Tag Archives: Action Cinema

Film Diary: A DAY WITHOUT POLICEMAN (Johnny Lee, 1993)

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Featuring a set-up familiar from numerous 1950s Westerns and the premise of many more modern action pictures such as James Mangold’s Cop Land (1997), Johnny Lee’s notorious Cat III picture A Day Without Policeman focuses an a representative of the law (played by Simon Yam) whose professional function is crippled by both a previous experience and his personal circumstances. Here, specifically, the once up-and-coming Yam saw his colleagues massacred during a bust by a gang wielding AK-47s, resulting in Yam losing his nerve, becoming impotent(!) and also losing his lover, and being relocated to an island.

Like his cinematic brethren, Yam is faced with a situation that tests his mettle and brings him back to functionality as a lawman: a gang of mainlanders invade the island, beginning a wave of outrageous violence against which Yam becomes the last line of defence and must make a stand.

There’s more than a little of David Sumner, the mousy mathematician that Dustin Hoffman played in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1972), about the character essayed by Simon Yam – in his trajectory from non-violent underdog into a man who is capable of using exceptional levels of violence in order to ‘protect’ the island community. Yam’s sexual impotence becomes a metaphor for his lack of efficacy as a policeman. Like Peckinpah’s picture, A Day Without Policeman draws a connection between violence, masculinity and sexual prowess: Yam’s lack of functionality as a police officer is connected to his very specific fear of AK-47 assault rifles and also his sexual impotence. The AK-47 too obviously functions as a phallic symbol here but this specific choice of weapon, the Russian-made gun most usually associated with Communist military units and guerilla fighters (for example, in its use by the NVA during the Vietnam war), perhaps also speaks of a fear of Communism and mainland China’s then-impending ideological ‘invasion’ of Hong Kong.

The violence in the film is often deeply protracted, with an emphasis on suffering and the callousness of the perpetrators. Amidst some outrageous bloodshed (including some strong sexual violence which casual viewers should be warned about) there are some strangely poetic scenes such as a brief visual reference to Bunuel’s Los Olvidados (1950), perhaps through Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), in which a victim of a vigilante mob’s hand is seen clawing its way out of a shallow grave. Like Ringo Lam’s School on Fire (1988), for example, A Day Without Policeman was reputedly cut quite heavily before its release, some of the violence being reduced in its intensity. Rumours abound of versions with slightly different content being released on different home video formats, and certain scenes seem certainly to be abbreviated, but both versions of the picture I’ve seen (the Universe VCD release and the Tai Seng DVD) appear to be identical.

Viewing Notes. This viewing was via the Tai Seng DVD, which runs for 98:57 mins. The 1.85:1 photography is presented anamorphically, with burnt-in Chinese and English subtitles that are sometimes hard to read (white text on a light background). It’s a sorry presentation of the film that cries out for an upgrade.

All releases are hampered (or perhaps assisted, depending on your point of view) by some of the most ludicrous English subtitles seen in a Hong Kong film this side of Tiger on Beat 2 (Chia-Liang Liu, 1990). These include lines such as [all sic]:

‘Stay away of women’.

‘Know your bitch cannot wail! Don’t forget to use condom! Move safe’.

‘Don’t satisfy women, they need to beat till they’re 70’.

‘Think it carefully, woman is just Sunday car. Drive once every week’.

‘Without gangsters, but you are making trouble here. I know you are the sone of the Master of the village’.

‘Smelly men! Stay away my lover! Don’t touch!’

‘You chinese gay stolen’.

‘Telling true, Ah Chai, you are very nutrient’.

‘Look at the size not like’.

‘Don’t move, see my underwear’.

‘If you don’t back, I change the lock’.

‘Go! Have discount you!’

‘Look and make my eyes pain’.

‘We throw the gun to smash them’.

‘While phir expose out! Still need to look!’

‘Gay! Play us!’

‘Dress the bra and walk street’.

‘We have AK47. You will lost’.

‘It’s you, you set out all the things’.

‘Please don’t gun me on the nose’.

‘Hong Kong people always lies! You will lost on hat! Damn you baster!’

‘I will not come back, Hong Kong is animal place’.

‘To tell you the truth, I’m sexual deformation’.

‘You have no hiding trees here!’

‘I go to hinge them! You find a chance to shoot!’

