When the Princess of Mongrovia (Mandy Moore) is kidnapped by ninjas, Jack Sargeant (Bruce Baron, who would go on to appearing in outings such as Ninja Champion) is sent to Hong Kong to join up the better of the law enforcing the island has: The Dragon Force. Led by Dai Lung (Bruce Li), Jack has to go through a series of tests before he can join the sect-like force. Michael Mak debuts with this internationally flavoured, at times very colourful B-movie extravaganza that sees us trying to endure the shenanigans of the worst action hero ever on screen... yes, Mr. Baron. Fancying himself being a James Bond-character and even meeting up with a Chinese Q called Ah Chu ("fine" humour and the "actual" James Bond is even referenced), thank god the filmmakers have an ace up their sleeve in the form of Bruce Li. Director Mak therefore neatly shifts gear from deadly boredom to making sure to imprint several fun sequences in our memories. Multiple bouts with colourful ninjas, ninja tricks, Bolo-esque fighters and Jack being cured of throwing star-poison by having a snake suck the poison out of him, Dragon Force becomes a fast rollercoaster of cheese eventually. Olivia Cheng also appears.

It doesn't take long sometimes to judge a film, rightly or not. Dragon Force Operation being a good example. Dressing itself up to be yet another one I call outside kung-fu where everyone has the same costume, are in outdoor locations all the time and little will likely feel distinctive, director Tyrone Hsu (The Red Phoenix) does delivers a hard hitting time with this basher as he gives us the framework of oppressed Chinese villagers by the ruling Japanese. At first Hsu takes the movie to playful but not broad places, creating fighting scenes with clumsy henchmen and Nancy Yen beating up her opponents in quite the sneaky way. The jump then to full on brutality and what defines Dragon Force Operation as a basher makes very much sense and is watchable for its ferocity rather than technique. Heck, even amidst the non-stop action Hsu finds time to slip in a banana peel joke that thoroughly works! Also known as The Revenge Dragon and The God Father Of Hong Kong.

One of the other loose Hong Kong adaptations of Kazuo Koike's Japanese manga Crying Freeman (Phillip Ko's Killer's Romance, shot in England, echoed it extremely loosely), Clarence Fok's odd charm as a visual thinker at breakneck speed reveals odd charms about his work on The Dragon From Russia (location work IN Russia included) but it doesn't make it any significantly better than any of his other wild, incoherent works. Starring a horribly miscast Sam Hui (his boyish charms combined with being a stone faced action hero is an embarrassing combo), his stunt double and Maggie Cheung as windowdressing, Fok rarely takes the time to breathe at all, moving to say the least with ludicrous speed through his scenes and ignoring pesky details such as logic. Obviously hard to feel anything and fans of the manga will feel that the connection matters very little. However Yuen Tak's action choreography goes well in hand with Fok's eye for the exaggerated, featuring several high flying excursions into creativity. Co-starring Nina Li, Loletta Lee, Dean Shek, Carrie Ng, Lau Shun and King Hu regular Pai Ying. Yuen Tak and Yuen Wah both play The Master Of Death while the former also has his own supporting role!

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!

Although promoting the female acting- and fighting talent heavily in the trailer (only one of which makes any impact: Ina Ryoko as Sexy, Bad Girl according to the trailer) and featuring some rather unwarranted dips into exploitation (female mud wrestling with breasts exposed and a bath house scene), John Woo's eternal vision that he'll be remembered for across heroic bloodshed and martial arts films is actually polished to a noticeable degree here compared to his debut The Young Dragons. Carter Wong comes to Korea to learn Taekwondo. His master becomes Pai (Lee Tai-Yip) and Wong's goal of squaring off against Hapkido master Sheng (real life Hapkido instructor Ji Han-Jae) is accomplished. Having made friends with the likes of Nankung (James Tien) in the opposite school and falling in love with Sheng's daughter complicates matters about friendship and brotherhood but they have to unite as rival schools and associations are trying to become number one by murderous means...

The harsh Korean landscape is refreshing and after a clunky start with said nudity, Woo's script starts coming to life working with action director Chan Chuen who delivers several excellent, gritty training fight sessions and bloody fights. The furious pace and head on arm- and leg combat is highly memorable and standing out the most amongst the accomplished cast are James Tien and the badass and cool Lee Tai-Yip. Woo's pet themes and use of slow motion may be crude but ultimately sincere and well on their way to being refined. The goofier side to The Dragon Tamers as demonstrated in said trailer isn't the most memorable mix and feels like someone else's vision alongside Woo's but getting past that (whilst enjoying it) reveals something way above run of the mill that the Golden Harvest players respond well to.

KENNETH'S REVIEW: Who said the art of disrespecting but in intent respecting the immortal legacy of Bruce Lee was dead? Made way, way, WAY after any trend of Bruceploitation moviemaking that gave us Tower of Death, Bruce Lee Against Supermen and Bruce The Superhero to name but a very select few, Joseph Lai steps in to stir things up a little. Made with a purpose, here's filmmakers solely after nailing the checklist of random Bruce Lee imitation tangents the flick must have in order to have the video box art fulfill its promise (plus go-carts and drunken boxing comes included). Rest is filler that is allowed to be deadly boring to the point that you wanna slit your wrists. Yes, watch the arguably talented Dragon Sek turn up in the yellow tracksuit for no good reason and play a sifu that essentially IS Bruce Lee... also for no apparent reason. Add onto that a pagoda finale with a pretty much terrific fight between Dragon, Billy Chow and the barbwire-clad room. It's stupid but fun flashes of an art of exploitation I for one thought was only possible in the 70s. When not indulging in this Bruceploitation-worthy content, convoluted plotting about a computer design of a Bruce Lee game, bootleggers out for it, Billy Chow trying to prove to the world that he can get somewhere with his fighting ability and talent such as Roy Cheung being/feeling totally wasted is on prominent display.

Buy the DVD at:
HK Flix.com
Yesasia.com

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.

Buy the VCD at:
HK Flix.com
Yesasia.com

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.