Blood-Stained Tradewind

                                                       
Director: Chor Yuen
Year:  1990
Rating: 6.0
And a million bullets later. This is a fairly standard Triad movie in the 1990s with multiple shootouts, brotherhood galore and more betrayals than you can keep track of. So much so, that with a few adjustments, it could almost be a parody. But I liked all these Triad films when they were as subtle as a hammer across your forehead. Lots of talk and tears about loyalty and honor and why I have to kill you. The ending is classic bad film making with the two protagonists talking each other and the audience to death. Just shoot, dammit.



This is directed by the great Chor Yuen some five years and a few films after the end of Shaw Brothers. His last film at Shaw was Let's Have a Baby, his magnificent Wuxia films in the past and now forced into Heroic Bloodshed. That was more Chang Cheh territory. This has none of the grace and glamour of his Wuxia. Or the magical artificial sets that he favored. This was to be his last film as a director even though he lived for three more decades. The world outside of Shaw probably did not agree with him. Nothing in this film felt like a Chor Yuen film; dreary dialogue, a sappy narrative and action choreographed by Yuen Bun that is all gunfire.



This is all Triads and Yakuza. No police ever show their faces. All these gangsters vying for power and willing to betray anyone to get there. Brotherhood and loyalty is nice but an inconvenience when they get in the way. Top dog is the Zhong Yi gang, headed by Uncle Long (Bao Fang) and his two adopted sons, Xiong (Waise Lee) and Chen (Alex Fong). They along with Uncle Long's daughter (Ida Chan) have grown up together and by the time they are adults, the two men are both in love with her. Long's righthand man is Uncle Da (Ng Man-tat in a serious role). When Long decides to retire, he wants to appoint Chen as his successor, but Chen refuses. Give it to Xiong. Xiong says give it to Chen. Chen again refuses and has to leave the gang and move to Macau. Xiong takes over. Marries the daughter.



When the Yakuza (Lam Wei) move in. the trouble and the betrayals begin. Betrayals on top of betrayals on top of betrayals. Chen has fallen in love with Fang (Carrie Ng) but her crooked brother pulls Chen back into the underworld. One shootout follows another and guns rarely run out of ammunition. Men are bowling pins to be shot down by the tens. Also appearing are Stanley Fung as a master two-handed shooter and Lo Lieh as a gangster. It's far from a good Chor Yuen film, but it still manages to be entertaining in a rough bullet ridden way.