The Hunting List
Director: Kevin Chu Yen-ping
Year: 1994
Rating: 6.5
A category III
triad tale that serves equal dollops of violence and sex. Not a bad story,
but we have seen it many times before. Brotherhood and vengeance. It begins
with a prologue in which three young teenagers come to the assistance of the
older brother of one of them who is in debt to a loan shark and is being beaten
by them. One of the boys, the innocent looking Kit who can’t smoke without
coughing, kills one of the gang with about 20 stabs to his body and he is
forced to flee Hong Kong to Taiwan. Jump forward 15 years. Kit (Ray Lui)
is all grown up and with his beard and shaggy hair looking fairly cool. In
a drug deal he kills three men and decides it is time to return to Hong Kong.
The older brother Ray (Paul Chan Pui) is
now one of the top Triad leaders and his younger brother – Cramp (Tan Lap-man)
is his right hand man. A girl, now a woman, has been waiting for Kit all these
years because there is nothing more appealing than a young boy who stabbed
someone to death like a rabid dog and then left for 15-years. Mei (Lo Suk-fong)
immediately jumps into bed with him. Because he is Ray Lui. He is welcomed
back by his former gang members and sent on a drug deal where he has to kill
a few more people. But then Cramp and Kit find out that their friend (Tai
Bo) had his fingers cut off for not paying a gambling debt. As one triad
member says that is the Triad way. He was lucky to only lose a few fingers.
Cramp disagrees and goes up to three of them sitting in a bar and shoots
them dead, takes one of their women and he and the friend screws her on a
car in the parking lot in the rain. Kit is sitting there watching and clearly
thinking - and people think I am crazy. These two have me beat by a mile
but they are my friends. The triad life.
Once the ball gets rolling downhill it
is hard to stop. Another triad gang headed by Second Master (Ku Feng) wants
retribution and retribution brings on more. No one is safe. Not even from
their own gang. Cramp as his name might indicate is a psychopath with one
of those maniacal laughs that Hong Kong villains specialize in. His daughter
is played by Vivian Hsu and she is a mini-psychopath. Very cute and ready
to jump into the sack with one of Cramp’s men (Jackson Lau). Rule number 21
in the Triad Handbook. Never sleep with a triad’s daughter. It is just a
bad idea. There is one of those great Hong Kong shoot-outs when the two triad
gangs and the cops all find themselves in one place with their guns drawn.
The glass and pillow stuffing gets the hell beaten out of it. Every shot
that hits a person brings out a stream of spraying blood that must play hell
with the carpets. Decent triad film with plenty of action and drama and craziness.
They try for some emotional resonance but basically everyone here gets what
they deserve. It is directed by Chu Yen-ping infamous for Fantasy Mission
Force and Golden Queen Commandos but also for the wonderfully insane Flying
Dagger and A Book of Heroes. This is straight up conventional compared to
those.
