Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Drama/ Martial Arts
Director: Yuen Wo-Ping
Year: 1991
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
The meat of Yuen Wo-Ping’s beloved Tiger Cage series has always been corruption of one kind or another.
In this third installment, Mr. Lee (Wong Kam-Kong, vividly hateful) is a scumbag businessman who manipulates companies and markets to cheat his competitors. James (Cheung Kwok-Leung) and John (Michael Wong) are the cops investigating him. James and John have a running quarrel. John, who isn’t above using his insider information to play the stock market, thinks that James is a ninny for falling in love with Suki (Sharla Cheung), the assistant of a CEO doing business with the crooked Mr. Lee.
Disaster strikes when James invests all of his money based on one of the stock tips he overhears during surveillance of Mr. Lee and his associates. Suki’s boss is arrested and incriminating evidence is confiscated, but when the stock in question tanks, Mr. Lee is blackmailed for ten million dollars in return for the confiscated documents. Cops and witnesses start dropping like flies. That’s a good, simple setup for lots of kickass action and twisty plot turns.
In addition, screenwriters Patrick Leung and Anthony Wong (not the wildman actor) have gone to the trouble of creating juicy characters, which are mostly well-played by the cast. Wong Kam-Kong makes Mr. Lee’s joy in tricking his business associates and forcing others to do his bidding palpable. The role of John plays to Michael Wong’s natural tendency to seem childish and immature. As Suki, Sharla Cheung plays her cards close to the vest. She seems to sincerely love James, but she can also be crafty, concealing her hatred of Mr. Lee when it is prudent to do so. Probably the least interesting character is James, which isn’t really actor Cheung Kwok-Leung’s fault. There’s only so much you can do with a true blue hero.
I was hopeful that Tiger Cage 3 would turn out to be a classic, but the filmmakers don’t quite have the passion and commitment to go all the way.
The script by Patrick Leung and Anthony Wong takes some amusing twists and turns, but it probably could have used a few more. Similarly, director Yuen Wo-Ping gets events moving along, but not with the breathless energy of the two previous installments in the series. Finally, the fights are staged and performed with a great deal of skill and energy by Yuen Shun-Yi and Guk Hin-Chiu (and I appreciated the liberal use of blood packs), but they aren’t quite as vicious and balls-out as the fights in the earlier installments.
What all this adds up to is an undeniably entertaining 90 minutes or so, but regrettably not another masterpiece like Tiger Cage and Tiger Cage 2.
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