Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

I’m used to how Hong Kong’s distinct historical and political subtext worms its way into its movies, even seemingly lightweight ones. Something like Police Story provides an obvious example, moving from a cheerful action comedy (full of breathtaking, death-defying action sequences) to something angrier, where the hero has been left to fend for himself by the institutions he once served but has lost faith in (but still with breathtaking, death-defying action sequences). But even then, that movie has its share of levity throughout, and ends on a note that I certainly wouldn’t call bleak. Perhaps it’s on me for not looking too much into this movie beforehand, but I was struck by how bleak this is. Within the first few minutes, an entire family is killed in order to sink the case against a pair of mobsters. Dismayed, the prosecutor decides to take the law into his own hands. But while in Police Story, the hero taking the law into his own hands got results and saved the day, the same thing here maybe does take down the criminal mastermind, but gets a lot of other people killed along the way.

I watched the Hong Kong cut and one of the alternate endings (my copy, freshly arrived in the mail from 88 Films, includes a few other cuts that I understand have different endings). Both of them end with the hero dead. The Hong Kong cut maybe leaves a bit of room for ambiguity, with the hero’s body floating in the water after he dives out of a plane right as it crashes, but the alternate ending ends with a grim punchline, with a group of partiers on a nearby boat choosing to ignore the corpse so that it doesn’t ruin their fun. I think I prefer the former, in part because I wanted to believe that the hero survived, but also because it ends things right at the peak of a crescendo. The latter drives the themes home, but allows things to come back down. Or to use punctuation, it’s an exclamation mark versus a period or ellipses. I guess I’m like Elaine Benes in that I’d opt for the former.

The hero is played by Yuen Biao, who I’d previously known mostly as a supporting player in the movies of his better known friends and co-stars Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. (The three of them make up my most watched actors this year, according to my Letterboxd stats.) In those other movies, he usually had an offbeat, likable presence, bouncing off Jackie and Sammo to hit a different set of comedic notes. (My favourite is probably his role in Dragons Forever, where he navigates his political and philosophical confusion and tension between capitalism and communism through his treatment of his pets.) Disappointment might be the wrong word, but I was definitely caught a little off guard by how seriously he plays things here. He’s effective in the role, and it’s the right tone for the surrounding film, but I did miss the quirkiness of his other roles. To the extent that there is levity here, it’s provided by the dynamic between a slobbish cop played by director Corey Yuen and his doting father played by Wu Ma, but like I alluded to earlier, nobody here gets a happy ending.

But while this is certainly a grim movie, it’s far from a joyless one, in that it’s directed with a constant forward momentum and packed full of top notch action sequences. I don’t know what I can say about the action here that would meaningfully differ from anything I’ve said about other classic Hong Kong action movies. I need to get better at discussing technical matters; the two touches that stood out to me were the uses of undercranking and body doubles, which are less offensive here than usual because of how relentlessly the action hurtles ahead. But one is simultaneously in awe and likely wincing as they see one crackling, fast paced, painful-looking action scene after another, whether it’s Biao taking down a group of assassins (which include a Mick Jagger lookalike and a gunman with an accordion), trying to avoid getting flattened in a cramped garage while the villains try to play bumper cars, Cynthia Rothrock and Karen Shepard going (wo)mano a (wo)mano (this apparently was notable for casting non-Chinese actresses in a Hong Kong movie in a non-gimmicky way), or Biao chasing after a plane on foot in the breathtaking (and death-defying) finale.

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If you picked up the 88 Films box set of the Tiger Cage trilogy, saw the picture of Donnie Yen holding the sword on the cover and assumed that this first movie delivered on that front, I must regretfully report that it does not. If you saw the picture and assumed that he was at least the lead, I must regretfully report that he is not. If you saw the cover and at the very least hoped that he got to do cool shit, I must...what’s the opposite of regretfully? I must cheerfully report that he does indeed get to do lots of cool shit, starting from his introduction, jumping in through a window, shattering the glass with his body, charging in guns blazing into a drug bust turned firefight. And that’s not all. He gets to do plenty of cool shit throughout the movie, including a two-on-one fight where he practically levitates as he bounces his kicks off his opponents. And there’s more, but that would be getting into spoiler territory. What’s important is that the movie delivers on cool shit.

