His Way, Her Way, Their
Ways
With the handover of HK to China looming in the
near future, there were a number of films produced in the early to mid-nineties
that poked fun at the clash of the two different cultures in a style reminiscent
of the old Hollywood classic Ninotchka. It usually revolves around a rigid
communist official or cop being initially repulsed by the decadent capitalistic
ways of HK but then slowly being seduced by them. The most popular
films with this theme were the Her Fatal Ways series starring Carol DoDo
Cheng.
This film is clearly trying to follow in those
footsteps – but not with nearly the same success. It is fairly amusing
at times – but still has a very slapped together look to it. In it three
Mainland cops -Wu Ma and two assistants – come to HK to look for some crooks
who are illegally procuring women for brothels from the Mainland. The two
HK cops who are assigned to work with them are Waise Lee and Yukari Oshima.
Later a Taiwanese cop also joins them and the friction between the three
groups is evident – but in the end of course all three Chinas must work
together to capture the bad guys!
Most of the film focuses on the three cops from
China and their reaction to HK and some of it is amusing. One of my favorite
scenes is when poor Yukari gets stuck with having to put them up in her
apartment – and Wu Ma watches in amazement as she brushes her teeth with
an electric toothbrush. He tries to follow suit – but unfortunately picks
up her vibrator by mistake and brushes his teeth with that! Yukari looks
on in horror.
With Yukari – you can expect some action of course
– but the few action scenes here are done as much for laughs as anything
else. Most of the film is very silly – even the bad guys at one point break
into a song and dance routine.
One very odd thing about the version I had of
this film – and as a warning to those with young children – was that for
some reason a number of soft porn scenes were inserted throughout the film!
These were clearly from another source and the inclusion of them is bewildering.
