Ameera (2014)
Plot: terrorist cell threatens biochemical attack. One agent intervenes.
Make of it what you will but Jing Wong has had a big hand in shaping contemporary Mainland China cinema at large. It is then not suprising that Mainland China has risen to the occassion and on the regular delivers what the old master is no longer able to. While the Hong Kong Girls With Guns action subgenre never went truly extinct it instead moved to the Mainland and the nearby Taiwan. Ameera (特工艾米拉) is a spiritual continuation (or homage) to Wong’s Naked franchise and isn’t too shabby of a genre exercise. Don’t expect too much acrobacy and high-flying choreography since this is a Mainland China feature. Thankfully it isn’t either overly gimmicky or especially brutal – but for what it is it’s perfectly serviceable, if not on the plain side of average. For better or worse Ameera takes a lot after Naked Soldier (2012) rather than either Naked Weapon (2002) or the unsurpassed psychotronica of Naked Killer (1992). If nothing else, its sole function seems to be the ultimate canonization of curves.
The titular Ameera (an indirect Quranic girls name of Arabic and Hebrew origin meaning either “princess”, “leader”, “commander”, or “chief”) is, of course, not Saudi Arabian humanitarian, philanthropist, and former princess Ameera bint Aidan bin Nayef al-Taweel al-Otaibi (أميرة بنت عيدان بن نايف الطويل العصيمي العتيبي) but Meng Long Xin Girl Competition (梦龙心女郎大赛) and Mina Star (期之星) pageant 2008 contestant Frieda Hu Meng-Yuan (胡梦媛). Hu is another in a long line of modern day Sino actresses resembling anime girls come to life rather than the classic beauties of yesteryear. While hardly mid- or plus size by today’s standards Frieda is a bit fuller and rounder than your average petite Sino model. Frieda has that which has fascinated men over many centuries and will continue to do so for many more. You know, breasts. While blessed in the chest miss Hu certainly is no “milk goddess” in the Daniella Wang Li Danni (王李丹妮), Pan Chun-Chun (潘春春), Miki Zhang Yi-Gui (张已桂), Yang Ke (杨可), Ada Liu Yan (柳岩), or Zhu Ke Er (朱可儿) mold. Heavy weighs the crown, so do the boobs, no doubt. Prior to Ameera fabulous Frieda starred in No Limit (2011), the ill-fated but well-intended environmentalist jungle action-adventure Angel Warriors (2013), and Unexpected Love (2014). That Hu isn’t much of an actress was a foregone conclusion and director Xiao Xu uses every opportunity to have Shao Dan photograph miss Hu’s curves extensively. Driving the sore point home is that the entirety of the promo campaign seems to hinge on Frieda and her considerable decolettage. Over the years she adopted a number of English aliases including Melrose Hu, or in the case of Ameera and around that time, Patricia Hu. These days she goes by Jane Hu and while she is no Chrissie Chau Sau-Na (周秀娜) or Ni Ni (倪妮) she deserved better.
Years of investigation go to waste when special agent Ameera (Frieda Hu Meng-Yuan, as Patricia Hu) engages in a firefight with field agent Lao Q (Collin Chou Siu-Lung, as Ngai Sing) that leaves several key witnesses dead. Her heroic intervention tanks her professional career as she’s summarily suspended and relieved from active duty. On the homefront things aren’t much better as her boyfriend Jason (Ambrose Hsu Shiu-Yang) is involved with a number of dubious characters and a shady business deal that he isn’t very forthcoming about. With no job to go to and no other obligations to tend to Ameera undertakes a clandestine investigation with help from her trusty aides David Wang (Cao Yang) and Fat Girl (Yao Wen-Xue). This leads her to the Wily Group and when she does her mother Daisy (Shelly Yu Tai-Yan) is abducted. The Wily Group is presided over by the near dessicated, decrepit overlord Eric (Leung Kar-Yan) - who not only has with bionic enhancements and is constantly surrounded by four delectable assistant babes Plum, Orchid, Bamboo and Chrysanthemum (Xu Ou-Yi, Yu Wei-Wei, Xiao Qi, and Yu Guo) but who’s planning a large-scale biochemical attack in what they have dubbed Hurricane Operation. As Ameera closes in on them she must face the dragon John Wu (Andrew Lin Hoi). The deeper Ameera pushes and the more of the conspiracy she uncovers the fewer people she can trust. Will she able to halt the Wily Group and thwart Hurricane Operation?
