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Beast Cops
Beijing Rocks
A Better Tomorrow
A Better Tomorrow II
Big Boss, The
Big Bullet
The Big Heat
Bio-Zombie
Black Cat
Black Mask
Blade, The
Blade of Fury
Born to Defend
The Bride With White Hair
The Bride With White Hair 2
A Bullet in the Head
Burning Paradise
Bury Me High
By Hook or By Crook |
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Daniel Wu's path to greatness continues apace with this great melodrama about a young Hong Kong musician finding solace and soul on the road with a mainland Chinese, er, funk-rock band. With singer (and acting newcomer) Geng Le, the gorgeous Shu Qi, and cinematography by "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" alumnus Peter Pau, "Beijing Rocks" sounds and looks just great. |
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John Woo had hit films before, but it was "A Better Tomorrow" that introduced the modern Woo: slow-mo, gunfights, themes of brotherhood and moral schizophrenia, and Chow Yun Fat. Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung are brothers, gangster and policeman respectively, whose personal conflict interferes with the rise of scheming gang boss Waise Lee. Chow plays Mark Gor, a crippled gang enforcer (his trademark shades/overcoat/cocktail-stick/two-guns style launched a thousand imitators) caught in his own dilemma over loyalty and honour. Unmissable. |
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A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987) |
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Even though Woo claims he hates this sequel - a contractual obligation - it holds together pretty well. The action sequences are the focus, losing the heart of the first film in the process, but as a stylistic exercise and an opportunity for John Woo and Chow Yun Fat to cement their perfect on-screen relationship it's great. Be warned! This film contains the LAMEST excuse for the return of an actor killed in a previous film in cinema history. |
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This was a huge hit in the dim and distant past, but "The Big Boss" hasn't really stood the test of time as well as Bruce Lee's other films - indeed, other than the charismatic performances of Lee and James Tien it has little of interest as anything other than a valuable historical record. But from these slightly dull roots come much of modern action cinema - East and West alike. |
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Hong Kong's most consistently brilliant actor, Lau Ching Wan, stars as a hotshot detective busted back to uniform for insubordination. Wow, it felt good just typing that sentence. He's put in charge of a team of disparate beat cops who are drawn into a battle of wits with master criminals Yu Rong Guong and Anthony Wong. Superb support from Francis Ng and Jordan Chan make director
Benny Chan's unexpectedly high-octane action film really work - even in the face of some awful bit-part acting by Brits in the final reel. |
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Nasty and noirish, brutal and brooding, Jonny To's superb crime thriller has Waise Lee (playing the hero for a change) and his team taking on a crooked businessman with gory results. Characters get crushed, burned, stabbed, shot and exploderized with little regard for the conventions of the genre - no-one is sacred here. A spiritual cousin to the even more bleak "On The Run", this little beauty comes with my highest praise. |
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Hugely entertaining mish-mash of goofy humour and horror starring Jordan Chan and the irrepressible Sam Lee, stuck in a closed shopping mall during an outbreak of undead-itis which is (kind of) their fault. Somewhat brilliantly, this funny and cheap film manages to include most, if not all of the staples of the zombie flick (bickering survivors, military conspiracy, gore, the not-so-bad zombie, apocalyptic ending) while remaining fresh and surprising, and getting in some great jokes at the expense of pirated VCDs. |
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Solid but mostly uninspiring remake of Luc Besson's "Nikita" with Jade Leung and Simon Yam. Though it's exciting and well produced, and replicates the moody desperation of the original, it remains a good cover version at best. It's simpler, weirder and more violent, if that is any help. |
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Jet Li plays a genetically engineered super soldier living as a librarian, trying to forget his violent past, and forced to don a mask and fight when - guess what? - his PAST CATCHES UP WITH HIM. Inspired by the look of Bruce Lee's Kato from "The Green Hornet", this attempt to make a kung-fu superhero film (pre-"Matrix") is largely successful thanks to the performances of the leads (Jet, Lau Ching Wan and Karen Mok), the brilliant design work, and Yuen Woo Ping's entertaining action direction. Even in arguably 'lesser work' like this, he is great. Anthony Wong's cameo as a sleazy drug lord in a see-through plastic
robe is a bonus too. |
