Note: This review may contain spoilers
Looking at the cover of "Fire Island" (Huo shao dao, 1990) one might think that this is another action comedy starring Jackie Chan , but it is neither comedy nor Jackie is its protagonist, the less absolute.
The story begins with a Police, Andy Lau, ( Tony Leung Ka-Fai ), whose father is murdered by a criminal who allegedly had been executed in prison before. Thus, the protagonist decides to infiltrate the prison to investigate what really happened. Once inside, meet other prisoners and John Liu ( Sammo Hung ), every little leak to see his son or Charlie ( Chung Hua Tou ) that will be your best friend in prison and cellmate. You can also see that sometimes in this prison, the guards are more dangerous than the inmates.
It was 20 minutes, makes its appearance Jackie Chan, who goes to jail for accidentally killing a man who is a brother of Chief Lee ( Andy Lau), a gangster who also go to prison to avenge ; the death of his brother. Also involved in the film Jimmy Wang Yu, playing Luke, the maximum power inmate in prison.
As we can see the film features a number of stars of action films made in Hong Kong, but actually share less than desired levels. In fact, the characters are appearing and disappearing over and over again on the screen. We assume that given the ensemble so that everyone join a similar number of minutes on screen.
Moreover, the film has a strong dramatic (too much, perhaps) that is not very common in the films of Jackie Chan, except a few exceptions like "The Shield" or "New Police Story" . The tragedy surrounding almost all the characters, well either by their personal history or do not arrive alive to the credits. Of course, there are occasional humorous scene to lighten the drama, almost always by Sammo Hung.
And of course there are also action. Jackie does not appear much on screen but almost always they do is fight, which is appreciated. In addition, the final part, where finally share screen actors, is the best film. But yes, breaks with the prison film to move to a pure action movie where the protagonists are hard to kill a drug dealer. Too bad they are just 10 minutes of film.
There are also occasional gap, but this is due to assembly of the film. The version I've seen has been the American, who has 30 minutes less than that of Taiwan than two hours. We assume that certain deficiencies of the film is due to that.
As a curiosity, to say that Legend has it that the director Chu Yin-ping, was not facing its best financial. Then his friend Wang Yu helped him calling for the film actors who owed him a favor the protagonist of "The Wrestler manco" , who apparently was related to the triads.
best: the end of the film. Pure action.
Worst: their excess drama that sometimes makes you forget that you are seeing an action movie
0 comments:
Post a Comment