This is a police corruption actioner, where the betrayals sting all the more because the movie establishes the rapport between the characters at the beginning. After that initial drug bust, where a lot of paunchy mustachioed bad guys get shot to pieces but one escapes, we have the characters celebrating their success as well as the impending wedding of two members of the unit. This scene has a lot of “one day before retirement and here’s a picture of my kids and the boat I’m gonna be spending my time on” energy, so it’s no surprise that the guy who escaped guns down the fiance with an especially threatening looking shotgun. (We first see the guy prep and pose with the weapon framed against red lighting, like a weapon forged in the fires of hell.) As the other cops vow to avenge his death, we get what can only be described as a police brutality montage (police brutality is common in Hong Kong action movies, but this is the first time I’ve seen it montaged through). And then more paunchy mustachioed bad guys, and not so paunchy, not so mustachioed bad guys, and the revelation that members of the police force might in fact be selling drugs to some eeeeeeeeeevvvvviiiiiiiiilllllll foreigners (literally three people hanging around the docks, one of whom wears a nice hat). This thing might go straight to the top. Something something handover anxiety, something something distrust in institutions, I’ll leave the political analysis to somebody smarter than myself. (If there’s one thing I’ll quibble about, it’s that an attempted rape scene feels a bit of a miscalculation, bit too gleefully evil for a character who should be more businesslike. But like the time in high school basketball when a player covering me got a little too hands on, the attempt is squashed with a knee to the balls, so things work out in the end.)

What I can analyze is how much the movie kicks ass. My experience with Yuen Woo-Ping’s work as a director and fight choreographer has been through comedic star vehicles like Drunken Master and The Magnificent Butcher, appreciative Hollywood efforts like the Matrix and Kill Bill movies, and of course Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And I’ll take a moment to give a shout out to Game of Death II, arguably the best Bruceploitation movie, largely thanks to the formidable fight scenes. Across those movies there’s a good amount of range in the exact qualities of the choreography in each of those, but the intricacy and grace I’d associated with his work is downplayed here in favour of an atmosphere of brutality. This is heavy on gunplay, but it’s meted out in relentless bursts, lacking the balletic qualities of John Woo’s work. Every squib has a thunderous impact, every bone crunch deeply felt, the brain matter exploding out of a character’s head a manifestation of the raw emotion of the scene. Excess is the name of the game, right down to the exclamatory final moments.

Great trilogy! Watch the other three ASAP!

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

That’s the plan.

Which trilogy are you referring to?


I think the only films is his I am familiar with is Snake in the Eagles Shadow and Tai Chi Master.

Tiger Cage

The first Tiger Cage was a corrosive cops versus crooks actioner with amazing action scenes. Tiger Cage II is a kinder, gentler, more lighthearted actioner... but also with amazing action scenes. In the first movie, whatever trust we could place in authority or even in our friends proved to be fleeting. Here, if you think you’re having trouble trusting authority on this side of the law, well, they have the same problem on the other side. And if some of the good guys might not be so good, well, some of the bad guys might not be so bad. The boisterous violence of the first movie has been toned down, with the violence less graphic this time around, or at least lingered on less blatantly, but the pace has not let up. Here, we start at a law firm doing some kind of crooked criminal deal involving drug money from eeeeeeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllllll foreigners, where Donnie Yen (returning from the first film but as a different character) gets mistakenly accused of murder when the deal goes south and a bunch of people end up dead. He’s soon paired up with Rosamund Kwan, whom he rescues from the carnage, finds himself accused by, and then gets paired up with as both flee from the bad guys and try to prove their innocence.

Yen’s and Kwan’s scenes together are played almost like a romantic comedy, like a Hong Kong action movie version of It Happened One Night, stringing contrived set piece after contrived set piece together at a breakneck pace. The result feels almost free associative, stringing together the bare minimum of cop and crook tropes as it bounces from one scene to the next almost reflexively. True, if the characters bothered to slow down, they could easily resolve any confusion. One gets the sense that this is like The Wrong Guy, where the police have good reason to believe they’re innocent, especially after getting in a shootout with a black-clad motorcyclist killer after witnessing said killer do the deeds Yen and Kwan think they’re accused of. But it’s hard to complain about any idiocy in the plotting when we get scenes like Yen peeing his pants while handcuffed to Kwan and Yen threatening to torture somebody with Perrier water. If you subscribe to the theory that actors essentially play the same character in all their movies, then that’s technically Ip Man peeing his pants in that scene.

I probably don’t need to tell you that Yen is extremely charismatic and a remarkable physical performer, but will note that at one point we see him kick down three bad guys while still in midair. (I don’t know if I’d describe the movie as stylish, but the action scenes are directed with undeniable verve, and images like Yen charging at the camera and the atmospheric scene in the darkened tunnel have a palpable visual impact.) I will also note that after seeing Kwan in Prince Charming, where she’s unfortunately outmatched by Cherie Chung and Maggie Cheung, and Armour of God, where she has unfortunately little to do, I think this movie makes a good case for her particular charms. We also get Cynthia Khan, who has her name misspelled in the credits and is maybe underused, but does get to face off with the motorcyclist killer. I am less familiar with her than some of the other girls with guns stars, but perhaps I will make time to explore her body of work. Also, as I mentioned earlier, there are some eeeeeeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllllll foreigners, although instead of the lady with the nice hat from the first one, we get a guy with a ponytail. Which sounds like a downgrade, until I reveal that the ponytail guy has a sword, which we uses to face off against Yen in an all-timer action sequence. Which would be the peak of most movies, but this one finds time to deliver a few more amazing fight scenes right after, because one climax is for pussies.

