Power Connection
Director: Philip Ko-fei
Year: 1995
Rating: 5.0
This Filipino-Hong
Kong production only goes to prove that action films on their own can only
give you so much enjoyment. This has more action than a deer has ticks -
and some of it is very solid - but the filmmakers throw the action set pieces
at you out of right field. Suddenly there is a big action scene and you are
not sure why and who is fighting who. Like dandelions popping up after a
rain. It seems that a dog ate the script, if there was one. It does have
a lot of talking though. Especially from the main bad guy Dick. He first
tries to kill his enemies by talking them to death and if that doesn't work
he employs his killer helicopters, sacrificial minions, hand grenades and
a machine gun. This sort of shoddy action packed film is fairly representative
of these Philip Ko-Godfrey Ho productions. The story is on a napkin and the
fights are probably fairly well choreographed out by Ko himself.
This one even co-stars a Filipino action
star - Jestoni Alarcon - who I admit I had never heard of but he had a good
action filmography before he turned politician. I didn't watch this though
for Mr. Alarcon - but for Yukari Oshima. I would watch her in anything and
in this one she is basically the only reason to watch it. While Alarcon does
a lot of shooting - often killing more than one person with one shot - one
time three guys go down - the actors must have been confused - no, I get
killed, no I get killed and they all fall down. But Yukari stands out from
all the gunplay that is a basic shooting gallery and has a few very decent
martial arts fights. Some wonderful leg kicks and acrobatics and her final
fight against I think Robert Mak is an incredible flurry of leg kicks by
both. She fights Mark Houghton in another. If you are a Yukari fan, this
is worth at a minimum fast forwarding through.
The plot. Well - first it was confusing
and second the subtitles were often impossible to read due to that old white
on white issue. But Alarcon is a cop in Manila with his partner Ko Chun-kit
and they are after a drug gang headed by Philip Ko. Big fight. The helicopters
show up - loads of bad guys killed - Ko gets away and keeps trying to kill
Alarcon all over the place. Much to his detriment. Then Alarcon has to go
to Hong Kong to go after the Big Boss - the talker - and big laugher - Dick
(Dick Israel a Filipino actor). Alarcon hooks up with undercover cop Yukari
and lots of people are killed. The finale must have lasted 20 minutes of
people stepping out to get shot. I think these were basically straight to
video productions for action junkies and getting a name like Yukari was a
big plus.
