City Cops
Director: Lau Kar-wing
Year: 1989
Rating: 5.5
City Cops is representative
to a large degree of the mid-budget action Hong Kong films of the 1980's
with a script that looks to have been found in a garbage can after a cocaine
party, some tasteless comedy, a few solid action stars and a couple terrific
knock down sequences that look very painful for the participants. I am fairly
surprised I never saw this previously - and this is from a horribly dubbed
version on YouTube - especially considering that a few of the action stars
that I like are in this. It is directed by Lau Kar-wing (brother of Lau Kar-
leung) who was the action choreographer of tons of films - and acted in many
of those - and in truth isn't that great a director but he knows how to stage
a fight. These are just brutally acrobatic with some flips and hits (shown
in slow-mo) that would leave your mouth wide open if you hadn't seen a bunch
of these sorts of action films previously.
This is a little unusual in that it has
a bunch of foreign action stars in it. The Gweilo contingent consists of
Cynthia Rothrock, Mark Houghton, Ken Goodman and John Ladalski and we also
get Japanese action star Michiko Nishiwaki. You can spot Goodman and Ladalski
playing thugs in a few other Hong Kong action films such as She Shoots Straight,
Outlaw Brothers. Armour of God, City War, Burning Ambition and others - usually
getting killed at some point or if not killed getting the crap beaten out
of them.
Houghton also almost always played a hired
villain but he had a nice career in Hong Kong. He was in nearly 50 films
and was involved in some rugged hard hitting action scenes - here he is like
the Timex watch - he gets a licking but keeps on ticking. This can be verified
by the fact that he has had both hips replaced, a knee replaced and a plate
in his ankle. He looks huge on the screen but is actually only 5'8''. He
came over from England to study martial arts and at one point began training
under Lau Kar-leung and got into films through him.
Rothrock and Nishiwaki are of course two
of the biggest stars in the Girls with Guns genre - Rothrock from 1985 to
1989 and Nishiwaki from 1985 to 1993. Nishiwaki never became as big in the
genre as her compatriot Yukari Oshima but she had a big fan base at the time
partly due to her stunning looks, body building physique and strength. Nishiwaki
and Rothrock have a very nice fight at the end in which they both take a
pounding.
There is an idiot plot that ties these
action scenes together - a Chinese informer escapes from the states to Hong
Kong and the FBI send agent Rothrock to bring him back. The bad guys have
other ideas. Two Hong Kong cops are assigned to work with her. This is the
idiot part - two dimwitted cops played by Miu Kiu-Wai and Shing Fui-on with
a moustache - get way too much screen time. Michiko doesn't appear till the
one hour mark which was an hour too late. At one point the informer disguises
himself as a woman and acts like a gay queen - leading to a parcel of awful
homophobic and AIDS related jokes that were not that unusual back then in
HK films.
Maybe back in 1989 this was sort of funny
but now it is cringeworthy - but perhaps even more cringeworthy is the romance
that springs up between Rothrock and Shing Fui-on. A weirder more unlikely
couple there never was and when she is rubbing him down to sooth his injuries
and they are both getting aroused, you want to head to the exit! But the
fights keep you there - especially the last one that goes on for about 20
minutes of thrashing and shooting loads of minions who kindly all dress in
white to be easily identified and to make the bloody squibs more visible.
Also, I just want to mention is that Suki Kwan is in this as the sister of
the informer and romantic target of Miu Kiu-wai - she became a favorite of
mine years later for her roles in films in the late 1990s and early 2000s
- but it is great seeing her so young and cute and busty (which was behind
a lot of her appeal).
