Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Comedy/ Martial Arts/ Bullet Ballet
Director: Liu Chia-Liang
Year: 1990
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Having just seen the horrible Liu Chia-Liang-directed Drunken Master III, I wanted to remind myself why I liked Liu Chia-Liang in the first place, so I decided to watch Tiger On The Beat II.
Like the first in the series, Tiger On The Beat II is a mixture of mad martial arts, crazy stunts, and Cantonese style comedy.
The plot could not be simpler. Buffalo (Conan Lee), a musclebound American-born Chinese blockhead with primo fighting skills, has been sent to Hong Kong by his mother to find a nice Chinese girl to marry. Buffalo’s mother has asked her younger brother, Sergeant Lam (Danny Lee), to help out. Meanwhile, Sweet Dream (Ellen Chan), a dim bulb who likes to steal from Triad types, hocks a valuable ring from Lau Fai (Gordon Liu). He and his thugs (including the invaluable Roy Cheung) spend the rest of the movie trying to retrieve the ring from Sweet Dream, while Buffalo knocks himself out trying to protect her, getting his poor uncle Lam into hot water in the process.
Most of the comedy comes from how easily Sweet Dream cons Buffalo into thinking she’s an innocent damsel in distress, to Sergeant Lam’s increasing disgust. James Wong and Norman Chu are amusing as two of Sergeant Lam’s colleagues.
Tiger On The Beat II spends a lot more time on comedy than the first film, which wears a little thin. I would have preferred the balance to tilt in favor of action, but that’s okay.
The action, when it comes, is full of the full-tilt hard hits, broken glass, and the crazy stunts so beloved by fans of late 80s Hong Kong films, all of it energetically choreographed by four different fight choreographers and Gordon Liu’s stunt company, Liu’s Stuntmen Association. There’s nothing as crazy as the dueling chainsaw finale from Tiger On The Beat, but the action is still plentiful and furious. Conan Lee does one especially nutty stunt that goes wrong, costing him several months in the hospital, which director Liu Chia-Liang happily caught on film for our delectation.
Nobody will ever mistake Tiger On The Beat II for a masterpiece, but it’s still a lot of fun.
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