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Review
by Kozo: |
This past Christmas, Hong Kong
was beset with a rare gift from their local film industry:
6 big movies with big budgets, big stars, international
appeal, and all vying to be crowned “King of Christmas
Hong Kong Movies.” As of this writing I have seen
5 of the 6 and I gotta say: it’s like I got a bunch
of coal this year.
The nadir of HK’s big
bad movie syndrome seemed to be the overstuffed, undercooked,
and aptly titled For Bad Boys Only. Well, I can
now officially say that there is a Christmas movie worse
than that! Yes, Stanley Tong’s eagerly-awaited China Strike Force has become the worst of the
worst. The marvelous “plot” cooked up
by Tong and some buddy is an incredibly shallow and
inept piece of writing that can only be described as
a Golan-Globus production with all the good stuff taken
out. And that's just the beginning of the inanity.
Sky King Aaron Kwok is Darren,
a Shanghai cop and the only actor in this movie that
does not share the same name as his onscreen character.
Darren is partnered with Alex (Alexander Wong), which
is a detail of no importance, except for the fact that
they get drawn into an international crime caper run
by those geniuses of crime (and acting) Mark Dacascos
and Coolio. Coolio plays Coolio (wow!), a South Central
bad boy who wants to run drugs in China.
However, Coolio is thwarted
by Ma (Lau Siu-Ming), the kindly crime lord of China.
Ma’s underling (Dacascos) decides to betray Ma
and facilitate the drug deal, which is where Darren
and Alex come in. Ruby Lin is Alex’s girlfriend
Ruby, who’s a fashion designer. What that means
is we get a fashion show sometime during the course
of the film. Ruby doesn’t appear much in the film,
but her dad (Paul Chun Pui) is the police chief who
leads our two intrepid heroes around. Finally,
Japanese supermodel Norika Fujiwara plays Norika (what
a surprise!), a Japanese Interpol agent who doesn’t
seem to carry any credentials. Norika is trying to get
even with Coolio because he killed her partner. How
she relates to Darren and Alex is a mystery, but of
course Darren is enchanted by her generous figure so
we must pay attention with all our might.
After a few opening action
sequences that promise some brain-dead fun, the film
moves into its 80 minute filler section as we discover
the truth behind the drug deal and we witness the incredible
policework and investigation that solves the case. Well,
actually we don’t. People just kind of walk into
crime scenes at appropriate moments, whereupon fighting
or long stretches of poor dialogue occur. And sadly,
that dialogue explains nothing. GET IT STRAIGHT, NOTHING
MAKES ANY SENSE IN THIS MOVIE. All we get between
action sequences is just talking. It doesn’t even
advance the plot, because there is none! None of which
to speak! My god, tshe two or three scenes where Shu
Qi asks Ekin Cheng for water in For Bad Boys Only represents an artistic breakthrough of epic proportions
compared to the fantastic interplay between Mark Dacascos
and Coolio (which actually seems to take up 30 MINUTES
of screen time). At the very end of the film we manage
to get some entertaining action sequences, but the time
it took to get there could have made Buddha go postal.
Okay, here are the good things:
the fighting is well choreographed, the stuntwork is
impressive, Norika Fujiwara is terrific eye candy, and
Alexander Wong and Ruby Lin make a believable couple.
Other than that, this movie is AWFUL. I lay all the
blame on one Stanley Tong, who proves beyond a shadow
of a doubt that Jackie Chan was responsible for all
those good Jackie Chan movies that Tong directed. I
used to lament that Jackie Chan and John Woo should
go back to HK where they could once again make really
fantastic cinema. Well, the reverse is true for Stanley
Tong. (Kozo 2001) |
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