While we have a lot of appreciation for Frieda Hu Meng-Yuan she’s no Maggie Q (李美琪) or Chingmy Yau Suk-Ching (邱淑貞). Hu is more our kind of girl than Jennifer Tse Ting-Ting (謝婷婷) ever was. If Ameera wants you to know anything, it’s that Frieda Hu Meng-Yuan has no actual superpower. She simply has breasts. As Ameera she gets to wear a number of uniforms, all of which are as revealing and figure-accentuating as possible, because Frieda Hu is a woman known for her ample curvature and director Xiao Xu will take any and every chance to make sure the viewer gets to glance her globes. The Y2k futurist costumes especially are redolent of Naked Soldier (2012) and even director Marco Mak Chi-Sin mans the editing suite here. This unfortunately also means that whatever Hu gets to wear is thus highly impractical (not to mention completely unsafe) for a suspended special agent on a clandestine investigation. Her burglar uniform (complete with dominatrix mask and gratuitous boob window) is closer to Halle Berry’s attire in Pitof’s Catwoman (2004) than to that of Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). As a civilian Ameera can be seen wearing a variety of dresses and more casual outfits, each skimpier and more revealing than the last. Frieda Hu is obviously a beautiful woman, but Ameera more often than not borders on Andy Sidaris and Jim Wynorski territory with its sheer fixation on Hu’s ample boobage and eye-watering cleavage.
In fact there isn’t much that we learn about Ameera over the course of the 90 odd or so minutes as it hurries from one explosive setpiece, chase or shoot-out to the next. Ameera is a Mainland China police officer with a penchant for deeply cut uniforms and the skimpiest of dresses. She dresses elegantly, cuts more than a nice figure, and can run and gun with the lot of them. Most characters have curiously Anglo-Saxon names and for some inexplicable reason some of these characters will, seemingly at random, spout phonetic English lines (a common practice in Asian cinema, especially in the Southeast of Indonesia, Thailand, and India) that obviously are meant to invoke a chuckle, but somehow never do. The main villain is a cadaverous elderly gentleman who looks like a cross between Ernst Stavro Blofeld from You Only Live Twice (1967), the Cryptkeeper from Tales From the Crypt (1989), and the hook-handed prison warden from Riki-Oh: The Story Of Ricky (1991) for that extra ick. In Sino grand cinematic tradition attractive young actresses usually start out in dialogue-free flower vase roles (they only require the actresses in question to stand pretty) and here they even are given the obligatory flower-related code names to drive the entire painful point home. Amanda Tan Xin-Rou and Ham So-Wom are also of little overall importance and their inclusion only seems to be nothing more than to fulfill some arbitrary beautiful women quota on either side.
Where Ameera falters most egregiously of all is in its overreliance on CGI where practical effects would have sufficed. Just about everything has been replaced by computer generated imagery. Be it shards of glass, sparks, smoke, fire, explosions or bulletholes and gunshot wounds. Ameera is not only custodian to a particularly badly animated car wreck, but also the worst digital razing of a building and the most heinous of animated missiles. Practical effects, as much as they are a dying art, would have done this far, far better. Likewise is the action direction rather flat and uninteresting. None of the fights are particularly acrobatic and Hu, for obvious reasons, doesn’t possess the balletic grace of Cynthia Khan, the sheer multi-discipline mastery of Angela Mao or the brute force of Etsuko Shiomi. Clearly she’s far from being in the same league as Vietnamese Veronica Ngo. Hu acquits herself if only through clever editing and blocking but Ameera is a long way from competing with the HK action classics of yore.
At least Ameera never reaches the impoverished lows of Mad Shelia (2016), that has to count as a victory – however small it may be. Clearly a lot of effort was sunk into making Ameera look like a big budget production. However bad writing, flaky acting, and an over-reliance on digital effects is what ultimately ends up killing any and all (or what little) potential it had. There’s no contesting that conceptually Ameera was admirable enough but its more cartoonesque moments end up defanging its otherwise very serious tone. To make matters worse it borrows, nay, steals much of its score from the Bourne trilogy, The Expendables and Déjà Vu (2006). It even throws in a few bars of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Start Me Up’ for good measure. Ameera succeeds as a candy-colored exercise in boob worship but it effortlessly fails as the 1980s Girls With Guns action throwback it so desperately wants to be – and it is thoroughly enjoyable for exactly that reason.
Obviously Ameera was meant to kickstart both a franchise (the “to be continued” title card was a dead giveaway) and Hu’s career at the same time. Neither of which happened in the years since. It in fact killed the career of director Xiao Xu (徐宏輝) while reluctant star Hu disappeared from the webmovie circuit for the ensuing 7 (!!) years and focused on her modeling in the aftermath. For all intents and purposes it was assumed Hu had prematurely retired after this debacle. That was until she suddenly and unexpectedly resurfaced with Queen's Return (2021) (reuniting her with Andrew Lin Hoi), the military, SWAT, and police action flicks The Sniper (2021) and Sniper: Vengeance (2023), as well as Special Forces King: Nuclear Explosion (2023), Extreme Speed Police: The War on Drugs (2024), and Hunt the Wicked (2024). She even had smaller supporting roles in a few genuine modern day Hollywood blockbusters. Miss Hu apparently has done the impossible and reinvented herself as a modern day Sino webmovie action star. Mercifully, it would be a short two years later that up-and-coming director Lu Yun-Fei (路云飞) would revive and elevate what could be done with the Sino webmovie action with his multi-part Stunning Corps (something which we colloquially and collectively refer to as the Chinese Expandables) series. Ameera is not Stunning Corps. At least Frieda Hu Meng-Yuan survived to tell the lamentable tale.
