Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Bullet Ballet / Romance
Director: Kirk Wong
Year: 1988
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE
Gunmen is a classic Golden Age of Hong Kong flick in the hard hitting 80s style.
In the closing days of a civil war in China, Ding Chun-Bei (Tony Leung), and his three compatriots, Chang (Waise Lee), Lau Fook-Kwong (Mark Cheng), and Cheung Chor-Fan (David Wu), bond over a near death experience at the hands of Haye (Adam Cheng).
After the war, the buddies go their separate ways. Ding Chun-Bei becomes a policeman in Shanghai and finds himself in pursuit of Haye, who is now an opium smuggler. When Haye kills Chun-Bei’s mentor on the police force, Chun-Bei redoubles his efforts and inadvertently causes the death of Haye’s boss.
After that, only the death of everyone on one side or the other will suffice to end the feud. For these guys, the war never ended.
Okay, that’s a pretty basic setup. What matters is the way that it’s handled.
The script by Law Gam-Fai and Lip Wang-Fung never stops. It’s one of the most efficient narrative engines I’ve ever seen, along with Terminator II. The action, as directed by Kirk Wong and choreographed by Fung Hak-On, is just relentless. There’s close quarters fighting, hard falls, gunplay, fire stunts, bayonets, you name it. The action is also gratifyingly bloody.
There is a constant and excruciating sense of jeopardy for our heroes. Aside from the four male heroes, Ding Chun-Bei has a wife, Cho Giu (Carrie Ng), and a daughter, Sze-Sze (Hoh Leng-Leng), to be kept out of harm’s way. There’s also Mona Fong (Elizabeth Lee), Chun-Bei’s informant. All of these folks are likeable and you fear for them.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Golden Age of Hong Kong action movies, one of the wonderful things about them is the filmmakers’ willingness to kill anybody. Sometimes children get killed. Sometimes dogs. Sometimes everybody. Occasionally, the villains walk away smiling after pissing on the graves of the heroes. You just don’t know. That does wonders for suspense, I’ll tell you.
Director Kirk Wong knows this and masterfully manipulates us. In the action blowout that closes the film, the first time I saw Gunmen, I was screaming at the television set I was wound up so tight.
Another strong point of Gunmen is the evocation of 1920s Shanghai. The period detail is dense and the cinematography is rich and soulful.
But I don’t want to oversell Gunmen. Yes, it’s nonstop entertainment and very exciting indeed, but it isn’t perfect. Adam Cheng, who plays the villain Haye, is appropriately ferocious, but a little one dimensional. He lacks the florid personality of the best Hong Kong villains. Also, aside from Tony Leung and Waise Lee, the members of Chun-Bei’s squad don’t register too strongly. Mark Cheng is a little bland playing a hero — I’ve seen him enjoy playing a villain more elsewhere, most recent in A Taste Of Killing And Romance. David Wu is kind of goofy, but also lacks charisma.
But these are relatively minor flaws. Gunmen plays like gangbusters. I recommend it without reservation.
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