Danny Lee was well into his transformation into the movie cop acting for the real life cops and a very apparent support seems to be in place for Road Warriors as Lee portrays the bike cops trials and tribulations. Taking time to highlight routines before duty, routine during duty, put up factoids on screen about the subjects, one can understand Lee's desire to paint an image of a civil servant but it does harm Road Warriors in a sense that it's a late starter. A very basic but sufficient plot soon takes shape about the fast speeding antics of Tony Wong (Billy Ching), son of a wealthy adult magazine publisher (James Wong). Tony evades the police thanks to his father's wealth but when he causes an accident that leaves several children dead, the police do everything they can within the law to have him taken away. Faring poorly in that regard, it has to take several more unlawful acts before the fractions of the police (led by Li, played by our director) realizes someone needs to step outside the frames of the law to punish rightfully...

Therefore giving us a taste of law the harsh Lee-way, his character is still the voice of reason amongst a torn group of mostly young cops and the message about standing together certainly feels more balanced than later flicks such as Twist where it was open season on interrogating in just about every way conceivable. However come ending time, controversy sets in that feels like Lee's venting in future flicks. Lee does effectively set up the urban nature of the story however, featuring the ordinary people trying to make a living, the cops in need of acting as role models (again, the ending seems to correspond little to this prior notion and does ring false) and for once it's not gun wielding gangsters to take down. Effective pushes into the tragic and thankfully playing the events out straight, Road Warriors is merely decent, a bit askew but also balanced in the way that it's not playing a commercial game. Jamie Luk, Shing Fui-On, Parkman Wong, Ken Lo and Liu Wai-Hung also turn up.

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A more action oriented The Story Of Woo Viet if you will, director Jeng Wing-Chiu (who also co-wrote) delivers a dependant immigrant drama that is suitably and not unnecessarily spiced up with bloody gunplay. When the Vietnamese of the piece are gathered up into one sole setting when they're not performing assassinations for their "saviours", Jeng injects the piece with quite decent knack for character explorations coupled with the dirty, gritty Hong Kong world they're forced to live in. The promised land on the horizon is America and obviously that's a great big criticism if there ever was one. So Jeng's work is more out in the open compared to what Ann Hui did but the tragedy that ensues is still earned thanks to solid performances, in particular from Lau Ching-Wan whose character questions the need to be cold blooded to gain future freedom. Also with Kara Hui (who performs the single most chilling acts of violence in the film), Sibelle Hu and Waise Lee.

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The production company is Ramking and Rock On Fire (released in the UK as Girl On Fire) early on show signs of proudly wearing the Category III rating like a badge on its sleeve. The opening is a long, stylized sex scene with hints at S/M as it involves a knife and so it goes. Blending in an action plot to disrupt things, at least the choreography makes up for lack of consistent creativity with fair power (the finale at a construction yard sees the females duke it out with the boy machinery). You'll have some fun watching tough as nails cops flinch when firing guns, doctors examining head wounds by performing CPR and so it goes. Rock On Fire is indeed generally memorable thrash thanks to a duo of actors that spices up proceedings considerably. Starting with Mikie Ng (Girls Gang) as a deranged femme fatale and on the other side of the spectrum, Stuart Ong is at his depraved best, exploiting the female body whenever he can or even after he can as a bit of death by strangulation won't stop his lusts. Takajo Fujimi, Ken Lo and Shing Fui-On also appear.

Little known Ann Hui adaptation of Louis Cha's famous first novel The Book & The Sword. To date, this marks Hui's only foray into martial arts action (outside of a later co-directing stint on Swordsman) but watching The Romance Of Book & Sword, Hui's trademarks are spread over it as it at its core is a small scale character drama. This first part (the sequel being Princess Fragrance, shot the same year) clearly have taken a chunk only out of the important template of Cha's work and the 90 minute running time isn't devoted to fleshing out many characters to an epic extent, not even the main ones of rebel leader Chen Jalo and emperor Qian Long. Hui treats her characters simple but still emerges with suitable weight to that relationship and the imminent threat of the Red Flower Society exposing Qian's true heritage as part of the Han people.

