As you can guess from the summary above, this film is pure-D insane! I haven't seen too many Hong Kong martial arts films, but I've seen enough (like, three of them) to know that this kind of insanity is par for the course. If Fantasy Mission Force didn't have all the weird costumes, crazy genre mixing, or an abundance of pop culture references that would make Joss Whedon's head spin, I'd probably freak out.

This is probably one of the "better" films you'll find on this site. Sure, it's cheap as hell, and the humor is stupid, and it probably got hacked to pieces for the late night chopsocky TV circuit, but (and I know that's a bigger "but" than Star Jones Reynolds) but when you get over all of that, this film has a lot of things going for it.

Jackie Chan (billed here as "Jacky Chan") has a pretty small role in this film, despite his name being splashed all over the cover artwork. The story is that Jackie did this movie purely as a favor to Jimmy Wang Yu, who plays the lead in Fantasy Mission Force. It's been rumored that Hong Kong director-producer Lo Wei, disgruntled that Jackie was no longer making movies for his studio Seasonal Entertainment, sent thugs to Hong Kong to kill Jackie. Supposedly, Jimmy Wang Yu fought off the thugs and saved Jackie's life. Jackie vaguely alludes to these events in his autobiography, I Am Jackie Chan:

Similarly, I've been raised to believe that nothing is more important than meeting my obligations. Hence, I'm posting this review, which fulfills my contractual obligation to provide something for the Rogue Reviewers Kung Foolery Roundtable, as well as following through on my promise to review the movie that won this poll in the forums.

I must warn you, this DVD was released by Madacy, so obviously, they've used a print they found in a dumpster. I don't think anyone does a worse job at packaging movies than Madacy. (Don't even get me started on my tirade about their release of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.) I think there are like, old porno reels from the '50s and shit that were only shown once at stag parties and never seen again, and if you could dig up one of those and watch it, it would look better than this print of Fantasy Mission Force. So, in case you're wondering, that's the reason why all my screencaps look like crap.

I don't want to spoil any of the surprises in this film, because most of the fun is just seeing what crazy ass thing will jump out at you next. So let's get right to it.

The film starts in some sort of military camp, while we get what sounds like the theme music from The A-Team. We see a white guy in a military uniform directing his soldiers, ordering them to box up huge crates of cash. The white guy, who by the way is strangely wearing a skull and crossbones patch on his camouflage cap like a Confederate soldier, goes into a nearby tent, where several stock military types from all throughout history are arguing over a map. Yes, I said from all throughout history. Try not to think too much about the implications of that, and this review will go by all the easier. You kind of have to phase out of a regular, coherent style of thinking for this movie to make any sense. So, a wide variety of military uniforms are seen here, including the type of uniforms with huge epaulets that were worn centuries ago, or four weeks ago if your last name is Jackson.

Another white guy dressed like a Navy officer tells Skull and Crossbones Guy that they'll leave first thing in the morning. Suddenly, the camp is rocked by explosions, which cause lots of random guys outside to do stunt somersaults through the air.

However, back in the tent, everyone carries on. One of the Epaulet Guys goes to a map to tell the others where "intelligence reports" say Japanese troops are currently positioned, and it turns out he's pointing at a map of Canada [!]. The Northwest Territories, to be specific, and honestly, if that area were taken over by the Japanese tomorrow, would anyone even notice (or care)? Look, I'm sure there are some very lovely people living in the Northwest Territories, but my point is, there's about twenty of them.

Navy Guy says in a very overdramatic, dubbed voice, "You are wrong!" He then goes and plants little Japanese flags on a table-top landscape model, to show where the Japanese really are. One of the Epaulet Guys (who happens to be French) argues there are no Japanese at all. Excellent strategizing on display here. I'm starting to wonder if we won the war purely on blind luck.

They bicker until a random brown-skinned military guy calmly points out the Japanese are in their tent right now [!]. Sure enough, the camera whips over to a guy in a vintage WWII Japanese uniform with a Hitler mustache. He demands the military guys identify themselves, and here's where the lunacy really gets going, because the military gang turns out to be made up of the following: "France Major General Pierre Lautrec", "English Major General Robert Forrester", "American Major General Abraham Lincoln" [??], and "African Major General Goovayee Sukalo [guessing on the spelling]". Yes, you can read his lips, and he actually does say he's Lincoln.

