"I can beat you up!" Michelle Yeoh warned in her 2023 Golden Globes speech when the damn orchestra tries to cut her off. She isn't playing around either. Yes, Madam! (1985) is Yeoh like you’ve never seen before, a ferocious force of fist and fury. For her first starring role, playing a dynamic character isn’t as important as performing a dynamic fight. Moments that are light on character development, leave room for a thunderous intro to the versatile actress that is Michelle Yeoh. She plays an acrobatic Hong Kong cop, who can evade enemy gunfire, and while the criminals miss their target, she sure won't.

Yes, Madam! is a cult classic and at times, kind of oddball, even setting up a link between Jamie Lee Curtis and Yeoh long before they would share the screen in Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022). In the decades prior to multiverse jumping, Yeoh’s early role gives her fighting skills that are as deadly as any bullet.

Super Cops Are on the Case in ‘Yes, Madam!’

Senior Inspector Ng (Yeoh, credited as Michelle Khan) is on the hunt for an incriminating microfilm and it won’t be an open-and-shut case. Two low-life, bumbling thieves, Aspirin (Mang Hoi) and Strepsil (John Shum) get their hands on it, complicating Ng’s work. She doesn’t do it alone though, teaming up with Inspector Morris (Cynthia Rothrock) who’s transferred over from Scotland. They make for the best kind of buddy cop pairing, butting heads before forming a formidable double team. The microfilm, like any good MacGuffin, attracts the attention of those it incriminates, leading to death-defying stunts like any classic Hong Kong action flick can offer.

Yes, Madam!, directed by Corey Yuen, would kick-start the franchise In the Line of Duty and a whole subgenre that would be known as “girls with guns,” or movies featuring female action stars. It’s available to watch on Amazon Prime, but Yes, Madam! is switched out for the name In The Line of Duty II The Super Cops -- although this one is very much the first installment. Cynthia Rothrock, one of the rare western actresses to achieve Hong Kong film stardom, is Morris, who doesn’t play things by the rule books. She shakes her head at conducting a traditional interrogation, choosing to press a suspect’s cigarette into his face to get him to stop bullshitting her. She burns herself, but while he freaks out, Morris quietly lets the pain subside to remain the dominant figure in the room. Michelle Yeoh is just as badass in this “girls with guns” kick-starter, living up to the title, and then some.

Inspector Ng’s expert handling of a firearm is obvious from the first five minutes. She keeps up the pace of a speeding squad car for cover. Even without the protection, she dodges gunfire from armed robbers and corners one, telling him, “How ‘bout a nice game of Russian roulette? I could be all out of ammo.” She aims her shotgun and the criminal tries his luck, a blood squib exploding in the best way the scarlet juice can. Inspector Ng expresses who she is through fighting skills, but Yes, Madam! doesn’t let Yeoh play an entirely blank slate. Ng is not just a cop, she’s got a life outside of work, something she directly tells her superior who tries to keep her on a shift. She looks forward to going on a date early on, that is until it ends very badly and forces her into the hunt for the microfilm. When it comes to the pairing of Ng and Morris, it hits the usual beats of buddy cop movies. They don’t see eye to eye, where Ng prefers to speak to the suspects they bring into the station, Morris prefers to beat them when they aren’t cooperative. Then they eventually work out their differences, so no stress there.

Michelle Yeoh’s Intense Commitment to Intense Stunt Work

In a Town & Country interview, Yeoh fondly remembers the audience feedback from Yes, Madam!. “The film was released on a Thursday at midnight in front of a bellwether crowd that could make or break its reputation. “They expected that I would just pull a gun and say, ‘Stop or I’ll shoot,’ Yeoh says with a chuckle. When the audience saw her flip backward, shatter glass, and leap across an escalator to kick a goon in the sternum, it burst into applause.” The finale is a showcase of the spectacle that is Yeoh’s Inspector Ng. She walks into the Big Bad’s mansion, wearing all white to rival Bruce Lee’s iconic, all yellow jumpsuit, and takes down the opponents that come at her, one after the other — or multiple at the same time. For a jaw dropping moment, Ng swings under a railing, bursting through a glass panel and yanks two henchmen out, swinging them over the same railing. The camera placement ensures you know it’s obviously a real stunt and it’s obviously Michelle Yeoh performing it.

Yeoh was not a professionally trained stunt performer though, but she committed to doing the wild set pieces herself. Once she earned the respect of the stuntmen, she used her childhood background as a ballet dancer to ease her into learning the choreography and to adjust to the pain from it. Kung fu movies seemed to be the best place for her to start her film career as she went on to say in a Rolling Stone article, “—I couldn’t speak Chinese very well, but I knew body language and movement. My logic as a 22-year-old in over her head was: So if I’m fighting and running and jumping off things and doing stunts, I don’t have to be talking as much! It also meant the roles were basically, ‘You’re a cop.’ Pow, bam, pow! That’s it. Ok, pretty black-and-white. I can do that.”

There’s dubbing in Yes, Madam!, like in many Hong Kong action classics, which comes across as a bit strange. Hearing the cartoon-like, exaggerated voice acting coming from one of the thieves or the hyena cackle from the Big Bad is unusual for sure, but it doesn’t rob the movie of its entertainment value. The dubbing is endearing, a trademark to these action flicks, like the foley effects. Humans get kicked and fall down, all of this sounding like a massive, loud slap to someone’s face rather than a body landing on a solid floor. What’s actually unusual, is the use of a sound cue and score from an iconic slasher movie.

When ‘Halloween’ and ‘Yes, Madam!’ Cross Paths

One of the oddities to Yes, Madam!, is the eerie synth cue from Halloween (1978), a link connecting Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis before their time with IRS audits and hot dog fingers of Everything Everywhere All At Once. It plays when characters suddenly face danger or realize they are in way over their heads. Seeing John Carpenter’s score minimized to “scary music” per the subtitles, is pretty hilarious. The nods to the horror classic can bring an unlikely image to one's mind. Busta Rhymes (Halloween Resurrection) attempts a kung fu attack on Michael Myers, but had it been Michelle Yeoh, she would finish off the slasher villain swiftly. In fact, it might be difficult to fill out the runtime if she was ever a Final Girl. While there is no boogeyman in Yes, Madam!, there are dangerous criminals.

“The Shape Stalks,” the score Carpenter uses to signal an attack by Michael Myers (Nick Castle), is the one that really calls attention to itself, raising the tension in a very different way than what happens over Halloween night in Haddonfield. Inspector Ng approaches a suspect, the piano notes heightening the anxiety as she gets close to a suspect she doesn’t even notice is close. Despite the wildly different genres, Carpenter’s music actually mixes perfectly, calling to mind the nostalgic, music throwback style of director Quentin Tarantino. Helping the inclusion of Carpenter’s score in Yes, Madam!, works given how dark this movie can get, such as the ending. A sense of justice needs to be restored, and a violent one at that.

In one of the many realities Evelyn (Yeoh) travels through in Everything Everywhere All At Once, there is the world where she’s a superstar actress with a resume of kung fu movies. The real Michelle Yeoh would branch off, going on to play in many different movies as many different characters. There can be a case to be had that Yes, Madam!, in some form, might be on superstar Evelyn’s resume. The 1985 Hong Kong action flick shows off the intensity Michelle Yeoh brings, so early on in her career too. She's always ready to take on a challenge, whether it’s her first stunt work, jumping across an absurd multiverse, or an award show interruption.