Oh! Yes Sir!
Director: Frankie Chan
Year: 1994
Rating: 4.0
After watching this
film, I have to wonder whether Frankie Chan might suffer from a type of attention
deficiency disorder. He seems to have trouble focusing and this film is all
over the map as he comes up with a multitude of various plot lines only to
leave most of them hanging out to dry like a forgotten pair of socks in the
washing machine. For example, the conflict with the girlfriend – what ever
happened to her I wonder, the ghost that comes back for revenge – oops –
forgot about that thread as well and so on. The film is a complete mish-mash
of action, comedy and the supernatural and even Frankie’s action scenes are
much weaker than usual and are not nearly enough to hold one’s flagging interest.
Frankie plays Power Chan a short-tempered cop who is jealous of his Cat III
actress/girlfriend and thinks she is fooling around with sleazy director
Charlie Cho. After beating him up – Chan and his partner come into conflict
with the next door neighbor – a fortuneteller with supernatural abilities.
Eric Tsang plays this person – as a woman – or perhaps as a transvestite
and has his voice dubbed by a female. In fact, there are some odd gender
things going on in this film. His male partner boasts about his sexual conquests
with women – and one character – a prostitute called Papaya – confirms that
he was with her the week before – but there is something out of kilter with
this fellow. Did I see or imagine that he seemed to have breasts? I don’t
know – the film certainly never reveals this to be the case.
Anyway, the main gist of the film is that the two of them are after a weapons
dealer who has three gweilo killers in his employ – Mark Houghton, Jeff Falcon
and Kim Maree Penn. The gun dealer also has a specialized killer on his payroll
– one who can take on the looks of anyone – and disguises himself as Frankie
and eliminates a witness and a couple of cops. So Frankie and his partner
are blamed for the crime and have to go into hiding – sort of - as
no one really seems interested in catching them. Maybe the cops were as bored
as I was. Frankie and partner use the psychic abilities of Eric to track
the fellow down and that leads to a big brouhaha at the end. There are a
number of fights in the film – not badly done, but nothing exceptional either
– and when the video finally ran down I was more than a bit relieved.
In one of those “isn’t that a weird co-incidence” moments, I later was looking
through the film Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon for some pictures of Karl
Maka for the Actor Index section – and lo and behold there was Frankie’s
partner again – with a slight difference – he was in a dress – playing Karl’s
wife – and sure enough the name Wanda Yung Wai-tak appears in the credits
of both films!
