Hunted Hunter


Director: Ricky Lau
Year: 1997
Rating: 6.5


I  came away from this film with a mixed feeling - it comes nowhere close to Yuen Biao's best work, but there is still plenty of action and it is generally entertaining even if very formalistic. You sense right from the beginning that this movie will not be a classic when you realize that the action is taking place in the Philippines and your immediate thought is - "oh no, not a cheapo Filipino knockoff. Has the same fate befallen Yuen that befell Cynthia Khan & Yukari Oshima". Well probably - but this one is a few notches above some of those other low budget quickies that I have come across.



The story has Yuen being framed for murder and sentenced to be executed. He escapes and is basically on the run for the entire movie - looking for the real killer while escaping from the police time after time after time . . . At least the action soon shifts to HK and the quality of the film making picks up immediately. Lots of action - none of it brilliant - but some of it not badly done as a bit on bamboo scaffolding and the final shoot out.





There are a few stunts in which I wondered whether Yuen was doing them as the camera shot was from quite a distance. I still remember two jumps he made in Millionaire Express & On the Run that were breathtaking so I was curious if he was making them in this film. Probably for a low budget job like this he would not want to bother. The most irritating thing in the film is the director resorting to doing some of the action scenes in slo-mo for absolutely no reason that I can see. Hell, I can look good in slo-mo - I want to see Yuen in real time speed (or even speeded up). Sometimes slo-mo is used effectively for creating an atmosphere, being almost poetic - but here it was just done for doing it. A film really only for Yuen Biao fans. Also in the film is Jessica Hester, Wu Ma and Jerry Lamb.