Rating: *
Review Date: 5/4/19
Cast: Bruce Mang, Cynthia Khan, Yukari Oshima, Billy Chow,
Gordon Liu (Liu Chia Hui), Waise Lee
In the wake of their father's death, a brother and sister visit their uncle with the hope of getting some financial support, or at least some employment. Their uncle ends up being a real tightwad who has an unhealthy interest in big-busted women, and they end up working at his restaurant with a kung fu chef played by Gordon Liu. Unfortunately, the brother has a knack for getting into trouble and one of the local crime bosses wants him dead. Meanwhile, police officer Cynthia Khan and Interpol agent Yukari Oshima are trying to bust a drug trafficking ring run by Billy Chow. A big fight goes down at Chow's birthday party involving the police and a rival gang, and the film ends abruptly with him being burned alive.
While it's an embarrassingly awful film, it's still a step up from Cynthia Khan's worst efforts. Both she and Yukari Oshima have little more than extended cameos and only appear in a handful of scenes. I was actually surprised and pleased by their initial fight scene, but it's over far too quickly and then they disappear for the majority of the film. Ms. Khan is barely present in the final fight against Chow, and the film teases that she wouldn't be in it at all as she was about to be transferred to Scotland. Yukari Oshima has about twice as much fight time as Cynthia Khan, but that still amounts to very little. The vast majority of the action goes to the main character, played by Bruce Mang. He's a good fighter and stunt man, but his look changes so frequently that I had a hard time convincing myself it wasn't multiple actors. Waise Lee literally has four shots as a concerned police chief with a furrowed brow, and Gordon Liu is downright embarrassing as the goofy and eccentric chef. Nearly every scene of his made me bristle, and the only action scene he has is a lackluster fight at the very end against Billy Chow.
The production values are actually pretty good for a low budget film, but the writing is awful, the humor is painfully bad, and the continuity and editing are terrible. The narrative is so disjointed that it's difficult to follow, and numerous gags and plot points never follow through. As is typical for the genre, it borrows music from several other films. The most depressing aspect of the film is just seeing so many veteran actors being reduced to fighting for scrappy parts.