Violent Cop
Director: Kant Leung Wang-fat
Year: 2000
Rating: 2.5
A quick note to myself.
In the future stay away from Hong Kong films with this title. This is two
Violent Cops I have stumbled over and both had the charm of a broken bicycle
chain.
A couple is having sex in a deserted building
when a third party silently approaches them with more than voyeurism on their
mind. The pickaxe and drill in the hands might give away the deadly intentions
if the couple were paying attention. The woman finally sees the person approaching
and shouts out “in the back, in the back” from which the man assumes she
is requesting a change of position! A few minutes later and he has been decorated
with a sharp piece of metal in his skull and the woman has been drilled in
a manner that she had not been counting on. A psycho killer has struck again.
Who could it possibly be?
The butch lesbian played by Pinky Cheung who doesn’t like anyone messing
with her woman, the woman in question (Anita Chan) who seems to be tiring
of the feminine touch and is seemingly looking for something with a five
o’clock shadow, the female police superintendent who we keep being reminded
has the same shoe size as the killer, the primadonna actress who receives
a heart in the mail, the quirky coroner with a bad taste for perfumes or
finally is it the investigating cop (Patrick Tam) whose own sexual confusion
has put him constantly on the edge of violent behavior. Pick anyone
out of a hat because when we finally learn whom the killer is it makes so
little sense that the director truly could have selected anyone.
This is a dreadful film in which the actors look to be mainly reading from
cue cards when they have the energy to lift their heads. Pinky who usually
exudes energy like a power candy bar is lifeless and bored and Tam simply
looks disbelieving that he has found himself in such a mishap. The producers
apparently hoped that enough kinky behavior and violence would keep the audience
entertained (if they at all cared), but it is done with so little style and
flair that one wonders how this same director (Kant Leung) could have made
the enjoyable The Demon’s Baby. On the other hand he also directed Sexy and
Dangerous II. So from his first film Demon’s Baby to S&D II to this film
– not exactly a trend to be proud of.
The silliest thing about the film is that they try so hard to keep the identity
of the killer a secret until the every end – but they give it away on the
DVD itself!