The Crazy Chase
Director: Eric Tsang
Year: 1981
Rating: 4.0
I thought this film would never end. I saw
my life playing out in an endless loop of people running around for no purpose.
Please, let me out. This was an early script by Wong Jing. He was pushing
them out like donuts with thirteen in 1981. This film shows none of the sophisticated
razor-sharp wit that Wong was later to be known for. That was sarcasm. His
first directing credit was in this same year, but not this film. That honor
goes to Eric Tsang. At this point in his acting career, Tsang often played
an idiot, but he followed this by directing two good Aces Go Places films.
This one definitely feels like somewhere between a Hui Brothers and a Cinema
City comedy but not as good as either. It even has a few songs that sound
like Sam Hui. But this is a Lo Wei production.
Lau Kar Wing, who is the brother of Lau
Kar Leung, was in a bunch of kung fu comedies around this time, but they
leave the kung fu out and give us a feeble insipid comedy that annoys with
its grating characters and comic bits as rusty as my love life but not as
funny. Lau is a detective. A terrible one on the verge of being thrown out
of his apartment. He gets invited to a party being given by the head (Tang
Ching) of a movie studio. The head is announcing that he purchased a valuable
Sung period urinal worth millions. His much younger wife and her lover have
hired men to steal it. Lau miraculously stops them. The wife/lover decide
Lau has to be killed but so does the head who thinks Lau is having an affair
with the wife.
Much of the remaining film is people trying
to kill Lau and him escaping by luck. He never even realizes they are. Not
even when five of them are in a house, all trying to get him. Two of the
killers are played by Ng Man-tat and Addy Sung. The woman he romances is
Jojo Chan. Lau goes through the film with over-sized spectacles, a dopey
haircut and a goofy expression. It gets painful. Among the thousands of antics,
a few were funny, but they are as rare as steak tartare.
