Inspector Pink Dragon
Director: Gordon Chan
Year: 1991
Rating: 5.0
This is an incredibly
consistent movie. It is almost entirely bereft of laughs through the entire
ninety minutes. Not an easy thing to do when you are trying to make a comedy.
It’s not that they were aiming either too high or too low – they aimed right
for a bland middle and scored a bull’s eye. Not that this film has no redeeming
features. It does and they go by the names of Rosamund Kwan and Nina Li.
Both add some sparkle to an otherwise dull outing.
The main problem with the film is the lead
actor – Lawrence Cheng. He plays a bumbling cop with the humor and charisma
of a lead pipe. The story isn’t too bad and he has some talent surrounding
him, but he is as interesting as licking an envelope. In short, the film
is about Cheng – a totally incompetent cop – who gets mixed up with some
old school friends – Rosamund and Tony Leung Ka-Fai (in a small role) – and
they get him involved with a corrupt businessman who is trying to bribe the
Govt. Land Authority Office. Cheng goes undercover as a high official and
in one of the few mildly amusing bits starts making decisions that affect
100,000 people having to move from their homes!
He becomes infatuated with Rosamund and
this doesn’t sit too well with his cousin/fiancée Nina Li. She doesn’t
really enter the story until the fifty-minute mark and gives it an immediate
lift. She plays a little homely here – but there is no hiding that Nina Li
beauty. Both women are charming to watch, but otherwise this is a definite
miss.
