Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Comedy/ Drama/ Romance /Action
Director: Norman Law Man
Year: 1986
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Ah, the wonderfully wacky world of Hong Kong movies! I can’t claim that A Hearty Response is all that good, but it certainly is entertaining.
The subject matter is that Hong Kong 80s perennial, illegal immigration from Mainland China, but in A Hearty Response, it’s given the romcom treatment, with a detour into pure melodrama for the third act.
Mainland China refugee Kwong Sun (Joey Wong, she of the chipmunk cheeks), fresh from escaping the clutches of Shing (Shum Wai, doing his scumbag best), meets cute with policeman Ho Ting Bon (Chow Yun-Fat) on the streets of Hong Kong, and he ends up taking her off the streets.
Most of the film is evenly divided between a light dramatization of the plight of illegal immigrants (hunger, being forced to shoplift for food, homelessness, fear of deportation, being taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers, etc.) and the comic courtship of Kwong Sun and Ho Ting Bon. She pretends to have amnesia (that old chestnut) from a bump on the head, and claims that Ho Ting Bon is her husband. This causes drama with Ho Ting Bon’s real girlfriend, Judy (Poon Lai-Yin), a beeatch with a poofy 80s perm. Fortunately, Kwong Sun has an ally in Ho Ting Bon’s mom (a hilarious Lee Heung-Kam), who’s already treating Kwong Sun as a daughter-in-law.
A lot of the fun of A Hearty Response comes from unintentionally provided insights into Hong Kong culture. The interactions between Kwong Sun, Ho Ting Bon, and his mother are revealing. The filmmakers also have fun with how family relationships trump official ones. (The boss of Ho Ting Bon’s partner, Long Man (Lui Fong), is Inspector Lui Tak (Paul Chun), but Tak is also Long Man’s nephew, so Long Man treats his boss with utter disrespect and gets away with it.) It’s also eye opening to see what Hong Kong audiences regard as a fate worse than death (tattooing, and rape, which is somewhat less surprising).
So other than as an exercise in cultural anthropology, is A Hearty Response exciting? Frankly, if you don’t appreciate Cantonese comedy, long stretches of A Hearty Response will bore you. The action, when it comes, is fairly decent, in that standard 80s, hard hitting way. There are no extended martial arts battles, but the action choreography by Luk Chuen, Benz Kong To-Hoi, and Tony Leung Siu-Hung is engaging enough.
I also appreciate that Hong Kong filmmakers like director Norman Law and writer Lai Man-Cheuk are so willing — no, eager — to put their heroes in harms way. A Hearty Response may not be a rigorously written drama about the perils of illegal immigration, but it has the grace and guts to acknowledge that in real life, the white knight on the horse doesn’t always arrive on time, and decent people often get hurt by scumbags, and yet somehow, they have to find a way to live with the scars.
The moral of the story is, if you’re a newcomer to Hong Kong movies, there are plenty of movies you should see before A Hearty Response. This is really more of a film for people who appreciate Cantonese comedy, are big fans of Chow Yun-Fat or Joey Wong (they’re as cute as a couple of squirrels with a bowl of nuts), or really dig Golden Age of Hong Kong (1985-1995) flicks. Personally, I hit the trifecta.
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