Hot Cop in the City

Director: Yuen Kai-chi
Year: 2004
Rating: 3.0
Dammit! Trapped again. After having bought the 2003 DVD of “Brush Up My Sisters” and sitting through one of the more tepid and mind numbing female “action” films ever, I swore I would not be tricked by a cover of good looking women holding guns ever again. But I must have blanked out momentarily in the DVD store because when I got home I found “Hot Cop in the City” hiding in my bag. Did it crawl in on its own looking for a good home or was it an impulse buy? I plead amnesia and want my money back. I wonder if Paul at Lai Ying would believe me. Not likely – he has witnessed me buying too many bad movies in the past. In fact, he reserves them especially for me.  “Hot Cop in the City”? Just the title alone should have kept me far away from this one. Well never again! Really. I mean it this time.
 

Oh what a surprise – it’s shot on video – and takes a break every now and then to allow our hot cops to dance in a public square in Hong Kong. Now you don’t get to see that in many “girls with guns” films. In truth, Tiffany Lee is rather hot with legs that start somewhere above her feet and seem to go right up to her breasts where they are finally stopped by the forces of nature. In a short time she has managed to find herself in some high profile films – “The Mummy Aged 19”, “Golden Chicken”, “Shiver”, “Men Suddenly in Black” and “The Park” – so it is a bit of a surprise to come across her in such a low budget film. She must have had a free Sunday. Now the other hot cop isn’t bad to look at either – so you have to wonder why it was “Hot Cop” – why not take a chance and have it plural – but I guess the filmmakers didn’t want our expectations being too heady.
 

This second cop is Sonija Kwok. Now some of us might go “Sonija who?”, but a little research on the Internet provides me with the following. She was Miss Hong Kong in 1999 beating out Marsha Yuen (daughter of Cheng Pei-pei) and the very very cute Myolie Wu. But not only that, Sonija also won Miss International Goodwill, Miss Intelligence and Miss Photogenic, while Marsha cleaned up with the Miss Perfect Skin and Miss Perfect Figure at the awards. Myolie had to settle for Miss Energetic Award. Someone called Cindy Wong won Miss Perfect Legs – I guess Tiffany wasn’t available. This reminds me of my high school baseball team in which everyone got an award – I think mine was “Best Substitute Right Fielder Late in a Hopeless Games”. I was very proud, as I am sure Cindy was.
Since then Sonija has been working for TVB – one show is called “Angels on a Mission” in which she plays a gun toting cop – so she was well prepared for this film. This wasn’t her first film thankfully – prior to this she was in “The Cheaters”, “Fighting to Survive” and “Replacement Suspects”. When asked why she agreed to perform in this film, she pleaded a case of amnesia and could not recall shooting in it - but admitted that she was pretty hot. Born in 1974, her family moved to Vancouver in 1994 where she earned her degree in business and psychology – then went on to even bigger and better things as a hostess on Cathay Airlines – famous throughout Asia for their especially good looks and party attitude. From there it was just one great success after another until she reached the pinnacle of her career with “Hot Cop in the City”.
 

This is an original plot – a by the book Mainland cop comes to Hong Kong to track down a criminal and is paired with a happy go lucky Hong Kong cop and during the film they bond with one another. I don’t think its been done before – at least not for the last week or so. At least the film has the good sense to not take itself at all seriously and is rather goofy in a loosey goosey way. Tiffany is a public relations officer for the cops (with a pretty good kick for a P.R. person) – her specialty is educating on sexual harassment at the workplace – one guy tries to pinch her bottom and wishes he hadn’t and another guy gets a shoe in his mouth for looking down a woman’s blouse. She rooms with Patrick Tang who does his usual sissy boy shtick but spends an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom thinking about his roommate. She reports to Law Kar-ying and is assigned to work with a Mainland PR cop coming to Hong Kong. His criteria for choosing Tiffany – someone who can drink, lose, be blamed, be fooled and be teased. I have no idea what that meant, but I liked it anyway.

In reality Sonija is only pretending to be a PR cop – she is in fact looking for her ex-partner and boyfriend who has gone bad and has a counterfeit plate with him. Her contact in Hong Kong is Tats Lau – sort of a hip hop pimp informer – who has the lowdown on all the bad guys. The usual happens – the two women initially don’t get along – then grudgingly partner with one another and finally bond over a flour fight and live happily ever after. The film does have a modicum of action – actually much better than the infamous broom scene in “Brush Up My Sisters” – and some unusual uses for CGI – a ping pong game, bullet holes, tear gas and Tiffany doing a round house kick that lays out about ten guys. Much of it is silly and much of it is bad, but it has high spirits and Tiffany in particular hits some of my happy zones.