And the guy who's supposed to be Lincoln looks absolutely nothing like Lincoln, other than having a beard. Seriously, the guy who played Lincoln in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and the guy from "The Savage Curtain" both did a better job. What's worse, the so-called "African" guy is obviously just a dark-skinned Chinese guy. And for some reason, after each general introduces himself, the Japanese WWII guy makes a face like he's about to puke. That must be some kind of Chinese in-joke about the Japanese that I sure don't get. Anyway, Japanese WWII Guy declares them all his prisoners.

Cut to a slide of what just happened, and it's part of a slide show being presented by a random Chinese guy. He describes the kidnapping, and another guy in glittery epaulets (who, judging by his handlebar mustache and monocle is the current mayor of Pepperland) stands up and asks everyone to calm down. Then he says they must rescue the generals at all costs. The first Chinese guy says they have to decide who will lead the rescue mission.

The projector is then started up again in order to provide us with several more doses of craziness, one still photo at a time. It's like, travel size craziness. Or "fun size" craziness for you Snickers fans. The very first slide is a portrait of Roger Moore as James Bond [!], but someone says he can't do it because he's in South Africa. The next slide is of "the Bald Detective", apparently a joke reference to a character in the Aces Go Places series. Someone says he's defected, so he's also out of the running.

Next up is a portrait of Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken [!] in Escape from New York. It's close, very close, but even though both Roger Moore and Kurt Russell have both been seen on this site before, I went to the judges and they've ruled this doesn't qualify either of them for Repeat Offender status. And for unknown reasons, they call him "Snake King" [?]. And the reason he can't lead the mission? "He's been dead for three years!" Yeah, that'll do it.

Ah, but the insanity has really only just begun. The next slide is of Sylvester Stallone as Rocky [!]. Someone says, "This is a military action! He's not suitable!" Wow. I bet if Stallone saw this film, he'd be deeply offended, and remind everyone about his fine performance in the military-oriented Rambo films. (Military-oriented in the same sense that Road House is beverage-oriented.) Then he'd drop a whole bunch of ten dollar words on us like "estrogeneous" and "decreptitude" and make our heads spin.

The next slide is of a woman they refer to as "Captain Black Fox", a joking reference to a character in Golden Queen Commando played by Brigitte Lin, an actress who actually shows up later on in this movie [!], but unfortunately she's retired to "raise a family". The final slide is a random Chinese guy they identify as "Lieutenant Don Wen", and we immediately cut to him driving a jeep. And the jeep is not a WWII-era relic, but a brand new '80s model Suzuki jeep. What time period are we supposed to be in, again?

The jeep has a hood-mounted machine gun which Wen uses to blow away a lot of soldiers. Thoughtfully, these soldiers are kindly allowing themselves to be picked off, since they're not attempting to seek any kind of cover. Another soldier wearing black face paint pushes down the plunger on a detonator, and Wen's jeep has to run a gamut of fiery (but totally ineffective) explosions. Wen drives past the soldier with the detonator and snaps a whip [!] in the guy's direction. The whip hilariously wraps around the soldier's neck, and Wen flings the guy high through the air. And in choppy slow-motion, no less.

A moment later, there's an abrupt cut to soldiers marching Wen into a room to meet with Random Chinese Guy and the Mayor of Pepperland. To showcase his bad-ass qualifications, Wen reveals he was able to smuggle in an assault rifle, but he lays it down and shakes hands with Random Chinese Guy (whose name is "General Johnson") and the Mayor of Pepperland ("General Thompson"). Yeah. Two Chinese guys named "Johnson" and "Thompson". I'm assuming some lazy English dubbing, but then again, with a movie this crazy you never know.

Johnson explains that the kidnapped generals are being held hostage in Luxembourg [!!] for the next four days, and then they'll be taken to "Tokyo City [!] for propaganda." He instructs Wen to form a "commando group" to rescue them. A fantasy mission force, if you will. Johnson adds, "Remember, anything screws up, we deny respons—" and then the scene abruptly cuts away, and no I'm not surprised. I'm assuming we lost the part where Johnson explains to Wen that he should drive slow when heading for Luxemborg, because if he drives too fast he's likely to completely overshoot the place and end up in Belgium.