Dedicated to the millions of Bruce Lee fans out there, this low-budget Goldig production goes per definition international on us, violating most copyright laws known to man. Not only Bruce Lee exists in the afterworld but Clint Eastwood (the screen persona from the Westerns), James Bond, Dracula (who can attack in broad daylight in this world), Zatoichi, Popeye (Eric Tsang!), the One-Armed Swordsman and on it goes. Anything is possible in this insane, often racy Bruce Leung vehicle and by featuring what it does, it automatically at least gives you something to smile about. Battling the various mentioned characters, skeleton- and mummified demons, Leung's duty as co-action director reveals his apparent kicking skills but little consistent "real" choreography. Director Law Kei concerns himself more with being out there, something that means we get displays of styles named after the little dragon's movies. But do not think of the choices as actual concerns.

Representing Conan Lee utilizing his final Hong Kong cinema stock before expiring altogether, The Big Boss co-star Lau Wing directs this thoroughly awful action-drama set mostly in Los Angeles. Minor enjoyment is definitely applicable to The Dragon Killer though. Lau plays Lung, a Chinese jumping a ship to America to find his wife Miu (Sharla Cheung). His best friend Liu (Simon Yam), a figure in the criminal underworld, has lost track of her though and Lung takes the hard road by committing crime in order to find out the truth about Miu. Chasing them is the not so badass cop played by Conan...

Lau Wing sticks with being harsh most of the film, shooting scenes where pregnant women are thrown off the immigrant boats, dogs being beaten to death and other quite gory bits are scattered throughout. There's action ambition here, especially so since Lau's character was an Olympic champion in shooting but the close cut acrobatics is not very impressive. But Lau scores points by exceeding the brutality for no real reason. Oh he argues that the increasing drama and social commentary warrants this but since he fails at creating actual cinema using that template, the end result is all very laughable. But the low level cinema does have its charm, in particular in the English dubbing throughout and Troma, IFD or even Filmark would've been proud of this product that shows anyone can be a director. A bit unfortunate that too. According to online credits, Rouge and Everlasting Regret director Stanley Kwan produced!

Few Hong Kong films can have this much of an identity crisis (and there are a lot of them) and still be this good. Yuen Woo-Ping's Dreadnaught somehow overcomes the risky, eclectic mixture of broad comedy, lion dancing, martial arts and slasher-thriller esthetics and the film ends up as one of Yuen's very best. Not that eclectic or eccentric are strange elements to Yuen's directing as the subsequent The Miracle Fighters and Shaolin Drunkard proved. Still, it's ranks pretty much way above any of those since it features fine elements such as the casting of arguably THE portrayer of Wong Fei Hung, Kwan Tak-Hing (reprising the role a second time for Yuen, first being in The Magnificent Butcher) and an extremely sympathetic turn by Yuen Biao, as it turns out an expert on laundry kung-fu! Fight action does exist, primarily during the intense end bout between our over actor of the day, Sunny Yuen as The Masked Killer and Yuen Biao but Yuen Woo-Ping primarily occupies himself with putting his fine touches on comedic fights and banter, all of which work greatly. Also starring Leung Kar Yan as Leung Foon (a role Yuen Biao would take on later in Once Upon A Time In China), Philip Ko, Lily Li, Tong Jing, Fan Mei Sheng, Yuen Cheung Yan, Fung Hark On, Brandy Yuen and Sai Gwa Pau (another mainstay of the long running Wong Fei Hung series).

One of the very best girls with guns flicks from frequent genre director Wong Jan-Yeung. Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima are since fetus status trained to be professional killers by their foster father (Eddy Ko). When a Thailand mission goes wrong, Moon's character is missing in action, with an amnesia to boot. She ends up in the hands of Lan (Sibelle Hu) and Rocky (Ben Lam, displaying some great kicking during his fight scenes), a sister/brother unit with enemies in the illegal boxing circuit.

No one will confuse Dreaming The Reality with class akin to John Woo's examinations of loyalty and brotherhood (or in the case of this film, sisterhood) but Wong's film, clocking in at an usually epic length of 100+ minutes, gets to us with its combination. It's a B-film compared to anything else but combining bearable emotions, character depth and a nice gory, exercise in mayhem is a success recipe for Dreaming The Reality. Despite little style apparent in the action, there are worthwhile standouts such as the airport shootout, subsequent chase scene and the bloody finale.

