In The Line Of Duty III - Red Army Terrorists Do Hong Kong

Nov

4

In The Line Of Duty III - Red Army Terrorists Do Hong Kong

≡ Category: Action, Comedy, Girls with Guns, Hong Kong, Martial Arts, Movie Reviews, Recommended |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Drama/ Comedy/ Martial Arts/ Girls With Guns
Director: Brandy Yuen/ Arthur Wong
Year: 1988

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

In The Line Of Duty III is far from an unqualified success, but it does have it’s compensations.

Often, with girls with guns flicks, plot and character are given short shrift, merely being a scafold on which to hang elaborate martial arts sequences and gun battles. There’s a lot of that here, too, but the villains are unusually complex for this sort of thing.

Villainess Michiko Nishiwaki (played by the actress Michiko Nishiwaki) is madly in love with her partner in crime, Nakamura (Stuart Ong), but Nakamura is mainly in love with the Red Army. After the two of them rob a jewelry exhibition to finance a weapons purchase for the Red Army, Michiko wants them to run off to the Caribbean. You see, Nakamura has cancer and only has months to live. But Nakamura scolds her for being selfish. He’ll fight until his last breath for the Red Army. It’s so much more interesting when villains are motivated by things like loyalty, idealism or passion, rather than money, which seems to always be the case in action movies made in the United States.

Michiko Nishiwaki and Stuart Ong are fantastic in their parts. They’re great athletes and fighters, and completely convincing as die-hard terrorists. They’re joined by a third terrorist who’s just as cool, played by Dick Wei.

The heroes are not quite as convincing. There’s Hiroshi (played by Hiroshi Fujioka), who has a rather comical jerry curl. He’s a Japanese cop bent on avenging the death of his partner. Then there’s the star of our show, Madam Yeung (Cynthia Khan), who is struggling to make her name as a policewoman, stifled by her uncle, Inspector Cameron Chuen (Paul Chun ), who wants to keep her out of harms way.

Cynthia Khan is cute, but she’s not much of an actress. Hiroshi Fujioka is even worse. Fortunately, lackluster acting isn’t a deal killer in a movie like this.

The comedic sequences involving Madam Yeung and her uncle are amusing, but whenever someone like Richard Ng or Eric Tsang shows up, doing Stephen Chow nonsense comedy stylings, the movie grinds to a dead halt. Fortunately, there aren’t too many of these sequences.

More problematic are a fair number of routine action sequences with lots of gunfire, and relatively uncreative choreography. I wish directors Brandy Yuen and Arthur Wong had filmed the martial arts sequences with fewer closeups. Many times, a kick or a hit cuts to the impact instead of showing the whole movement. It’s easier to cheat the action that way, but it isn’t as rewarding for the viewer. On the other hand, lots of innocent bystanders get smeared, which is always fun. And the bullet squibs are nice and juicy.

Unfortunately, there’s also a relative shortage of those crazy stunts Hong Kong film fans live for. I’m talking about those suicidal falls that look like they earned the stunt person a three month trip to the hospital, if not the morgue. Thankfully, the action choreography improves as the movie goes along. There are two extended fight sequences in industrial spaces that kick bountiful ass. In The Line Of Duty III gets extra points for creative use of objects like boat hooks, hatchets, crowbars and so on.

The last problem is that the pacing is a bit off. There are too many lulls in the action in the first half of In The Line Of Duty III, and the ending is too abrupt.

So, In The Line Of Duty III is hardly a deathless classic, but is it worth seeing? If you like Girls with Guns flicks, yeah, definitely. There are some good fights, and for me, In The Line Of Duty III is worth seeing for Michiko Nishiwaki alone. She’s fierce, she’s beautiful, and she gets butt nekkid for a precious three seconds of screen time. That women is nothing but muscles, but in an intensely feminine way. She’s a beast. Check it out.