FILM DIARY: Hard Boiled (John Woo, 1992)

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HARD BOILED is still, perhaps, the Ultima Thule of action films. There are action movies I prefer to it; and certainly in terms of John Woo’s pictures, I have a stronger preference for THE KILLER. However, the action in HARD BOILED is absolutely, spiffingly splendiferous. In fact, the action is so good that on the numerous occasions during which I’ve watched the film since first encountering it via its UK VHS release – which I rushed out to rent as soon as it was available – in the early 1990s, I’ve often found myself soaking up the eye candy, focusing on the spectacular action and forgetting about the plot.

And the plotting, to be fair, is of an equally high standard. There’s cross and counter-cross, complexity in relationships (Tony Leung’s conflicted undercover agent, Alan; Mad Dog’s dislike of the sadistic/nihilistic Johnny Wong), clever parallels drawn between Alan and Tequila (Chow Yun-Fat). The moment in which Tequila discovers the book in which Alan’s gun was hidden during the ‘hit’ in the library always struck me on first viewing as too much of a coincidence, but on reflection, viewing the film 20-something years later, I understand how important this scene is in establishing the bond of sympathy/empathy between Tequila and Alan.

Woo’s use of editing is exceptional, particularly the sharp cross-cutting between scenes to establish parallels of action and character, the use of freeze frames to punctuate moments of epiphany, and there are some incredibly-staged action sequences in which Woo shows his mastery of a screen vocabulary of action developed by Sam Peckinpah – which Woo extends and makes his own. For instance, it’s hard to disagree with the title of the video linked below when one reflects on how Woo achieved this incredible sequence of action in a single long take:

In fact, in the years since HARD BOILED’s first release, Hollywood has increasingly taken Woo’s lexis of cinematic action and attempted to interweave it into its own productions – initially by co-opting Woo into the Hollyweird canon. However, there are arguably no Hollywood action films made since HARD BOILED that are its equal – or, arguably, even worthy of licking its cinematic boots. And that includes Woo’s Hollywood productions.

Most frustratingly, however, is the fact that such a significant and rewarding film, which has a strong fanbase, has never had a home video release that isn’t in one way or another deeply compromised.

FILM DIARY: Blue Jean Monster (Ivan Lam, 1988)

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I’d not seen this in an age and had forgotten most of it. Big riffs on ROBOCOP and THE TERMINATOR mixed with some bawdy comedy: Shing Fui-On tests his signs of life, realising he’s come back from the dead, by looking at a jazz magazine that he casually keeps on the bedside cabinet in the bedroom he shares with his pregnant wife (WTF?) than admonishing his penis to ‘get up’ (double WTF?). Then he shocks himself into life by miswiring the electric iron, before the parasitic hoodlum who lives with him (much to the chagrin of Shing’s wife) because Shing saved his life comes in and tries to pull the iron from Shing’s chest; the pair end up tumbling to the floor, and Shing’s wife walks in to see the hoodlum’s buttocks thrusting whilst he yells ‘You excite me’. She naturally jumps to the conclusion that her husband is having a sexual relationship with the hoodlum boarding at their house.

This is riotous fun. I think I’m going to have to put this one in for more frequent rotation in my player.

FILM DIARY: Point of No Return (aka, Touch and Go) (Ringo Lam, 1991)

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This is a darker than usual film for Sammo Hung, who plays a wide-eyed innocent, street cook Fat Goose, who gets caught up in street level violence when he witnesses a policeman being murdered by a group of thugs. However, the street hoods are in the employ of a much more wealthy group of criminals who are involved in sex trafficking, abducting young women from mainland China and forcing them into prostitution in brothels – the most regular patrons of which seem to be city officials and high ranking members of the police force. Sammo teams up, largely through accident, with Wan Yeung-Ming, who plays Pitt, the partner of the murdered detective. Sammo also attempts to court Wan’s sister, played by Teresa Mo. The head of the street hoods is played with sinister precision by Tommy Wong.

There’s some humour (Fat Goose persuades his mother that Teresa Mo is his girlfriend, and ‘Goose Mom’ – as she’s called in the subs – makes Mo go through a series of exercises designed to assess whether she would be capable of multiple childbirth), though it’s buried in some bone-crunching violence and a near-persistent sense of threat. Not top-tier Ringo Lam (ie, not on a par with CITY ON FIRE, etc) but certainly a good representation of his middle-tier work.