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It's a Tsui Hark film through and through, but "The Blade" comes from Tsui's nasty side ("The Butterfly Murders", "Don't Play With Fire") rather than his strident, populist side ("Once Upon a Time in China", "Peking Opera Blues"). It's a loose remake of Shaw Bros movie "The One Armed Swordsman", but the extravagant kung-fu and heroic posing is replaced by murk, introspection, self-loathing and half-glimpsed techniques. Much of it is told in voiceover, so lead Chiu Man Cheuk doesn't have a lot to do except look handsome and miserable, but rest assured that the film is a rare achievement and an unqualified success. |
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Sammo Hung's new wave martial arts epic was unjustly overlooked on it's Hong Kong release, flopping badly and pushing Hung out of the limelight for a few years. A real shame, because "Blade of Fury" is really entertaining: a well plotted action film with memorable characters, a political subtext and hyperspeed, over-the-top-and-right-down-the-road fights. Some of it is totally unique and the finale, in which body parts are hacked off major characters good and bad, is surely a tribute to star Ti Lung's heyday at Shaw Bros studios. |
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Jet Li directed himself in this unusual film in which he plays a soldier returning from WWII to find US soldiers misbehaving in his hometown… needless to say, mucho aggro ensues when kung fu meets Western boxing. There are a few good fights in here (including some interesting bouts in the competition ring) and Jet is customarily charismatic, but the whole is messy and murky. Tellingly, "Once Upon a Time in China" was still five years away when this film was released, putting "Born to Defend" in the Jetster's wilderness years after "The Shaolin Temple". |
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The Bride With White Hair (1993) |
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Fantastic in every sense of the word, this is one of those films that could only have come from Hong Kong. A stunning mesh of romance, action, horror and some beautiful cinematography by Peter Pau, the icing on the cake is a mesmeric performance by Brigitte Lin in the title role. It's heartbreaking and gorgeous, a perfect date movie - as long as your chosen date likes seeing men ripped apart by a whip. Brilliant bad guys too… |
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The Bride With White Hair 2 (1993) |
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And this is everything that is wrong with Hong Kong movies. Cheap, rushed, cash-in rubbish that relegates Brigitte Lin and Leslie Cheung to supporting roles in their own sequel and sullies the memory of the original. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little - I've certainly seen worse sequels… but not many. Please keep away. |
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A Bullet in the Head (1990) |
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To my mind, John Woo's finest hour. A "Treasure of the Sierra Madre"-esque tale of a friendship torn apart by war and greed, it is refreshingly free from many of Woo's stylistic flourishes while still remaining exciting, brutal and commercial. It has been accused of ripping off Cimino's "The Deer Hunter", and while that's true to a certain extent, "A Bullet in the Head" succeeds where that film fails because of its excellent pacing and a terrific opening sequence which sets up the time, mood, and most importantly the friendship of the leads in a beautiful way. Tony Leung Chui Wai, Jacky Cheung, Waise Lee and Simon Yam are all note perfect, and Woo's graceful orchestration of carnage serves the harshness of the plot excellently. A personal favourite. |
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Ringo Lam's only period kung-fu film is thematically a great fit with the best of his other work. Lying somewhere between the Tsui Hark films "Once Upon a Time in China" and "The Blade" in tone, "Burning Paradise" (which Tsui produced) is about an underground prison temple full of Shaolin monks after the Manchus had ransacked their temple. The atmosphere is more reminiscent of a gory horror flick than a martial arts adventure, and the feeling is bolstered by the no-big-names cast. It has an obvious lead in Chinese folk hero Fong Sai Yuk (played the previous year in two films by Jet Li), but a first time viewer has no idea where this thrilling, horrible ride is going. |
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Part of a series of films about Wisely, a supernatural expert and master of geomancy (and kung fu, apparently) which is entertaining despite itself. The casting - Moon Lee, Yuen Wah, Tsui Siu Ming, Chin Kar Lok - suggests a fight-fest: it's not. It's more of a James Bond type action drama about military coups and rebel forces with some Feng Shui chucked in. Weird in an okay way. |
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By Hook or By Crook (1980) |
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An absolutely fudged-up old school comedy starring Sammo, Dean Shek, Lam Ching Ying, Karl Maka (who also directed), Eric Tsang and Wu Ma. It's okay - a final fight with Sammo and Dean Shek using huge metal clubs to battle the bad guys is a stand out, but most of Sammo's other films from this period are far funnier and have higher production values. And better action. Most aren't this mental, though. |
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