Live Hard
     
             
Director: Yuen Cheung-yan
Year:  1989
Rating: 6.0
For all the talent here this should have been much better but for a basic 1980's Hong Kong action film it still holds up with lots of kung-fu fights and gunplay. The cast here was about a decade too soon for a Milkyway film but the people are here. Simon Yam, Lau Ching-wan, Lam Suet and Eddie Ko. Throw in a few others like Girls with Guns star Elaine Lui, Stuart Ong, Jason Pai-piao, Hwang Jang-lee and Sarah Lee. And that is before we get to the Gweilos - they bring in a whole crew of them to be villains of course - all with a bunch of credits in HK films - Kim Maree Penn, Fairlee Ruth Kordick, Dan Mintz and Vincent Lynn. Not well-known names but all with martial arts skills and very willing to get the hell beaten out of them in a number of HK action films. All this for a run of the mill film.

 


That is actually part of the problem - too many good actors. They all need their time on the screen and that forces the film to jump around too often and never stick with any one character too long. Or allowing the viewer enough time to feel they know them. There is an International version of the film that apparently has more fight scenes and adds two more Gweilo actors - Mark Houghton and Steve Tartalia. I saw the HK version. What is strange for an action film is that often the fights are cut off before they take off. Even stranger when you realize this is directed by one of Yuen Clan - Yuen Cheung-yan and the action choreography is credited simply to the Yuen Clan. Though there is a fair amount of sporadic action there are no hell yes scenes. Finally in the end for reasons I didn't quite get, the good guys and the bad guys put down their weapons and just duke it out for about 15 minutes. Some good beat the hell out of each other stuff there.








A terrorist organization has come to Hong Kong to kill a group of foreign politicians who are coming to town. They are tough - one guy's back is set on fire to see if he shows pain - he doesn't - and one of the women has her back cut by the leader Stuart Ong for the same reason. The cops are just as tough. An elite force has been formed after a school bus was blown up. It is confusing for a while because most of them are undercover - Lau Ching-wan, Eddie Ko, Elaine Lau, Cheung Lap-kei. Then there is Simon Yam as a uniformed cop who keeps investigating the bus explosion even though he is taken off the case and he gets in the way because he doesn't know they are all undercover cops. A couple twists in here that took me by surprise - because honestly they make no sense. A better script - say written by Johnny To - would have made a huge difference. Still good enough for the likes of me.