valentine’s Day in ’99. However, a friend has offered to take me out hunting, even though I fear I would probably be more of a danger to him than any of the local wildlife…

3. Go to a country-and-western bar. Chat with locals. Ascertain that yes, some Americans have a backwards, antiquated view of English and Europeans dating from the 1700’s.
“We have both types of music: country and western.” Eugh. C&W is not, in my humble opinion, America’s greatest gift to world culture, ranking right down there with McDonalds and most of Disney’s recent output. If I was to enter such a place, I would insist on playing up to their stereotypes, dressing in a frock coat and monocle, while pretending to be an Earl. Possibly on a mission from Her Majesty to investigate the possibility of reclaiming our colony. Bar-brawl, anyone?

2. Enjoy affordable, full-contact lap dances! 🙂
My girlfriend would likely regard this as infringing on her personal territory, and I am more than happy to go along with her on this one! 🙂 However, one of the things I genuinely do love America for is freedom of speech and expression, enshrined in the Constitution. Precisely how full-contact lap-dances fit under this umbrella seems to vary from state to state, but I’m with the ACLU, defending the rights of consenting adults, whether I’d want to follow suit or not…

And the Number One thing you can do now that you’re finally in America…
1. Enjoy your stay and our hospitality! Hope you find yourself at home! Happy holidays to you!
And that is one I’m happy to accept without the need for any further comment at all. Have a good festive season, wherever you are reading this…

Days here: 28. Rainless days: 27. We had some last Tuesday, but not over enough of an area to register on the weather data. Normal service i.e unbroken sunshine, has now been resumed.

This part of Phoenix, a northern suburb known as Scottsdale, does not appear to be big on night-life, in that the restaurants, etc. close at 10 pm, or at the very latest, 11, even on weekends. Coming from Britain, the land of obscurist licensing laws, I suppose I should be used to it, but it does seem a bit odd. Now we’re into the week leading up to Christmas, a lot of the shops in the nearby malls are open every bit as late, or in some cases even later. Indeed, some will be heading onto round-the-clock opening, and we’re talking proper department stores, not just the 7-11s. It could be that consumerism is the main leisure pursuit, particularly at this time of the year.

The cinema is, you’ll not be surprised to hear, a viable alternative for myself and Chris: all the more so when the cost is so reasonable in comparison to London. Prices for matinee shows – which operate every day, not just Monday to Friday – have just gone up to the extortionate cost of $5.00, which is about one-third of what it would be to see the same film (months later, and perhaps cut by the BBFC) in Leicester Square. This is not in some flea-pit, but a fully-accredited THX cinema; and you rarely have to sit through more than one token advert, before getting to the trailers. The only problem is that there is only one cinema which shows the obscure stuff, so whenever Crouching Tiger gets here (and I’m polishing a spot on 2000’s Top Ten!), a trek will likely be required to see it. However, for Hollywood product as it appears, Phoenix has a lot to offer.

There does seem to be a decent live music scene going too; after finding VNV Nation playing here the day after I arrived, another of my favourite bands, The Aquabats, floated through town on Saturday. The Aquabats are kinda like a PG-rated version of Gwar, borrowing a lot of imagery from Japanese monster movies and Saturday morning cartoon shows, while playing a catchy combination of ska-punk. This concert was “all ages”, and did indeed appear to go right down to the low single figures. This meant no alcohol was on sale, which did at least avoid the need for severe ID checking before beer-buying was permitted, as seen at the VNV concert (ID check, wrist-band, alcohol only permitted in a double ring-fenced area by the bar). I think the lead singer must have been a teacher in his previous life, and did a fine job of controlling a boisterous crowd which hurled marshmallows at them, even getting the entire audience to sit down at one point before they’d continue!

Completing this quick sweep through the leisure potential of Phoenix so far, last Friday was the birthday of Robert, Chris’s son, and we had a ten-pin bowling party at a local alley. I’ve not been ten-pin bowling in years, although perhaps the sporting highlight of my life to date was getting four strikes in a row on a previous visit to the Streatham Megabowl. It has to be said that my technique relied more on power than skill, and was on occasion a danger more to pins in the adjacent lanes, but I enjoyed it, even if my thumb the next morning, was doing a solo audition for the Dragon Drummers of Kodo. Much like getting extremely drunk, ten-pin bowling is something which is such great fun at the time, you wonder why you don’t do it more often. But the next morning…

Finally, I ask for your prayers. The ship pictured left, the Hong Kong Senator, is currently shipping my goods across the Atlantic, with an expected arrival date in San Diego of January 14th. I’ll be the one spending Christmas scanning the short-wave radio for distress calls; if you see this ship on a beach near you, please let me know and I’ll come scrape my possessions off the fore-shore.

Who’d Kick Whose Ass?

In the blue corner, out of the (then) colony of Hong Kong, we have The Heroic Trio, reigning three-babe tag-team champions, and queens of femme fatale cinema: Michelle Yeoh, Anita Mui and Maggie Cheung. In the red corner, weighing in at between one and twelve million dollars per movie, we have the challengers, Charlie’s Angels, employed by a guy they’ve never met: Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu. But which of these two teams of action heroines would win in a fight? It’s over to our commentator at ringside for the best of the brawlin’ broad action…

Anita Mui vs. Lucy Liu.

Anita Mui is sometimes known as The Madonna of Asia, but let’s not hold that against her, since they look totally different, and Mui can act. This pits two former Jackie Chan associates against each other, Mui from Drunken Master 2 and Liu from Shanghai Noon. Both are well-known for playing somewhat angst-ridden characters, but Liu gets the edge because of a somewhat disturbing fondness for playing dominatrixes, both in Payback and an odd sequence in CA where she does an S/M efficiency queen. Mui may have had the glorious multiple machine-gun moment in A Better Tomorrow III, but in a bare-knuckle bout, Liu would soon clean up. Winner: Lucy Liu.

Maggie Cheung vs. Cameron Diaz.

Here we have the permanently perky little misses, Cheung and Diaz. The latter won the biggest pay-day for CA (a reputed $12m), while Cheung’s recent career has tended to vanish up its own art-house, with fodder like Chinese Box and the execrably self-indulgent Irma Vep. However, with her back-catalog including such gems as Flying Dagger, that’s a lot of class for Diaz to handle. This is especially true, since her career has been made, largely in “zany” comedies like There’s Something About Mary, though her experiences there with hair-gel mean Cheung will be aiming to keep her at a distance. To her credit, she did look the most competent fighter in CA, and if there’s a rematch in the sequel, this one could go the other way. Winner: Maggie Cheung.

Michelle Yeoh vs. Drew Barrymore.

The luck of the random draw pits the two leaders against each other, in a battle which will decide the fate of the title. And it’s a tough one to call. Both bounced back from down-time in the middle of their careers: Yeoh was married to magnate Dickson Poon, while Barrymore could be found wedded to drugs and booze. There’s no doubt both are on the way up – Barrymore’s role as a CA producer has her power quotient upped, while Yeoh might just be looking at Oscar nominations for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, after stealing Tomorrow Never Dies. By the time this one was over, both contestants would be battered and bruised. But that’s something the utterly hardcore Yeoh is used to by now, so she gains the victory on points. Winner: Michelle Yeoh.

So, by a split decision, the title remains in the Far East, with The Heroic Trio holding onto the belt, despite the strongest challenge to come from the West since they took the title off the Thelma and Louise squad (Davis, Sarandon and Khouri) in a 1992 barbed-wire cage death match.