Friday Gigolo
Director: Stephen Yip
Year: 1992
Rating: 6.0
During the last twenty
minutes of this film, I just had to start laughing. Up until then it had
followed the plot of the 1987 American movie The Bedroom Window somewhat
faithfully with one big difference. Then, I guess the writers decided that
the American ending just didn’t have enough pizzazz and they decided to do
it HK style.
Simon Yam is a photographer during the week, but come Friday evening he earns
a little extra spending money by renting out his services as a gigolo. He
tells his client that he saves it up all week for this night to better satisfy
his customers. She takes him at his word and they are soon testing out all
of his furniture plus his chin up bar. At least that takes care of having
to dust the furniture!
Afterwards she (Mondi Yau) hears some cries
from the street and looking out she sees a girl being strangled. Upon seeing
her though, the man stops and runs away and the girl does the same. The next
day the murder of a female is reported and the description of the suspect
fits the man she saw. She is married (as it turns out to Simon’s boss) and
so cannot tell the police. Simon decides to pretend that he saw it and reports
the incident to the police. Complications follow.
Finally, in the last part of the film all
hell breaks out as a bunch of folks are out to kill Simon. But before that,
they decide to really damage his pride first in an excruciating scene that
had my palms sweating. They take Simon to the top of a long series of steps
– tie his guilty party with a rope to a heavy oil barrel – and roll the barrel
down the steps – while holding Simon down.
I kind of enjoyed this silly and very idiotic
film. I am not sure too many other people would though. It goes from a sleazy
Cat III film to a thriller to an absurd action finale. But all in good fun.
And Simon no matter how ridiculous the movie still manages to look so cool.
