Dubbed in Mandarin
Aka - Bandit Bandit International
Aka - The Mad, the Mean and the Deadly
I came across this one and saw that Michael Chan was in it. His presence
in any film pretty much makes it mandatory watching. Especially one from
the 1970s when his fighting was raw and fierce. He was of course the real
deal. An enforcer for the triads who came to realize that being a film star
was easier and safer work but he has always kept his fingers in the triad
world. A "star" might be overstating it but he is as well-known as any actor
in Hong Kong though he rarely got the lead role. In his earlier films he
was usually a killer or thug and as he got into his 50's he took on senior
roles in the triads but could still kill you with a sneer or a fast slice.
I am not entirely sure what the origin of the film is - Indonesian I think
- IMDB has the director as F. Sutrisno but HKMDB has him and our favorite
Taiwanese kung fu director Joseph Kuo. It is a mixed cast - a few Indonesian
actors, Chan and from Japan, Kurata Yasuaki - another actor that you want
to watch whenever you can. The direction is really ham-handed with terrible
continuity issues and a lot of whats? For example, there is a fight
between two guys. One pulls out a pistol and has it kicked out of his hand
- a constant occurrence in the film - and then they run for a while until
one is knocked down, rolls a bit and picks up the gun. Wait - that was way
back, how did it get here - and later the non-gun guy has the gun and reaches
into his back pocket and pulls out a silencer. Huh, you always keep one just
in case you find a gun? There is a lot of that sort of thing. Which makes
me think Kuo had little to do with this - maybe he directed a scene or two
for a Taiwanese version.
Four gang members have come to Jakarta to steal a giant diamond. They are
Chan, Kurata, Garner (Boy Tirayoh) who they call the "negro" and a Korean
babe (Pei Ju-hua). Where is this diamond you ask. On the top of the National
Monument, an obelisk that is 433 feet high and out in plain sight. The rumor
is that the top ball holds this diamond. On the other side is a four member
Interpol task force to stop them. Headed by George Rudy, a very popular Indonesian
action actor, Debbie Cynthia Dewi called Agent Eagle 2, Yulinar Firdaus -
a pretty Indonesian actress and another male whose name I could not figure
out.
What the film has going for it is a lot of kung fu action. Not topnotch by
any means but definitely watchable. Rudy keeps running into the bad guys
because Jakarta is such a small city - and has a bang up with them - one
time at the zoo. A solid fight and then they get away. The two good fights
that might make the film worthwhile is Chan against Kurata and then Kurata
against Boy Tirayoh. In one of the dumber bits in the film they kidnap Agent
Eagle 2 who Chan had an affair with long ago. Now he tells her I loved your
plump figure and all the sexual rhythms you performed. Those sexual rhythms
will get you every time. When they kidnaped her, her hands were full of boxes
of bakery goods and she could not fight back. So ya. Anyway, she makes a
play for Kurata knowing it will drive Chan nuts and it does. They go outside
and have a great 10-minute fight that is nicely choreographed, and they beat
the hell out of each other and remarkably at the end neither has a mark on
his face. Meanwhile, she just walks out and gets away. An interesting curiosity
with Chan and Kurata doing some good work.
