Director: Johnnie To Kei-fung
Year: 1987
Rating: 5.0

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I’ve been on a bit of a Nina Li jag lately; trying to run down as many of her films as I can find. Obviously, some are better than others are. This is a fairly weak offering from Raymond Wong (producer/actor) and Johnny To (director), but it is certainly not as offensive as the reviews in the HK Database make it out to be. It is one of those typical “men acting like lustful adolescents” that HK film has a plethora of. Sort of a middle aged Porkys with lots of women parading about – but strictly PG rated. Raymond Wong specialized in these male fantasy films in the 1990s.


The only similarity with the American film of the same title is that Raymond has reached that seven-year itch period with his wife Sylvia Chang and the idea of other women has begun to attract him. His brother-in-law Eric Tsang certainly does his best to push him in that direction. Soon a business trip to Singapore comes up and he looks forward to the idea of “hunting wild animals”. Co-incidentally, Nina Li is who is on the same plane smuggling some jewels into Singapore and hides them in his luggage. As soon as she saw him she thought "sucker fish". To get them back, she has to come on to his male ego. This was one of Nina’s very first films and it shows from her acting to the baby fat still showing in her face. She is still a pleasure to watch though they could have given her a better hair style.


At any rate, complications ensue as Sylvia suspects some hanky-panky is going on and soon has a suitor chasing after her. A fairly mediocre film – with a very peculiar 30 second cameo of Maggie Cheung jogging at the very end of the film. She owed someone a favor I guess. This film is only for Nina Li fans such as myself and even then the fast forward button was a blessing! This was only Johnny To’s second film and I expect just a studio assignment. It has Wong's fingerprints all over it. You certainly would never guess at what a great director he was to become within a few years.

 

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