Goofy sci-fi/gang comedy, featuring slapstick, killer robots (including sexy killer robots, naturally,) and utterly-‘80s effects. Not my personal cup of tea, but I’m well aware that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed several of Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s low-budget wuxia movies and action comedies that are of similarly-flexible quality, so a lot of it also comes down to personal preference. Also, we now have three months to go until Shang-Chi comes out!
The latest threat to Hong Kong streets is the Hero Gang, which terrorizes the city with its deadly robots. When one robot, designed to look like the gang boss’s right-hand woman Maria, gets damaged, it winds up in the hands of an odd-couple pair of bumbling heroes, who wreak a lot of accidental havoc while trying to investigate the gang.
Fair warning: I watched this movie a few months ago, before I switched gears into my annual Oscar-movie phase, and I’m only just getting the review written now. It didn’t make a huge impression on me, so I can’t speak as well as I might like to on the specifics. But like I said, it’s goofy stuff, full of sexy-malfunctioning-robot hijinks and fast-paced action. The effects are super-cheesy, but it’s of the sort that can be amusing in the right context if you’re in the mood for this kind of movie (goodness knows I’ve gotten a kick out of various old-school Doctor Who aliens that were clearly made of cardboard and tin foil.)
The main characters, Curly (a outside-the-box thinker who works with the police department in a scientific capacity) and Whiskey (a Hero Gang member who’s just left the gang,) have some fun banter and physical comedy together. When you throw in the Maria robot, it gets plenty broad, but all three actors – Johnny Sham Hark Tsui, and Sally Yeh – deliver fun performances.
Leung is quite a bit of fun as well. He plays T.Q. Zhuang, a photojournalist who’s nothing if not tenacious in his quest to cover the Hero Gang. Like our central heroes, Zhuang is more than a little bumbling, but he’s remarkably tenacious, taking all sorts of ludicrous risks in the hope of getting the perfect shot. For much of the film, he’s the tagalong who’s always just a bit too far behind the capture the action, but in the final act, he’s incorporated into the main cast a little more and gets some fun stuff to do beyond just doggedly chasing a story he can’t never quite catch up to.
This is a cute performance. As with the other actors, Leung plays Zhuang fairly broad but in an enjoyable way. There’s something fun about characters with more determination than sense, and that description fits Zhuang well. He’s not incompetent or anything, far from it, but he’s just hapless enough that he keeps having to scramble for much of the film.
Recommend?
In General – Not necessarily. If you like schlocky sci-fi/gang romps, you’ll probably have fun, but it’s not a must.
Tony Leung Chiu-wai – A soft maybe. While this isn’t a revelatory performance or anything, it’s fun, and Zhuang is a type we don’t often see from Leung.
Warnings
Violence, suggestiveness, drinking/smoking, and language.
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