Red Zone
Director: Edward Tang Ging-sang
Year: 1995
Rating: 7.0
Waise Lee is the
reptilian villain in this one. He is an amazing actor if you step back a
bit. He shows up all the time in films in the 1980s and 90s and is still
at it today. His debut was as the traitor in A Better Tomorrow and he has
gone on to play shady sleazy characters so often. If you see him in a film,
you immediately wait for him to betray someone or order someone killed.
I don’t know how he became the go to guy for true underhanded snake in the
grass villainy. He looks just like the guy who is sitting next to you on
the subway. But check your wallet after he gets up and leaves. There is nothing
about him that says bad guy. Maybe an accountant or a mid-level government
official but not the vicious killer he often is. He does have a great smirk
though and he brings that early to this one. He is a big-shot drug dealer
caught with the goods and on trial and so sends his moll Ivy, the exquisite
Valerie Chow to whisper seductively into the ear of the British judge to
grant him bail. And a check for $1 million. Hell, with Valerie whispering
in my ear I would have done that and thrown in my house as well. He doesn’t.
Kaboom goes his car. Waise smirks.
Initially, the film centers around Valerie
as she goes about her business – getting money for Waise’s men and fending
off the advances of his right hand man Wei (Chan Chit-man), but it slowly
brings in the cops in charge of the case – Kenny Ho and Yu Rong-guang. She
is faithful to Waise until Kwong (Ken Lo) shows up at her bar and charms
her back to his apartment. He is an undercover cop though tasked with seducing
her and getting information. He has taken the identity as a Thai-Chinese
man which Ken Lo in fact is. Before he can make his move on her, Wei shows
up with four men to bust up this little love nest and Kwong too. Uh-uh. This
is Ken Lo and a lovely fight breaks out till Wei pulls the gun. Some nasty
torturing follows.
This is a pretty nifty B flick going back
and forth between the cops and the bad guys. Wei has decided to go into
business for himself and wants to clean up everything including Valerie
and the cops. It gets pretty tense as he plants bombs all over. It doesn’t
have as much action as one might expect with the threesome of Ken Lo, Kenny
Ho (The Red Wolf) and Yu Rong-guang but there are couple small skirmishes
on the way to the big finale. Some great leg kicks from Ken Lo. Round kicks
from Yu. It is great to see both Ken Lo and Yu on the right side of the law
for once! I have seen them as the bad guys so often. One of the bigger
roles for Ken as well and he gets to make out with Valerie Chow. I wonder
if he asked for a salary too. He is good in this and I wonder why he was
usually just one of the henchmen. Also, look for Sammo Hung's son Timothy.
He plays the cop named Greyhound and gets the hell beat out of him at one
point. And you might ask, well what about Waise. Oddly, he spends the entire
film in jail and occasionally the camera catches him looking up and smirking.
Rating: 7.0
