Spiritually a Cop
     
                 
Director: Shum Wai
Year:  1989
Rating: 5.0

This Hong Kong action-supernatural-comedy is pretty obscure for good reason but within its broken shell are some choice bits. You just have to be patient and wait it out. I am not saying it is worth it but if you are a Yukari completest as I am it may be worth your time. It actually has a good beginning and I thought I might be in for a surprise treat - but instead it devolves into a boring muddling confusing mess in which nothing much happens for the entire middle section and then it comes back with a really good action ending. And it has such a good cast as long as you don't know how long they are in it for. Cameos by such veterans as Michael Chan, Eddie Ko, Phillip Ko, Johnny Wang, Peter Chan Lung - and then small parts by James Wong, Elaine Lui and Shum Wai, who is responsible for this mess as director. But in the main parts we have Yukari Oshima, Stanley Fung, Mang Hoi and Lui Fong. Ok, Lui Fong wasn't a film star but the other three are.








A vigilante cop is going around Hong Kong capturing small time criminals and beating up triad thugs (Ko and Wang). The cops can't figure out who he is and in truth they like what he is doing. A little tasteless humor of course thrown in such as when he catches a rapist in a porno theater. The cops arrive and stop and watch with Inspector Fung (Stanley Fung) telling them they will get an infection of their eye and then the rapist defending himself by saying he never would have if he had known how ugly she was. The cops agree. The vigilante though is not really a cop but a cop wannabe who was rejected for being too short. This is Lui Fong who is actually in real life a popular singer more than an actor - and I can see why. He had dated Carol Dodo Cheng for sixteen years before breaking up and called his time with her like being “in jail for 16 years". Just a bit of gossip I picked up.









Anyway, he takes on more than he can chew with his next attempt to stop three transvestites from stealing diamonds and they kill him. Not the end of the story obviously as his ghost breaks away from the denim clad Claimers from Hell, Pig Head (Peter Chan Lung) and Horse Head (Ma Yui-saan) and escapes to revenge himself on what he thinks are the women that killed him. Fung has to hand over the case to the specialist - Inspector Lin Lin (Yukari) and this pisses off Lui because he now hates women. The whole middle section is him trying to get her off the case and Fung on and it is pretty awful and irritating. At one point he takes control of another policeman and uses him to insult Lin Lin. That does not go well for him. Only Hai (Mang Hoi) a newly anointed monk can see him. Ugh - this part just dies a slow death but then.







Yukari tracks the killers down and goes undercover in some deal with them and a bunch of baddies. One being Elaine Lui. Fung who has a relationship with Lin Lin (and there is one weird in bed moment going on there) and thinks she is cheating on him barges in and all hell breaks loose for the next fifteen minutes and Yukari goes to work. Her duel with Elaine is easily the highlight of the film - but then there are two stunts at the end that are holy shit - one just someone jumping out of a high window right before the explosion but then followed by someone on fire falling from the window, hitting the ground and while still on fire crawling away. I hope that stunt person on fire got a bonus.