Movie Review: Badges of Fury (aka Bu er shen tan, 2013)

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Directed by Tsz Ming Wong

An action film star plunges to his death without his parachute. A dancer is crushed to death by his overweight partner. A high diver plunges to his death during a competition. All three men die with smiling grimaces on their faces, to the consternation of the Hong Kong Police Department. Veteran cop Huang Feihong (Jet Li) and eager-to-impress rookie Wang Bu’er (Zhang Wen) trace the victim’s mysterious deaths to aspiring action starlet Liu (Shishi Liu). While the toast of action cinema, Liu has had little luck in the romance department. The three aforementioned men who died in freak accidents were all at one time betrothed to her, before they were stolen out from under her by her – according to the subtitles – “catty skank” older sister, Angela (Michelle Chen) who lives very comfortably in spite of her most unglamorous position as a life insurance salesperson. There are lots of “hilarious” fight scenes and “wire fu” involving peripheral characters, until Bu’er has a capital suggestion: Why doesn’t he draw out the killer by proposing marriage to Liu? There is a big slam-bang surprise ending.

Movie Review: Drug War (2012, Blu-ray)

Reviewed By James DePaolo

Drug War is the latest film from Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To. I feel no matter what I write after that, people will have their minds made up if this film is for them. Now, before you keep that train of thought let me tell you I had the same thought being I was also a fan of To. I know people are still trying to figure out where he is coming from after Life Without Principle, which was action lite and more of a thriller that he wanted to try and to put in the Oscar race.

Drug War seems to be his take on the classic cops and robbers chase films. To be honest, I did not hate the film as much as I did not think this is To at his best. This film takes the police against organized crime lords in a film that I feel suffers from the pace that To tries to keep. The film is shot to be fast paced, but the script and characters seem to drag the story. I mean To has a reputation off these kinds of films, in his homeland he is the king of these gritty crime stories and I just feel that this film comes across more like Romero who is the king of all zombie films giving us Survival of the Dead. China is now governed in this way that if you are caught dealing with drugs or manufacturing them you are sentenced to death. So when Timmy is caught with drugs instead of killing him he helps Captain Zhang with a bigger drug ring to help uncover it. He has only 72 hours or he will face his demise for the drugs.