2000 A.D. (2000) Movie Review

Gordon Chan’s 2000 A.D. doesn’t represent your average Hong Kong film production. For one, one of its writers is a fellow name Stu Zicherman, a non-Chinese name as you’ll ever find. Zicherman shares screenplay credit with Chan, who adopted Zicherman’s English screenplay into Chinese....

February 26th, 2002 | Read More

Ballistic Kiss (1998) Movie Review

Ballistic Kiss is the kind of movie that we in the States refer to as “Vanity Projects.” Such projects usually involve a known actor, already famous and with an established name and reputation, who takes on multiple chores for the film, mostly as star, director, producer, and sometimes as...

February 24th, 2002 | Read More

Gen-Y Cops (2000) Movie Review

The “men” at the core of Gen-Y Cops are 3 Chinese cops who are supposed to be an “elite” squad that handles “all of Hong Kong’s toughest cases,” but the actors playing them look like they’re in their early ’20s and talk like they’re in their...

February 23rd, 2002 | Read More

Danger Zone (2003) Movie Review

“Danger Zone” is one of those movies so unconcern with being even slightly competent that you just have to tip your hat to it, because to do otherwise would drive one insane. Take this scene, which occurs about 30 minutes into the movie: a woman, seeking to distract some cops in the living...

February 22nd, 2002 | Read More

Ashes of Time (1994) Movie Review

Wong Kar-wai’s “Ashes of Time” is a rare film. It manages to be complex, thoughtful, and incredibly entertaining at the same time. Based on a novel of the same name by Louis Cha, “Ashes of Time” is truly an amazing film, one of the best, if not the best, Hong Kong melodrama/action...

February 16th, 2002 | Read More

New Dragon Inn (1992) Movie Review

The thing about New Dragon Inn is, I really don’t care all that much for the movie or its ridiculous plot. Still, I can’t bring myself to completely dislike it, if only for the appearance of Brigitte Lin as Mo Yan, a female warrior who is the real heart of the movie. Without Lin’s character,...

February 5th, 2002 | Read More

Hot War (1998) Movie Review

I’m not a big fan of movies that shows more than one scene of someone typing on a computer keyboard. I have been using computers for over 10 years and unless I’m writing on a word document (say, this review right now) both of my hands are never on the keyboard at once and typing away. When...

January 21st, 2002 | Read More

Full-Time Killer (2001) Movie Review

Full-Time Killer concerns a professional assassin named O (Takashi Sorimachi), a Japanese living in Hong Kong (although he doesn’t speak Chinese) and happens to be the top assassin in Asia. All of Asia’s most lucrative murder contracts go through O because he’s known for his efficiency...

January 18th, 2002 | Read More

Fly Me to Polaris (1999) Movie Review

Fly Me to Polaris is a Hong Kong remake of the 1978 Warren Beatty movie Heaven Can Wait, which was itself a remake of the 1941 movie Here Comes Mister Jordan. Chris Rock would later redo the formula in Down to Earth in 2001 with mixed results. All 4 movies have essentially the same basic premise and...

January 5th, 2002 | Read More

Full Contact (1992) Movie Review

Ringo Lam’s Full Contact is a There’s No Honor Among Thieves Movie, a genre of film categorized by the presence of an anti-hero (that is, he’s a criminal but he’s also the hero of the piece) and the betrayal of that anti-hero by his co-horts — he’s double-crossed and...

January 5th, 2002 | Read More

A Man Called Hero (1999) Movie Review

A Man Called Hero’s biggest problem is its lack of focus. The movie meanders from one plot to another, returns to a previous plot to tie up loose ends, then meanders to tie up another loose plot, while leaving a half dozen other plots unresolved. At slightly over 90 minutes, a movie with too much...

December 28th, 2001 | Read More

The Accidental Spy (2001) Movie Review

Halfway through Jackie Chan’s latest effort, The Accidental Spy, a thought occurred to me. It was this: If I was a cab driver (irregardless of country, or city of work) and someone, a total stranger, got in and told me to “follow that car” — pointing to a car in front of me that...

December 28th, 2001 | Read More

A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987) Movie Review

Ascant one year after the tremendous success of its original, A Better Tomorrow, theaters around the world were treated to A Better Tomorrow II. Although I think a better title might have been, It’s Still a Better Tomorrow (tongue firmly in cheek, of course). The movie is incredibly rough around...

December 27th, 2001 | Read More

Iron Monkey (1993) Movie Review

Iron Monkey is a tale of two movies. First, let me assure you that “writing credits” in Hong Kong action films are a secondary (if that) concern. Movies are “envisioned” and then shot and “written” while the movie is in-production. This is the case with Iron Monkey,...

December 22nd, 2001 | Read More

Nightmares in Precinct 7 (2001) Movie Review

There is an infamous tradition in Hong Kong cinema to take Hollywood movies and turn them into Chinese movies. Jet Li did it with The Bodyguard from Beijing, which converted the Kevin Costner movie, The Bodyguard. There are a host of other movies, too numerous to mention. Most of the times these “conversions”...

December 17th, 2001 | Read More

The Storm Riders (1998) Movie Review

There is something to be said about a movie which has a hero who, when faced with certain defeat, decides to tear off his own arm and use it as a weapon against his opponent to secure his escape so he can fight another day. That’s the kind of imaginative scene that exists in abundance in The Storm...

December 3rd, 2001 | Read More

The Bodyguard from Beijing (1994) Movie Review

Obviously, as the title implies, Jet Li’s character is a Communist Chinese, and in a weird twist of plot machinations which I am still at a lost to understand, is either requested or ordered to proceed to British-controlled Hong Kong to protect Cheung’s character, a big-name singer/famous...

December 1st, 2001 | Read More

Drunken Master 2 (1994) Movie Review

Let it be said that Jackie Chan, the undisputed “Clown Prince of Kung-fu,” is a good stuntman. Let it also be said that Jackie Chan, the actor, is a one-trick pony. Then, let it be said that “Drunken Master 2″ (re-titled “Legend of Drunken Master” for re-release in...

November 16th, 2001 | Read More

A Better Tomorrow (1986) Movie Review

I don’t think it’s too much hyperbole to say that John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow” changed how the world looked at Hong Kong cinema. The film centers around two childhood friends who also happen to be counterfeiters, Mark (would-be International superstar Chow Yun-Fat) and...

November 8th, 2001 | Read More

God of Gamblers 3: Back to Shanghai (1991) Movie Review

“God of Gamblers 3″ is my first entry into the popular “God of Gamblers” series. I believe there is 4 — GOG1 to 3, and then two GOG3’s, this one and another one, which is supposed to be a prequel. This movie is supposed to be a comedy, and it is a very funny movie,...

October 19th, 2001 | Read More