This is fairly standard action fare for early 1990's Hong Kong films. Particularly for Danny Lee vehicles. Lee is perhaps most famous for his role as the cop in the classic John Woo film The Killer, but his career went back to the Shaw Brothers where he appeared in kung-fu films (as did every one) but also what have become cult films (Oily Maniac, Bruce Lee and I, The Mighty Peking Man, The Super Inframan). He hit his stride though with contemporary gun and butter policiers in which he was almost always the police. And his solid noble tenacious cops became part of the Hong Kong film landscape. In fact, Lee was a bit of a police groupie in real life hanging out with cops, getting awards from them for his positive portrayals and riding with cops on patrol. But that all added to his reputation as the go-to cop actor.

In Red Shield Lee is in charge of a task force after a vicious gang of smugglers. The gang consists of some good bad guys if that makes sense - actors who generally take those roles - Ben Lam as the head and his two main henchmen Jackson Lau and the wonderful Yuen Wah who trained in childhood with Sammo, Yuen Biao and Jackie and appeared in many of their films - again almost always as a villain - he just had that sort of face. But this is basically a shoot-em-up film and Yuen Wah is kind of wasted because his real skills were in his astonishing acrobatics.


Lee and his group think they have the gang trapped on the shore but they escape by boat into the Mainland - which as always back then comes off as a haven for criminals and idiot cops. But the gang comes back to Hong Kong for a face-off with a rival triad head (yay Shing Fu-on or as he was nicknamed "Silly Big Head"). During their shoot out, another cop happens by and kills one of Lam's men. This is Leung Kar-yan. Danny and Leung team up to go after the gang. All good. Lots of gunfire. Lots of dead bodies. We like that.


But the film goes badly askew by introducing the wives of these two cops (the very well-known Teresa Mo and the lesser known but very cute Yip San). Teresa is having a baby but Danny has no time for her and Leung suspects that his wife is cheating on him and follows her around. It is corny and annoying and takes up a good chunk of the film and completely breaks the tension and rhythm of the film. In fact such a chunk that you know at some point the gang will threaten them and sure enough.

There are better Danny Lee films out there - The Untold Story, Organized Crime & Triad Bureau, Shoot to Kill, Love to Kill, Run and Kill etc. etc. and of course The Killer. My rule for cop films is keep out the women unless they are cops or killers. Or blind singers.

Btw - not that I recognized him but a very young Nick Cheung who is a pretty big star today is one of the junior cops.