Fist Power
Director: Aman Chang
Year: 2000
Rating: 6.0
It is easy to add up
the faults of this film and many have. The script looks to have been written
in a day, space and time seem not to exist and the action is way over-edited
and often sped up. But damn it's fun even if it wallows in stupidity. I give
it kudos just for its ambition in 2000 when Hong Kong films were in a downturn.
An absurd amount of action without guns that has set-pieces on the Hong Kong
ferry, on the train to the plane and pretty much everywhere else they could
get permission to film. And a cast that dreams are made of. Even the small
parts go to such as Kara Hui, Lau Kar-wing, Cheng Pei-pei, Austin Wei (Kara's
brother), Lam Suet, Jude Poyer, Robert Mak and Li Fei. There is a fight near
the end that has Kara, Cheng Pei-pei, Lau Kar-wing and Austin Wei in it and
I just thought - damn - the history in that room.
As I mentioned, the near non-stop action
is edited to pieces - a second or two between edits - they could make me
look like I knew what I was doing. But the man doing most of the fighting
is Chiu Man-cheuk aka Vincent Zhao - one of the best young martial arts actors
of the time. The guy from The Blade, one of the greatest martial arts films
of the modern day. They really didn't have to edit him like this. Let the
man do his thing. Unfortunately, martial arts films were slowing down for
gun-fu and he ended up having to take lesser films like Blacksheep Affair
and Body Weapon. But even in speeded up edited fashion he is terrific to
watch here.
The film begins with the lowering of the
British flag with Chau (Anthony Wong) giving it a last salute. He is an ex-British
marine. His main reason to live is his son. His wife has taken a powder and
he is bringing up the boy on his own. But the boy's real father biologically
is a triad boss - the always reliable creep Lung Fong - and he wants the
boy back and so does the wife. Not for good reasons. They zap Chau and take
the boy. Brian (Man-cheuk) gets a nice introduction when he fights his way
through an army of security guards to reach the top of a high-rise building.
He is looking for Mr. Dick which is always good for a chortle. It turns out
though only to be a training exercise. He is off to Hong Kong along with
his father (Lau Kar-wing), mother (Cheng Pei-pei) and sister (Kara Hui).
They want to introduce him to a girl Hung (Gigi Lai) and they immediately
take a dislike to each other and amazingly it stays that way through the
film.
Meanwhile Chau has rounded up three of his
marine friends to take over a school as hostages with bombs planted everywhere
- in return he wants the cops to stop the thug from taking his boy to America.
Turns out though that Brian's nephew is in the school, so he takes it upon
himself to get the boy back with Sam Lee and Gigi tagging along. The triad
boss has an army of fighters who magically appear everywhere - the train,
the ferry, the bike lanes and even manage to convert an office building into
a police station in minutes where he has to face the deadly high-heels of
Li Fei. Li Fei only appeared in a handful of films but I had hopes she would
be the next thing in Girls with Guns - Cop Shop Girls, Naked Weapon - but
that genre was gone if not forgotten. He meets up with Jude Poyer twice -
on the ferry and a up some steep stairs - decent fights. And just action
scene after action scene choreographed by Ma Yuk-sing (worked with Ching
Siu-tung on a number of classics). Directed by Aman Chang best known for
his trashy output like Raped by an Angel 2 & 3, Sex and Zen 3, Body Weapon.
If you can put up with a lot of stupid, this is a good romp. I think the
20 years since it was made and how Hong Kong films have changed, it looks
better now then it did back then. It feels like Hong Kong.
