The Dragon Fighter
Director: Tony Lou Chun-ku
Year: 1990
Rating: 7.0
Aka - Hard to Die
Ah. This felt good.
Like a warm back rub with a chaser. One of those medium budget all hands
on deck action Hong Kong films of the 1990s that make me realize how much
I miss them. I think I saw this in vhs format many many years ago under the
title Hard to Die. Lots of basically mindless absurd action with a wonderful
cast. Of the 90 minutes running time it felt like at least 70 of it was devoted
to action of some kind. The action is terrific and streams out of every pore
like after eating a spicy curry. You want gunplay? Come and get it. Some
kung-fu? Of course. Even a little ninja action? Sure. It has a number
of parallel stories that don't seem to be connected - until they are. All
of them have a nice share of action. Everybody gets in their kicks, shots
and blows. The women, the men and even the one kid before he is thrown under
a moving van.
Eddie Ko is giving himself
a birthday party and why not. He has built up one of the bigger illegal drug
business's in Hong Kong and is living good. He is thinking about retiring
soon and leaving the running to his godson, Francis Ng. To most of us Ng
might seem a little unstable. At a meeting, whenever someone mentions a capital,
another fellow has to say the country. Istanbul. Turkey. Katmandu. Nepal.
This annoys Ng and so he smashes the guy's head on the table till he is dead.
End of the geography lesson. "I hate lousy guys" he explains to the satisfaction
of the others.
At this party Mark Houghton
(was in a number of HK action films and has a great background story if you
Google him) shows up to do a backroom drug deal. In the waitress staff you
may notice Michiko Nishiwaki. You know she is not there to serve appetizers.
And then Sibelle Hu comes uninvited in butch short hair and cargo pants.
She is there to arrest Houghton and a big brouhaha breaks out with her fighting
him and Michiko unleashing a fuselage of shots trying to kill Eddie Ko. When
Sibelle stops a motorcyclist to chase Houghton the driver skids and crashes
- showing zero sympathy she just grabs him off the motorcycle and tosses
him like a rag doll. Kind of a female Dirty Harry. Yup, just your average
birthday party in Hong Kong.
Other folks show up
with their own storyline. Alex Fong looking very spiffy and with his
usual two-day facial hair growth turns out to be a paid cool as ice assassin.
At one point when he is loading up, he is asked if he thinks he is "Master
Mark", a reference to Chow Yun Fat. Carrie Ng returns from America and is
engaged to Francis. She turns out to be a ninja of sorts with a deadly blow
dart expertise. Then way over on the side is Alex Man, a low life street
guy who another gang keeps chasing through the streets. Man is at his most
irritating here. Overacting was not a word in his vocabulary.
Action breaks out like
discount orders at a fast food restaurant. Fun action film where the
filmmakers seemed to say to one another - how about one more action scene
- again and again. There is some excellent gymnastics by the stunt people.
At one point Carrie Ng’s character cartwheels to an eight foot wall and then
somersaults over it. Nice going Carrie! Michiko has a lot of excellent martial
arts action scenes - and with machine gun, a bazooka and of course
her hands and legs. She is fab as always. And the finale expends more
ammunition than a small war. And more dead. Look for the car stunt when it
crashes through the second floor of three or maybe it was four buildings.
Totally ridiculous. But I love these crazy action films.
The director Tony Lou
Chun-ku knows how to put together a decent action film for a not huge budget
- he did some good Guns with Girls films after his days at Shaw Brothers
- Killer Angels, Angel Terminators 2 , Devil Hunters, Dreaming the Reality,
Mission of Justice and that classic fantasy film, The Holy Virgin vs The
Evil Dead. Here he spreads the action out among both the men and women but
the females sure get their fair share.
