Shaw Brothers legend Lau Kar-leung caves to the trends of the time and abandons the kung-fu wuxia period environments he was known for and instead delivers a contemporary Lethal Weapon inspired goofy buddy cop movie and a post-John Woo/Ringo Lam Heroic Bloodshed actioner starring Chow Yun-fat in one. It doesn't always cleanly nail that tonal combination of charming slapstick and legitimately dangerous-looking martial arts/cop-thriller action it’s going for that Jackie Chan was so good at (Police Story inspired years of copy-cats), frequently ending up on either the wrong side of being both broad and crass. But the merging of 80s action movie sleaziness (the excessive cruelty, disturbing gender politics and insanely huge blood squibs) and Lau Kar-leung's atheletic, rhythmic pageantry when it comes to choreographing/shooting makes this a strangely beautiful, messy and incredibly bloody Hong Kong facemelter all the same. Some of the comedy and treatment of women might be tough for some (especially an extended scene of Chow Yun-fat’s repulsive chauvinistic police sergeant torturing Nina Li that ends up resulting in her forming feelings for him and graphically dying like a scene or two later) but every time you think you have enough time to stop and ponder how you might morally feel about it the two cops are off on another Miami Vice sting operation where Conan Lee is leaping one moving car to another or trying to chase a guy down in his underwear. It’s almost Poliziotteschi-esque. I think you could easily view it as a negative thing if you wanted to but there’s honestly something a little amusingly perverse to me about such a spiritually minded martial arts filmmaker capable of something as earnest and emotional as 36th Chamber of Shaolin and 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (and who certainly could've been capable of the expressive romantic melodrama Woo often trafficked in) reduced to such a dumb, tasteless and gruesome 80s action-comedy roller coaster ride inside a fireworks factory, and just fully committing himself to realizing it as colorfully, skillfully and kinetically as he can anyway. The finale here especially is easily one of the best and most unhinged setpieces of the 80s, which is no small feat considering the glut of competition in the decade infamous for its maximalist action cinema. It features an insane swashbuckling chainsaw fight between Conan Lee and the great Gordon Liu that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and at one point Chow Yun-fat fires a shotgun around cover using a rope tied to the trigger + the flick of the wrist yo-yo trick I've never seen before. No idea how I hadn't heard of this film before. Full discussion on ep 423 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.
