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 t one dangerous point in Benny Chan's Gen-X Cops,
the movie's 3 protagonists, all undercover cops, find themselves surrounded by
men with guns aimed at their heads. One of the cops, thinking fast, grabs the
gangsters' boss who is standing nearby and uses him as a human shield. The cops
then proceed to leave the warehouse, but the cop with the hostage doesn't
have his gun aimed at the hostage! Why the criminal's henchmen, about two
dozen of them and all standing just two feet away, doesn't just start
shooting the cops I don't know. Then again, I don't know why the characters in Gen-X
Cops do any of things that they do.
Gen-X Cops is the original in the "Gen
Cops" franchise, which has spawn a sequel called, oddly enough, Gen-Y
Cops (I guess the term "Generation X" has lost all meaning in
favor of chronological sequelization). As was the case with its sequel (which I
saw before the original) the franchise's main selling point is that 3
undisciplined 20-somethings (Generation X for those of you keeping track of your
superfluous generational categories) are turned into undercover cops ala TV's
"21 Jump Street."
Our heroes, Jack, Match, and Alien, are recruited
out of the academy by Inspector Chan, a cop who has less respect in the
department than that copying machine that keeps breaking down. The Gen-X cops
are assigned to go after a Japanese gangster who has come to Hong Kong and
gotten his hands on some rockets and is turning them into powerful bombs, all in
the service of revenge for a past deed. Can our corp. of young cops stop the
crazed Japanese gangster in time? How many people will die? And just how big of
an explosion can Benny Chan give us in the movie's big finale?
To say that Gen-X Cops is just as ridiculously
unsophisticated as its sequel, Gen-Y
Cops is like saying Benny Chan is no Steven Spielberg -- it goes without
saying. The most fascinating thing about Gen-X Cops is trying to see if
it's as bad as its sequel, or if the sequel has somehow gone off the reservation
by meandering into the realm of the absurd.
Unfortunately, the original proves
to be just as lacking when it comes to brains -- which is to say there isn't
anything smart about this franchise to speak off. In a couple of obviously silly
scenes, explosives appear with digital clock readouts to mark their point of
detonation, but somehow the package that the explosive arrives in, or the
warehouse that the explosives are hidden in, always manages to reach the
"0:01" time when the package (or the warehouse door) is opened. The
one-second time, of course, is just long enough to establish that there's an
explosion counting down and that there's no time to run. Man, those bad guys
sure know how to time their explosives!
Movies like Gen-X Cops require that you
unconditionally accept the notion that the Hong Kong police department is so
poor in its screening process that it would voluntarily admit 3 undisciplined
youngsters like Alien, Match, and Jack to enter its police academy. Even if you
could swallow this premise, you wonder how 3 people so lacking in maturity would
ever consider becoming police officers in the first place.
To add insult to
injury, as if having 3 20-somethings prance around in the name of law
enforcement wasn't bad enough, the adults in the movie acts just as childish and
immature -- and sometimes even more so -- than our Gen-Xers. Inspector Chan
constantly butts heads with Superintendent To, and the two men's rivalry stopped
being mildly interesting after the 100th time we're forced to endure
their mindless bickering. The word "redundant" comes to mind. In fact,
seeing the two supposedly "grown men" belittle and squabble with each
other reminds me of infants fighting for territory in a sandlot at recess. (No
wonder the Hong Kong police force thought it was a good idea to hire Match,
Alien, and Jack. Look at the "quality" of cops they've had before the
trio's arrival!)
Acting in Gen-X Cops belongs in the category of: The
less you speak about it, the less it'll hurt you to remember. So I won't speak
all that much about the acting, only to say that the villains were actually the
better actors, since they didn't annoy me to the nth degree, with lead villain
Toru Nakamura (Akatora) showing a larger range of "cool" and thespian
ability than our 3 heroes combined. Our heroes, on the other hand, have as much
acting talent as the skateboarders on TV who keeps smashing their teeth into
staircase guardrails while trying to grind their skateboards. The 3 young men
are trying so hard to be "silly" (and in turn, "cool") that
they look completely foolish when they attempt to be "serious." Even
the kids from "21 Jump Street" knew there was a time to be punkish and
a time to be cops. These 3 fellows have no idea.
Direction by Benny Chan, who is also the film's co-writer,
is sufficient, although I could have done without the Big Explosion in the
film's finale. The entire sequence smacks of overkill, with its only purpose for
existence being so director Chan can say: Golly Gee, look, I blew up a building
real good! The movie's actions are not spectacular, although the final fight
between Akatora and the 3 Gen-Xers was the movie's highlight. Unfortunately
there are many moments in Gen-X Cops that showcases Director Chan's
inability to tell a coherent story.
After a string of pratfalls and mugging for
the camera, one of the Gen-X cops suddenly stops to query of Akatora,
"Doesn't life mean anything to you?" when the latter is threatening to
blow up a building full of people. While the question is relevant, I fail to see
how it would have any impact on the proceedings when one of the X-Cops has just
gotten his head stuck in an assembly belt a couple of seconds ago.
Perhaps as an indication of just how much I didn't enjoy Gen-X
Cops is this line of dialogue, delivered by Akatora towards the end of the
movie that had me rolling with laughter: Confronted by one of the Gen X cops,
the villain state matter-of-factly, "You have a big mouth, but a small
gun."
It's probably the best line in the entire movie, but
unfortunately it's the only good line.
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