City Cop

                                                     
Director: Herman Yau
Year: 1995
Rating: 7.0
There is nothing like a Hong Kong shootout on the streets of that city. No one does it better. Ferocious, deadly, hundreds of shots exchanged, stunts galore, car chases, a high body count and all choreographed by masters. In this case Chin Ka Lok and Paco Yick Tin-hng. There are three action set pieces in this film as the cops go up against a gang of robbers heavily armed with AK-47s and grenades. Each shootout ratchets it up from the previous one as they stretch across the city. Interestingly, it is directed by Herman Yau who at the time was mainly known for his horror films, The Untold Story and Taxi Hunter, but has over the past ten years become a mainstay of the action genre. This was produced by Danny Lee who also acts in the film and it has all the standard aspects of one of his many cop films. The cops are heroic and honorable while the bad guys are psycho monsters.



And the film begins with a close-up of Ben Ng, psycho supreme in many films. Once you see Ng, you know this is going to get violent and it sure does. He illegally smuggles over men from the Mainland - this still being two years before the Handover - and they do their job and are sent back. Their job? Robbing jewelry stores and killing anyone who gets in their way or just for the hell of it. This is a pure gun-o-rama with no hand to hand combat; just an unrelenting unmerciful barrage of gun fire.



On the other side is Inspector Wong (Parkman Wong), a veteran and a family man who is partnered with Inspector Chow played by Michael Chow, totally serious without a glimmer of his usual comic side. Chow is nicknamed Rambo for the risks he takes. Danny Lee is in charge of SDU, but only pops in from time to time. Wong and Chow are after Ng and his gang and as the film progresses and the body count climbs, they become more and more authoritarian and beat up prisoners and just bust in doors with no legal documentation and no one really cares. Police have been killed. Fuck niceties. Nothing subtle here, but loaded from top to bottom with action and stunts.