Director: Sammo Hung
Year: 1985
Rating: 7.5
This time around in the third entry of the Lucky Star series the boys are up to their usual shenanigans – chasing women and helping out the police. Sammo Hung once again takes the director reins and he keeps the formula firmly in place – a large share of nonsensical comedy along with some amazing action scenes and stunts galore. Much of the comedy limps along, but there is one inspired if juvenile sequence that is quite funny. The action again is very clever and very exciting. Everyone (Sammo, Richard Ng, Stanley Fung, Eric Tsang) is back in this one with the exception of Charlie Chin who disappears quickly and is replaced by near lookalike – Miu Kiu Wai. Sibelle Hu returns as well and escorts the group on a vacation to Pattaya where they spend their time vainly hunting down female prey. Richard Ng even goes so far as to visit a Thai witch doctor (Wu Ma) and gets a love doll that will allow him to seduce any woman. He tries this on a group of four women (Sandra Ng and Kara Hui Ying-Hung among them) and you should be able to guess the result. He ends up naked – but not exactly as he had planned!
It turns out that Sibelle really brought the boys to Thailand to protect a witness at the orders of her boss Walter Tso – and to tell poor love struck Sammo that she really doesn’t care for him. She just used him in My Lucky Stars to save Yuen Biao. Sammo’s face falls faster than gravity can. They fail in their mission to protect the witness (Melvin Wong) as he is killed in a wonderful sequence when he is paragliding. Three assassins bring him down with machine guns and then finish the job with a bazooka. Slight overkill perhaps but it does the job. I knew paragliding was dangerous, but that’s ridiculous! Before he dies though, he tells Sibelle that he sent a letter to Hong Kong with evidence. So the boys return home.
Before that though is the classic scene in which Sammo takes on what initially appears to be six lovely Thai ladies coming on to him – but upon closer inspection turn out to be six deadly lady-boys. At the same time Sibelle is fending off two machete wielding lady-boys in her room. The person that Melvin Wong sent the letter to is Rosamund Kwan – looking very lovely and large eyed in a short fashionable hairdo. In order to protect her, they stow her with the Lucky Strikes. Oh no, here we go again – five guys and a girl. Rosamund isn’t worried though as she confides in Sibelle – “they are just sheep in wolves clothing. Horny but chicken”.
One sequence did crack me up as the boys create an illusion of the house being on fire so that they can get Rosamund to lie in a bath full of water – using a straw to breath – in her nightie. Silly but funny. The always annoying John Sham one of the original Lucy Stars makes a reappearance as a friend of Rosamund’s – and upon being called Curley – his name in that one – he corrects them – his name is Wormgrass! Once this required silliness is done with, it is on to some great action. There are two set-pieces in particular that are just terrific. The first is when Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao and a very young looking Andy Lau (in only his seventh film) raid a factory. Fortunately for us there is poison gas on the premises and so they can’t use their guns. This leads to a wonderful fight in which the three of them battle a room full of bad guys – and Dick Wei, Phillip Ko and Lau Kar-wing are among them. The acrobatics are spectacular. Later as Kurata is setting up to shoot Sibelle from a bathroom window, Rosamund walks in on him and seeing what is going on pretends to be blind - he even watches her take care of business in the toilet. The perv. This sets up the last fight.
The finale is one of my favorite action scenes. Jackie, Yuen and Sammo do one on ones with the three assassins – Richard Norton, Chung Fat and Yasuaki Kurata – and all the fights are mini-masterpieces. Sammo in particular shines (hey, it is his series!) as he first takes on Norton – Nortom smirks as Sammo challenges him and then gets whomped - and then in the classic scene he duels Kurata branding a pair of knives with a pair of tennis rackets (Sammo being the purist he is – of course uses wooden ones). Yuen goes up against Chung Fat in a brutal fight. Michelle Yeoh has a small cameo – three minutes – but it is quite enjoyable as she plays a judo instructor and does a demonstration with Richard Ng and then Sammo much to Ng’s dirty-minded satisfaction.
Keep a close eye on the very final scene. The
boys are waiting for an elevator and out comes a myriad of actors. See how
many you can name. I caught Moon Lee, George Lam, Charlie Chin, Philip Chan,
Michelle Yeoh, Deannie Yip, Mang Hoi, David Chiang, Tai Bo, Alfred Cheung,
Leung Kar-yan, Billy Lau, Pauline Wong and Natalis Chan. All on one elevator!
In comparing this one to the previous Lucky Star films, I would rank it slightly
below Winners and slightly above My Lucky Stars. All three have tremendous
action and so it comes down to the humor being the difference. There were
some funny bits in Winners, nothing really in MLS and then this one did have
a slight upbeat in the comedy. Just the amount of talent here is rather amazing
whether it is to your taste or not. Looking at this years later, these really
were Golden Years. I can't help but notice that the comedy bits don't score
well with Western audiences while they very much did in Hong Kong - and now
they feel nostalgically bad - but that is simply culture and time at work.