Alas, the excellence of the first two entries is not maintained by Tiger Cage III, but for a movie that’s not very good, it’s surprisingly good. That’s a contradiction, you say? Well, first of all, **** you, I’m trying to coin a phrase. Second, what I mean to say is that while there are pretty blatant narrative weaknesses that keep this from being remotely as enjoyable as the first two, it still delivers pretty ably on the kind of pleasures we see these movies for. This time, the sense of corruption has become almost background noise, as we go from a tale of corporate wrongdoing and insider trading to a Phantom of the Opera riff about sexual misconduct and greed, all conveyed with as little feeling as possible. A large part of the problem is the cast, as this lacks anyone with the star power or charisma as the leads in the first two movies. Instead, we get such memorable faces as ascot dude, long hair dude (the specific kind of non-grunge long hair dude they stopped making after the mid ‘90s), and a hero whose facial scars resemble the pizzaface makeup of the zombies in Hell of the Living Dead. Which is to say, I did not find the proceedings terribly worthwhile to invest in, but it’s hard to hold that against the movie too strongly when we have such action delights as a fight with fiery wooden planks and a speedboat / jet ski chase with rocket launchers.

Always knew you were a pervert!

Of work. Of work!

The third one is cheesier and has that romance/foxy female plot IIRC. I like it almost as much as the first two films. Mostly because I'm all in when it comes to yarn like that.

I think I need a charismatic presence to hang on to for goofy stuff like this to go down easily. The downgrade from Simon Yam, Jacky Cheung and Donnie Yen to the two lame-os in part 3 was too much to bear.

I’d still give it 3/5 though, because the action scenes are that good.

Well, since August 6th, 2021, at least.

Sure, we can talk about all the movies I watched and reviewed for perverted reasons, but what about all the movies I watched for non-perverted reasons? All five of them. What about those?

*huffs indignantly*

Rockatansky? More like Pervatansky!

Thank you for not going with Cockatansky.

I’d caught a few minutes of this years ago, back when it was seemingly on Canadian cable constantly, and this is the only thing I remembered. The hero, a cop who is searching for a serial killer who kills his victims with the mysterious and deadly style known as Tiger, waltzes into a martial arts tournament and asks the first person he knows if the fight they’re watching is in Tiger style, which the other person immediately tries to shush him for. Having seen the film proper now, I must regretfully report that the scene is less funny than I remembered. One, it isn’t the first guy the hero talks to (he greets a friend who is preparing for a match). Two, Tiger isn’t quite as rare as I’d assumed, as the hero professes some experience in the style. Sadly, reality did not live up to my memories.

The hero is played by Jalal Merhi, who I understand was a jeweler who went into the movie business and became a bit of a mogul in the Canadian low budget action scene. He has a presence that can be best described as Canadian Seagal, in that he has a ponytail but is otherwise substantially more milquetoast, lacking the streetwise swagger of Seagal at his onscreen best and the pungency of Seagal at his offscreen worst. His accent also sounds a lot like Jean-Claude Van Damme’s, so you get a multitude of action hero flavours. All I can say is that his is the only character I’ve ever seen in a movie who has the same first name as me and has it pronounced (by others at least) the same way as me. And in the very last scene, he wears a Hawaiian shirt, so I’m counting this as onscreen representation. (For the record, I neither have a ponytail nor do I know any martial arts.)

As an action star, he gets an A for effort. But he’s joined by Cynthia Rothrock, who is very good at kicking people, and Bolo Yeung, who is in glowering, hulking mode a la Bloodsport, so it evens out. Having watched three Yuen Woo-Ping movies and a much better Rothrock vehicle within the last few days, it would be hard for me to call this a great action movie, but the fights are directed with a bit more style than I expected, savouring the North American martial arts movie vibe you would expect from this kind of thing. There’s also a couple of other cops who try to arrest the hero the moment they get reassigned the case, and a self-promoting martial artist named Bill Pickells played by somebody named Bill Pickels, who wears a Thriller-style jacket in his cheesy ad, and expresses some insecurity about tall houseplants. (One wonders if he had the extra “l” added to his name to distance himself from the obnoxious character he plays.) This is also very obviously shot in Toronto, meaning you get to hang out at Spadina and Dundas in Toronto’s Chinatown. And there’s a dojo with cute tigers on the wall that were supposed to have been painted by Yeung’s character. See, plenty to enjoy here.