His Way, Her Way, Their Ways
Director: Wong Pak-tse; Tin Chun
Year: 1992
Rating: 5.5
With the handover
of Hong Kong to China looming in the near future, there were a number of
films produced in the early to mid-nineties that poked fun at the clash of
the two different cultures in a style reminiscent of the old Hollywood classic
Ninotchka. It usually revolves around a rigid communist official or cop being
initially repulsed by the decadent capitalistic ways of Hong Kong but then
slowly being seduced by them. The most popular films with this theme
were the Her Fatal Ways series starring Carol DoDo Cheng.
This film is clearly trying to follow in
those footsteps – but not with nearly the same success. It is fairly amusing
at times – but still has a very slapped together look to it. In it three Mainland
cops -Wu Ma and two assistants – come to HK to look for some crooks who are
illegally procuring women for brothels from the Mainland. The two Hong Kong
cops who are assigned to work with them are Waise Lee and Yukari Oshima. Later
a Taiwanese cop also joins them and the friction between the three groups
is evident – but in the end of course all three Chinas must work together
to capture the bad guys!
Most of the film focuses on the three cops from China and their reaction
to HK and some of it is amusing. One of my favorite scenes is when poor Yukari
gets stuck with having to put them up in her apartment – and Wu Ma watches
in amazement as she brushes her teeth with an electric toothbrush. He tries
to follow suit – but unfortunately picks up her vibrator by mistake and brushes
his teeth with that! Yukari looks on in horror.
With Yukari – you can expect some action of course – but the few action scenes
here are done as much for laughs as anything else. Most of the film is very
silly – even the bad guys at one point break into a song and dance routine.
One very odd thing about the version I had of this film – and as a warning
to those with young children – was that for some reason a number of soft
porn scenes were inserted throughout the film! These were clearly from another
source and the inclusion of them is bewildering.