Interest is maintained throughout via Hui's almost sedate atmosphere and consciously limited scope. No doubt, this mainland China production boasts fine production values but Hui approaches the scope with a laid back and naturalistic eye, allowing the characters to matter and not the eye candy. Even though there's a decent amount of martial arts action corresponding to the Wuxia traditions, there's more grounded work on display that shows acrobatic brilliance sporadically, especially during the large scale finale.

The entire extent of Hui's work can be judged after taking in Princess Fragrance as well but as a standalone effort, The Romance Of Book & Sword portrays the main piece of the cake of Louis Cha's work well.

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With Ricky Lau (Mr. Vampire) at the helm of another genre exercise and armed with a Category III rating, The Romance Of Vampires goes some expected routes and some astoundingly mature ones, considering the filmmaker responsible for it all. Having said that, nothing on display really validates Lau's status as a maker of drama, only occasionally his cinematography skills does. Rainbow (Yvonne Yung - A Chinese Torture Chamber Story) is a blind prostitute saving up money for her eye operation. Suave Fung (Ben Lam) comes to her rescue during an attempted rape but can he suppress his lust towards her? His blood lust that is...

Ticking off the checklist of what needs to be done in order to get this conflicted Hong Kong movie made (including featuring perverse men, a rap number and some Kingdom Yuen skits barely related to anything), Lau does for a while consider his call is to fill the running time with photogenic, steamy sex. Not that poorly shot to be honest, as with many filmmakers, he seems scared to let a momentum take over the film so you'll get switches like the displaying of a surefire way to stop a female vampire in her tracks, namely fondling her breast. Things take a turn for the straight on dramatic eventually as the doomed love story between Rainbow and Fung connects to past sins of his and Yvonne certainly does just a little bit better work than most here, especially in more tender scenes with Louise Yuen. Even previously grating Yuen follows the descent into the sedated to a certain degree of success (think an aaaalmost calmed down Eric Kot) but as this serious side to The Romance Of The Vampires is in reality rather sappy, it's merely a curious choice to see Ricky Lau trying. Considering that he launches into exploitation at the emotional end once more (reminding us why Yvonne Yung got cast after all), you can't really acknowledge the film as such. Especially not since the subsequent crescendo is almost completely destroyed of its poignancy thanks to ropey optical effects. Also starring Mondi Yau.

Cop Lau (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) witnesses his long time partner (Kent Cheng in a cameo) commit suicide t in front of him, leading to him moving and working on small time cases in order to deal with this loss. His neighbor Hiu Tung (Veronica Yip) is a single mother struggling to find a footing in life and men only seems to want to be with her for casual reasons. When her father passes away, she makes a commitment to step away from any loose lifestyle and helping along is neighbor Lau. Eventually love is in the air and both now has to overcome issues of trust and commitment...

For Tony Au's streak of movies during the 90s, he utilized Tony Leung Ka-Fai as his leading man and after their first collaboration on Au Revoir, Mon Amour, Au went back to something smaller in scale and old fashioned in its ways, namely the romance/drama/comedy. He consciously uses genre staples that have been done to death but hinges a lot on his leading man and lady for it to stand out and he succeeds.

A Roof With A View sees an already suave and terrific actor strike up fine chemistry with prior Category III starlet Veronica Yip. Yip gets strong emotional beats to work with for sure but Au challenges by letting the whole proceedings, including the drama and comedy, play out calm and light, something Yip in particular nails. A lot of subtle things can be read into Hiu Tung's plight and desire to finally settle down and further shows how easily Yip escaped her sexy image from movies such as Take Me and Pretty Woman. A Roof With A View can easily be looked down upon as being too clichéd but it thoroughly works and is a small, Sunday afternoon delight of a movie. Perhaps even Au's finest next to Dream Lovers. Kwan Hoi San, Ray Lui and Carina Lau also appear.

