BRAVEFUL POLICE (Taiwan/Hong Kong; 1990)

Nightclub wrestler To Gwai-fa meets with disapproval. Bet your local Amvets ain't got a show like this!

BRAVEFUL POLICE (Taiwan/Hong Kong; 1990)
D: Hon Bo-Cheung
This lesser-known Kara Hui vehicle should probably stay that way. It's a soapy thriller that looks like it was shot for free and sends the veteran martial artist to Tokyo where, with the help of a plucky prostitute (Yip Ka-ling) and a sexy lady wrestler (To Gwai-fa; don’t ask), she takes down the syndicate that’s squeezing her restauranteur uncle. Lotsa yap about displaced Taiwanese folk sticking together (all the girls hail from the island), but the only real highlight comes when Kara yanks the bikini top off a snooty roundeye peeler and tosses her into the audience at one of those only-in-a-Hong-Kong-movie nightclubs where well-dressed society couples gather to furiously applaud spastic stripteasing—and female wrestling—like it was a night at the friggin’ opera! Stay home. New wave band Berlin performs “Take My Breath Away,” though I’m fairly certain they’re not aware of it.

SPICE COP (2002)

SPICE COP (2002)
D: Amen Wu Ga-kan.
AKA: HOT & SPICY

"Kooky" cops Louis Fan and Patrick Keung (two names that don't exactly scream "hilarious!" playing characters named F-Bomb and Mojito) are hired by the estate of a millionaire to shield his prized daughter from her shifty relatives, who are soon murdered one by one in the tycoon's opulent mansion after arriving there for the execution of the will. Writer Michael Yeung and director Amen Wu play out their mystery with a winking, Dutch-angled cartoon sensibility, most shamelessly embodied by the hero detectives: every line of dialogue they speak, every movement they make, is accompanied by the broadest possible gestures, including funky little dance steps and outsized facial contortions like googly eyes or flicking tongues. In the end, this liberal coating of "wacky" fails to make us forget that this is a formulaic whodunnit. Thankfully, Fan participates in several well-choreographed and crisply edited martial arts fights, including a climactic style-versus-style doozy in a garage with henchman Sze Hung-bor, and these make the title worth at least one viewing.

EYE FOR AN EYE (1990; Hong Kong)

EYE FOR AN EYE (1990)
D: O Sing-pui

When her cop boyfriend (Wilson Lam) puts her supposedly reformed triad father (Foo Wang-tat) behind bars, trading company exec Joey Wong aims to rid the organization of it's dirty ties, but chief goon Jimmy Lung Fong—in a deliciously over-the-top portrait of scumbaggery—has plans for a very hostile takeover. To ensure her cooperation, he rapes her, videotapes the deed, and sells copies to his pals when he's not whipping her, insulting her, killing her relatives, making her watch him have sex with hookers and reveling in her utter defenselessness (which actually lasts longer than logic would dictate).

Lam's conflicted detective is ultimately painted as an ineffectual, emotionally constipated hero-by-accident, which doesn't exactly win back his girl, but hotheaded partner Max Mok—whose unrequited love for Wong is sketched in montage while he sings karaoke to a soaring Dave Wong Kit power ballad (illustrated above and below—thanks YouTube!)—doesn't fare much better when he goes above the law to get things done.

In fact, the filmmakers strongly suggest that triad "troubles" take care of themselves, though to prove it, they go a little nuts in the second half, with catharses and plot twists and fight scenes—including a king sized gang-on-gang chopper battle that spills through a restaurant's windows and into the street, presumably so a fire hydrant can be broken open to make everyone look even cooler fighting in a downpour—piled on at such a ferocious clip that a viewer's emotional circuits might need rewiring after all the yanking around.

“Get that finger outta your ear. You don’t know where that finger’s been."

If you forced me to pick one thing that drives me nuts about Hong Kong cinema, it would be actors playing cops on public surveillance missions constantly pressing their fingers to their conspicuous earphones and mumbling to themselves as they scan the surrounding area.

