Current Movie of the Week

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This is a full-tilt Hong Kong action flick from Tsui Hark.  Hark is the same man who worked on the Black Mask, Twin Dragons and Dragon Inn.  He also worked on the Chinese Ghost Story series, the Once Upon a Time in China series and the Better Tomorrow series.

Even though I said it was an action flick, its not a martial arts movie.  It is an action movie filled with guns, explosions and crazy stunts.  (Everything you need in a movie)  The plot is almost as challenging as translating the Chinese language track without the subtitles.

Tyler, played by Nicholas Tse, is a lowly bartender who has a one-night stand with an undercover narcotics officer and gets her pregnant.  The cop wants nothing to do with him and the cop's lesbian lover goes berserk.  Meanwhile, Jack, played coolly by Wu Bai, leaves his South American mercenary group to make sure his wife and unborn child can lead a regular life.

Of course, everyone's paths soon cross.  Tyler decides to do right by the cop and gets a job as a bodyguard to earn money to give to her for the baby.  He ends up guarding Jack's father-in-law, a rich businessman who hates Jack, when an attempt is made to kill him at his gala birthday celebration.

Soon the South American mercenaries also show up on the scene to try and get Jack back into the group as well by killing his father-in-law before entering into a "business deal" with the same man.  Got all that?

As confusing as it all sounds, you really get wrapped up in the movie and tend to forget about fretting over the details.  Hong Kong movies are notoriously under funded compared to their Hollywood counterparts, but Hark has some truly mesmerizing scenes on his relatively small budget.

Having a car speed backwards against traffic in downtown Hong Kong, a computer generated scene of the inside of a gun firing and the slow motion explosion of a an alleyway full of grenades will leave you spell bound.  The most impressive, though, is a scene where a man jumps out of a window on a zip line and the camera follows him right down the rope.  Hark explained how it did it on the DVD version and I'm still amazed by it.

This is a great action movie with many memorable scenes.  Like many Hong Kong directors, Hark has learned to make lemons in to lemonade.  This movie is a great introduction to the Hong Kong style of filmmaking.  I enjoy this movie more each time I see it. 

CDWH