Godfather's Daughter Mafia
Blues
Director: Fung Hak-on
Year: 1991
Rating: 6/10
Ah, the good old
days when Hong Kong action films were guilty of insanity; when the concept
of playing it safe was as foreign a concept as cold breakfast cereal with
radishes; when actors and stuntmen literally risked their lives for a great
film moment and a small paycheck. It isn't like that anymore and that is
probably a good thing, but films like this are reminders of how it used to
be when you watched a film and just said "holy shit did they really do that".
And this isn't a particularly famous film; in many ways not really a good
film - medium budget at best that ran in theaters for a week (according to
HKMDB) and brought in about USA $200,000. Films like this were constantly
being cranked out in the late 1980's and early 90's.
Considering that this film has Yukari Oshima,
Dick Wei, Mark Cheng, Ken Lo, Fung Hak-on (who also directs), Alex Man and
Benny Lai in it, you would expect there to be a lot more action than there
is, but what action it has and in particular the stunts are pretty darn good.
In fact, for much of its running time it is your basic triad drama that plays
out between rivals - there isn't really a cop in the entire film - with a
few short fights interspersed - until the final 20 minutes where they blow
their budget on a blast of a finale.
Two friends (Mark Cheng and Benny Lai)
have a run in with a local gang when Lai jokingly criticizes a singer at
a nightclub for thinking she is Anita Mui. This sets off a set of circumstances
in which they end up working for Master Hwa (Alex Man) who runs some nightclubs
and restaurants along with his righthand man Dick Wei. Amazingly, Alex Man
plays his character as a really good calm thoughtful Boss - as opposed to
his often portrayal of psychotic maniacs doing that crazy Hong Kong bad guy
laugh. He has a cute daughter who has just returned from studying martial
arts in Japan - Yukari Oshima of course - who is quite adorable in this film
as she hangs around Cheng like a puppy dog trying to pick up martial arts
tips. They make a sweet kung fu couple.
But things start going very badly when
Man's long time Japanese partner dies and his nasty son Ken Lo comes to power
and starts trying to take over the business. Then things slowly begin to
rev up with a few amazing stunts - a guy jumps over a moving car headed at
him, a motorcycle crashes into the back of a car and sends the rider hurtling
over the car like a rocket, a car is used as a battering ram - on men - one
fellow is thrown 20 feet in the air. Yukari is tossed twice into a glass
table and has one terrific fight in a gym against a group of men and does
some astonishing gymnastics on the equipment. Later on Yukari and Cheng go
up against Ken Lo and Fung Hak-on. All good stuff. And I think everyone lived.
But then who knows. There are a few very severe edits in the film between
scenes that makes me presume that they needed to make cuts in order to bring
the running time down to the typical 90-minutes. But one of the cut scenes
appears to have possibly been an action scene in which Cheng and Lai go off
early in the film for a face off in a Mahjong parlor and then the next thing
we see is the two of them tied up to chairs with their faces beaten up. But
no fight. Maybe we will get it in the Director Cut!
By the way, the actor who has the crooked
mouth is Fung Fung who directed loads of films in the 1950's through the
1960's and is the father of Fung Hak-on and actress Petrina Fung.