Great stuff! Sammo beats, takes beatings, and falls in love while driving a rickshaw in 1930s Portuguese controlled Macau.
Sammo's got something to say about the plight of women under patriarchal management, be they bakers or prostitutes, and he mostly finds the right tone for it. Which is nice in a 1980's HK feature because it does sometimes feel like the inherent feminine warrior of 1970's wuxia fell away and the 80's kung-fu films became mostly a masculine ordeal (save of course for the GIRLS WITH GUNS subgenre and a few other, rare, examples).
The action is scorching. A fight between Chia-Liang Liu and Sammo in a gambling house is for real. Yet, strangely, this awesome character never gets a callback for the rest of the film. Why couldn't the Gambling House Boss return to knock heads for the super awesome final fight? Surely they could've cast one more white guy to get his butt handed to him. Oh well.
It is the want of many a Sammo film to have the action measured out, decorating the hood and trunk of the movie but letting the the bulky center sag under the weight of romantic comedy and tragedy. The same is true here. So be it. If you're a fan, you won't mind.
But why Macau in the '30's? No idea. It seems to add nothing to the film. Fortunately, it doesn't detract from it either.
Sammo's got something to say about the plight of women under patriarchal management, be they bakers or prostitutes, and he mostly finds the right tone for it. Which is nice in a 1980's HK feature because it does sometimes feel like the inherent feminine warrior of 1970's wuxia fell away and the 80's kung-fu films became mostly a masculine ordeal (save of course for the GIRLS WITH GUNS subgenre and a few other, rare, examples).
The action is scorching. A fight between Chia-Liang Liu and Sammo in a gambling house is for real. Yet, strangely, this awesome character never gets a callback for the rest of the film. Why couldn't the Gambling House Boss return to knock heads for the super awesome final fight? Surely they could've cast one more white guy to get his butt handed to him. Oh well.
It is the want of many a Sammo film to have the action measured out, decorating the hood and trunk of the movie but letting the the bulky center sag under the weight of romantic comedy and tragedy. The same is true here. So be it. If you're a fan, you won't mind.
But why Macau in the '30's? No idea. It seems to add nothing to the film. Fortunately, it doesn't detract from it either.