Having been known for serving on Her Majesty's Secret Service, protecting Queen and country, I'm incredibly surprised to learn that there was a time when James Bond actor George Lazenby once plotted to kill her.
A Queen's Ransom sees Lazenby playing IRA terrorist George, a man who's in Hong Kong putting together a team of crack killers and skilled mercenaries in order to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II during her visit in 1975. Joining him in his mission are Bolo Yeung, Judith Brown, Pei-Shan Chang, and other familiar faces, playing a variety of folks including diving specialists, explosive experts, and even a criminal swordsman. The eclectic group begin planning their attack on the Queen, but when the authorities learn of the assassination attempt things become more complex.
On the surface, A Queen's Ransom is a pretty simple and straight forward film, a group of bad people want to kill the Queen, the cops are trying to catch them. And the film does stick to this plot for a while, with the audience following both groups as they work towards these goals. But there's a strange sub plot happening involving a third group renting out a remote building to store some chests in, and cracks begin to form within the assassins group that leads to some tension and even a double cross or two. It's when the film gets towards it's final act, however, that we find out the audience has been duped, and that the assassins have a whole other scheme going on that's been kept secret from us; and it's this point the film goes from being decent, to being ridiculously fun.
I'm not going to spoil the final act of the movie, but it's one that I didn't see coming, despite the movie laying the groundwork for it quite well in the early stages. The film subverts your expectations, and you get so absorbed in the various plots and changes of plans (the gang seems to have so many of them), that when the rug gets pulled out from under you you're taken by complete surprise.
The action scenes in A Queen's Ransom are pretty arch, and go over the top where they can despite not having a huge budget or lots of resources. A lot of the actors go big on their death scenes, and the violence has a strange mix of being quite shocking, yet also a bit pantomimish too. It keeps things from becoming too serious, and it ends up leaving the viewer with a smile on their face. And that's perhaps one of the best things the movie does, it takes a story that could have been very grounded and gritty and it injects just the right amount of silliness. It's not enough to make A Queen's Ransom a comedy film, but it is enough that you know not to take things too seriously and to just enjoy the ride.
Some of the best scenes involve the criminal gang, and there are a number of recognisable faces amongst them. Lazenby manages to steal a lot of the scenes that he's in, swaggering around as the top dog in the pack. He seems to be enjoying playing the villain rather than the hero, and his thick 70's moustache and bad Irish accent (dubbed rather poorly too) make him a character that instantly stands out amongst his compatriots. Other than Lazenby, the most recognisable is Bolo Yeung, who most people will recognise from Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon. As with most cast's he in, Yeung dwarfs most of the other people on screen thanks to his physical size, and he uses his presence well here, getting to have a number of scenes where he and the other gang members get into some heated moments with each other.
The new release from Eureka Entertainment, the first time the film has been released on Blu-ray I believe, comes with both the English language export cut of the film, and the original Hong Kong theatrical cut of the movie. Alongside both versions of the film is a new audio commentary by Asian film expert Frank Djeng, and another from Mike Leeder and Arnie Venema. Folks who've been watching the Eureka releases will be familiar with all three of these guys, and will know that they offer very different things on their commentary tracks, with Djeng going into the careers of those in front of the camera and behind the scenes, as well as talking about the impact of the movie, whilst Leeder and Venema take a much more laid back, conversational approach where they will bounce off each other a lot. There is also a collectors booklet with some new writing on the movie too.
For fans of Hong Kong cinema this is an enjoyable film, one that has a lot of charm thanks to the twisting and unexpected plot, and which uses the real world visit of the Queen to springboard off of to create a movie that's more enjoyable than you'd expect. It's also one of the few times that Queen Elizabeth can say she's been in a Hong Kong action movie, thanks to the film making use of footage from her visit the year before it's release. That alone should get you considering giving it a watch.
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