“This is the hardest film I ever made.” - Michelle Yeoh, the DVD extras.

The pleasure I take watching Yeoh beat the shit out of men without dropping her girlish wonder is incalculable.

She was twenty-four years old when she made this movie. She laughs while tied to the executioner’s pole, gives a smile shy of a wink after mowing down hordes of Imperial Japanese with a heavy caliber machine gun, and makes a bunny-ear-goodbye-gesture after successfully engaging her biplane in a dogfight with a Japanese Zero.

She's a marvel of physicality, she engages in virtually wall-to-wall martial arts awesome throughout, utilizing multiple soft weapons (“Using soft weapons is extremely difficult” - Also Yeoh in the extras).

She bounces through this movie as if there’s never any hint of danger. All around her the physical world buckles under explosions, rocks wildly on runaway horse-carts, and bows under her frame as she dashes across, obviously, actually dangerous rooftops.

The movie takes place in a fantastic location during a fascinating period in Chinese history and its latticed up with a huge sense of adventure. Also, as is the Hong Kong way, it’s often very funny.

The turn to a Seven Samurai bloodbath at the end, where armies use guns and swords and the more intimate martial arts action is put on the shelf, felt like a dovetail into a different movie and away from the one I was enjoying, but I forgave it as soon as I saw Yeoh smiling, pop-star-like, surrounded by surviving refugees who have lost everything, their faces turned to a burning city in the distance. She’s just a crazy kid in a funny world! Bunny ears goodbye!