Arguably Tsui’s angriest film, this live-wire and nihilistic HK New Wave entry sees the collision of rebellious youth, lowly gangsters and nasty foreigners as society crumbles into death, violence, cruelty and insanity.
A great non-Bruce Lee entry point to the kung fu craze of the early ‘70s, this is fundamental viewing for fans of HK martial arts movies as Lo Lieh stars as a young man who becomes embroiled in a hostile school rivalry that turns increasingly brutal.
Wong’s rather conventional debut feature is a ‘Mean Streets’-esque gangster thriller that provides cursory pleasures with the odd heady rush of romance, and backed by a trio of committed performances from Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung and Jacky Cheung.
Sylvia Chang and Sally Yeh are a hoot together in this romantic triangle that sees Tsui Hark bringing the Hollywood screwball comedy to his home turf, marked by farcical setups and rewarding payoffs.
Bruce Lee’s only directed feature is an amusing actioner with cartoony characters, an ultra-thin plot and pacing issues, culminating in one of the most iconic showdowns in martial arts cinema.
Lau’s action extravaganza pits Chinese and Japanese martial arts against each other in a quest for legitimacy and personal dignity, disguised as an amusing marital conflict drama between a Chinese man and a Japanese woman.
Things go terribly awry after a jewellery store heist in this visceral and gritty film that is a serious contender for the zeitgeist-iest HK crime-actioner of the ‘80s, made with the kind of masculine gusto that seems rare today.
A brilliant idea to set a ‘warring gangs’ action film in the iconic if long-demolished Kowloon Walled City, but this comic book adaptation feels numbingly empty with its stylistic excesses a tonal mismatch with the more sobering space of marginality and exploitation.
Tsui’s Hong Kong action-fantasy cult classic is a reminder that the ‘visibility’ of VFX can be a virtue, with its retrogradely charming effects distracting from its nonsensical story of super-warriors fighting against an evil force.
Offering almost nothing in terms of plot and characterisation, Lau’s film is an often hilarious if skilful showcase of a series of dynamic action ‘spectacles’ one after another.
Eternality Tan 