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Sporadic fun can be had in this buddy-cop actioner starring Yuen Biao and mostly otherwise composer Lowell Lo (An Autumn's Tale). We've seen better pairings and for 90 minutes it's also uneven Hong Kong comedy hijinxs with mainly two action set pieces in between. To list good points, Lowell Lo is a visual amusement in itself and Paul Chun is a good sport, being the object of much punishment at the hands of our two cops. The action directing trio of Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah and Lam Ching Ying also serve up dependably executed action and stunts, playing to the strengths of Yuen Biao nicely while Lowell Lo participates as much as he can as more of a comedic fighting sidekick. Kara Hui, James Tien, Dick Wei, Chong Fat, Tai Bo, Zebra Pan and Blackie Ko also stop by. Writer Wong Kar-Wai would go on to better things...

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Also known as The Story Of Rose and Lost Romance, Maggie Cheung is the titular character going from the pouting, annoying girl that every man wants to a full grown woman in the space of 90 minutes...or something like that. However many deep sensibilities may have been intended by director Yonfan, Rose is a hasty product with attempts that resembles grave pretentiousness despite not hiding behind abstract behaviour. There's the obvious journey Rose needs to take, from shallow youth to maturity, form an independent aura around herself and realize that love hurts, taking it or giving it. Her relationship with brother Charles (Chow Yun-Fat) is a close one, both clearly not being able to survive without each others presences. Loneliness. Bada-bim, bada-boom, Rose goes on a lighting fast ride through studies, marriage, parenthood, divorce, death and love again when Chow Yun-Fat turns up a second time in the picture as a different character. For obvious symbolic reasons partly, Yonfan doesn't convince other than in the careful design of the flick. Being a photographer, it's no surprise surroundings are impeccable and that the stars look marvelous. The transformation in Maggie Cheung is admirable because Yonfan finds an early version of the movie star she turned out to be while Chow spreads some well-honed charisma over the production. Then again, it never really helps. Roy Cheung, Ha Ping and Alfred Cheung also appear.

The dvd release supervised by Yonfan reportedly replaced the dubbing of the leads with a new voice track by Tse Kwan-Ho and Ada Choi. The Winson laserdisc preserves the original soundtrack.

"Have you ever seen Maggie Cheung act in a movie with Roy Cheung?
I don't know, we haven't tried but maybe there will be some sparks?"

This is actual dialogue from Rose (aka Blue Valentine), a not so subtle in joke but director Samson Chiu actually makes us believe it's an intriguing proposition for a romantic drama. Clear from the beginning is that he's mixing drama and generic triad action, these crucial points works fine for the opposite attracts romance between insurance sales woman Rose (Maggie Cheung) and triad bad boy Roy (Roy Cheung). Both of whom have been neglected and left alone, especially the pregnant Rose who is now living in a shell where she makes her smoking habit equal to that of a secure man in the house. A little calculated, plagued with some holes in the character sketches (in particular Rose's shift in behaviour when harboring the wounded Roy as she would probably at one point do anything to kick him out) and predictable, director Chiu, while "borrowing" slightly with the A Moment Of Romance formula, merges these opposite performers to pretty decent effect. The stars themselves carry their more all too familiar-roles from their perspective into this unusual narrative, especially Roy, and delivers emotions of the workable, bearable kind. Still only at his second feature film (the superb Yesteryou, Yesterme, Yesterday followed), Chiu at this point doesn't seem to know that sappy montages are not needed for dramatic effect but his final reel moments does however speak of a subtle, simple poignancy that would be very evident in later films. Veronica Yip co-stars as Rose's friend who can't juggle life and love while Norman Tsui, Michael Wong and Yiu Wai also appears.

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One can't deny that Chor Yuen and company have done their best Wuxia filmmaking in the past but The Roving Swordsman contains worthwhile elements despite. It's simply a lot of fun watching the cunning trickery back and forth between the rival martial arts families for starters. All contained within colourful, intricate sets that Shaw's did not put in sloppy work into, even during their decline at this time. The actual sword fight action by Tong Gaai does not feel inspired but an extended sequence in a mirror maze (that curiously comes with a disco ball!) has creativity in spades from all involved, even though the concept is far from riveting) With Ti Lung, Cheng Lee, Ching Hoh-Wai, Goo Goon-Chung and Ku Feng.

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