Whether they’re pretending to read a newspaper, hawk fish balls or sweep the sidewalk, there’s always that moment where the actors simply must fidget with their earphones. This is hardly specific to Hong Kong pictures, but since the actors in many Hong Kong movies—especially no-budget duds like KUNG FU POLICE—often play these scenes on open streets in plain sight of hundreds of oblivious real people scurrying around them while the camera crew shoots from a van parked nearby, the urge to do something with their hands must be overwhelming, if only to mask the embarrassment of having to stand in the middle of a crowded sidewalk in their own street clothes with a two-dollar earphone stuck in their head!

KUNG FU POLICE has many such scenes, but unlike other, better cheapo Hong Kong police procedurals, the filmmakers can’t even be bothered giving the actors something to actually do as they mill around a Wanchai intersection looking all surveillance-y and stuff, so they press those earpieces like crazy!

No newspapers. No fish balls. Just fingers in ears.

It starts off with this guy…

…then cuts to the star of the show, Jackie Lui, lookin’ smooth.

Then we go to David To, who actually IS doing something else to blend into the crowd. He’s standing beside a guy that looks a lot like Wong Yat-fei (not pictured) handing out leaflets. These appear to be real leaflets for an actual place, so it’s kinda cool that they threw a t-shirt on the guy and stuck him out there for verisimilitude. But then, up goes that finger…

Then it’s over to this guy, who nods while holding his fingers to the earpiece, presumably acknowledging a command to look the other way, then looks the other way and, without touching the earpiece, appears to talk to himself. I’m going with the shot of him touching the earpiece for the sake of consistency:

Then we’re back to David, who’s now moved to the edge of the road, so he can finger his ear and lean on the railing. Gettin’ tired, I suppose:

Then we cut back to Jackie, who’s become rather engrossed in fingering his ear, to the point that he is no longer surveilling the landscape, which could have been just the break villainous jewel thief Karen Tong was waiting for. Alas, no. We’ll later learn she’s not even in the neighborhood.

We return to this guy once more to find he’s resumed his fake job of handing out leaflets, but again, important news over his earpiece has necessitated a rather obvious swing of his arm up to his head. If Karen were anywhere in the vicinity when all this is taking place, she would have been long gone to another part of town by this point:

Jackie again. He’s back to scoping out the busy Wanchai intersection, but must once again press his earpiece in tight lest he miss any vital information about the robbery his unit has been informed will take place somewhere in the vicinity. This time, he responds to something he pretends to hear in his disconnected Walkman earphone:

Then we’re treated to a shot, which occurs rather quickly, of the lone female member of Jackie’s team performing aural on herself. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a simple cutaway to a couple of actual Hong Kong folks having a chat. But then up pops that finger:

And finally, the money shot. We’re shown the robbery taking place nearby, but NONE of the cops sees it. They are notified that it’s going down when Red T-shirt guy gets the call…

…on his cell phone:

This represents about half the ear-touching shots that occur in this single movie, but you get the idea.

Not that this production isn’t burdened with other problems, what with all the ambient noise, poor night lighting, dreary shot composition and creepy Candy Lo impersonations by two wholly non-descript supporting “actresses” who are so non-descript I can’t remember their names.

In case you’re still interested, Jackie Lui is a cop and Karen Tong is a jewel thief newly escaped from prison with Big Plans to stick up jewel dealers who are walking home from work because that’s cheaper to shoot than scenes in actual rented spaces like jewellery stores that can’t be faked in the producer’s apartment or the production offices. Anyways, Jackie’s tai chi classmate owes Karen a few robberies, and his sifu’s daughter has some kind of relationship with him that only exists in her vacant little head. And that’s about it, really.

Most definitely a movie to approach with lowered expectations, but since my purchase of the VCD allowed the production company to make back their entire expenditure, the dirty work’s been done.