Close Escape
Director: Chow Jan-wing
Year: 1989
Rating: 6.5
Action Choreography: Phillip Kwok
For most of its 90-minute
running time, this low budget action film is fairly standard good guy/bad
guy stuff, but then in it’s last 20-minutes it does get somewhat suspenseful
and has a terrific final fight. The film also has a solid cast of Max Mok,
Aaron Kwok (in his first role according to the HK Database), Dick Wei and
Yukari Oshima (billed here as Yukari Tsumura).
Max Mok’s brother is a cop in cahoots with Dick Wei to steal some diamonds,
but after the theft the brother is betrayed by Wei but not before he hides
the diamonds. Mok (who is a medical student with a pretty good punch) teams
up with his brother’s partner – Aaron Kwok – to track Wei down.
Instead though Wei is able to frame Mok
for murder and Mok is on the run and he soon bumps into a demure young female
that he takes hostage – Yukari Oshima. At first I was worried that this was
a Yukari impersonator as she nearly faints at the sight of blood and screams
when she sees a cockroach! Don’t worry – Yukari is actually a killer hired
by Wei to find the diamonds.
Though Yukari doesn’t show up until the 40 minute mark – she has some good
screen time and one short but impressive flurry of kicks – and then the final
brutal fight in which she shows a few amazing moves – with a combination
of over the head kicks and somersaults. No doubt though a lot more of Yukari
would have improved this film. Wei as usual plays the bad guy with a wonderful
cool sleekness that always leaves me wanting to see more of him.