Despite Wong Jing producing this thriller, it's prolific writer James Yuen and director Jeffrey Chiang (A Gleam Of Hope) that are at the wheels of this balanced and engrossing thriller. Mark Cheng stars as a psychologically tormented cop with a tough nut of a rape/murder case on his hands. He aquatints a blind psychiatrist (Valerie Chow) who immerses her into the case but unexpected turns occur when his partner (Chan Kwok-Bong) aims his suspicions, due to jealousy, at a cop (Michael Wong)...

Favouring quite a heavy amount of style, using askew angles and initially very long takes of narrative action, director Chiang settles down soon with Yuen's script and delivers partly familiar cop procedure, character drama that parallels past trauma etc etc. The Dream Killer doesn't get buried in its clichés at all though and the screenplay is quite well-structured and intelligent. Featuring understated, possible romantic interludes between leads Cheng and Chow, more interesting tangents flash by such as victims not wishing to come forward for risk of losing face and the intimidation men have of clever women. Mark Cheng comes through with a somewhat rare, charismatic performance, despite the arc of the troubled cop while Valerie Chow may have solely the writing to back her up but is a fine presence nonetheless. Playing with notions of thunderstorms always going on during tense sequences and not truly surprising when revealing the killer identity, Chiang still doesn't cancel out his finely laid out work by the end. Heck, he even gets audience acceptance when structuring the character codas in an ambiguous way. Michael Wong's dubber has chosen to mix Chinese and English as well (!) and Alex Fong also appears.

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Shing (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) and friend Man (Nat Chan) earn money by racing cars at night and during the day they run their own garage. Being quite the engineer genius, Shing has created a revolutionary chip that improves his van's performance but first we focus on him being the loveable fool, being a fool in love, with Wu Chien-Lien's Kitty. Then when that doesn't pan out as beautifully as Shing wants to, his invention is discovered and off to the world of billion dollar business he goes. But he won't let go of his dream lover Kitty. Meeting her again and seeing her married seems to squander all future dreams but by meeting a master of supernatural power (Lau Shun), Shing gets the opportunity to affect fate...

Yes, this Sharla Cheung/Gordon Chan production is proud to be a Hong Kong movie with the "gift" of being all over the map but Bosco Lam directing (A Chinese Torture Chamber Story) doesn't equal opportunities wasted at all. In fact, Dream Lover possesses an eccentric, likeable and fairly touching aura that breaks cinematic rules gleefully to quite interesting effect. Interesting automatically being a verdict for any Hong Kong cinema vehicle doing what this does but Dream Lover has something. In fact, Bosco could've made the sweet romance with the otherwise suave Tony Leung and Wu Chien-Lien and gotten something über-pleasant out of it but the five man strong writing team goes for shift of gears where the film turns different to say the least and even dark with later an emotional payoff that is more nice than felt. But the musings of newly hatched love existing in a bubble, the puzzling nature of fate and stars that believe in the material makes Dream Lover better not just because it's different. Nat Chan deserves kudos for putting in a rare performance where he doesn't cover the entire film in annoyance. Perhaps it's the absence of Wong Jing in the directing chair. Also with Law Kar-Ying and Jack Kao.

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Former boxing champion Chan Kuen (Michael Chan) possesses self-pity and an impotence problem so he ruthlessly rapes and kills all across Hong Kong. Logical. He chooses to prolong the process with Ping (Michelle Lai - The Butterfly Murders) though. After Chan kills off a veteran cop (Lau Kong), it's up to his younger partner (Wong Yue) to stop the murder mayhem...

An unusual role for Chan, dealing with a character not triad related at all, despite his larger than life force, the chills and efficiency never makes it way into Dressed Off For Life. Wong Yue threatens to derail the film with farce but ends up playing it straight mostly. Screwball comedy ventures that instead takes place in the scenes with the police chief so you'll definitely know this is a Hong Kong movie despite. Goblin's score for Dawn Of The Dead turns up on the soundtrack.

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