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¬yª]®t±C (1989)
Thunder Cops II


Reviewed by: dandan
Date: 03/29/2006
Summary: a strange slice of ng and chow...

'thundercops 2' is essentially the sequel to 'thunder cops', although 'thunder cops' is really the sequel to 'operation pink squad'. 'operation pink squad' and 'thundercops' have the same characters and work well as a couplet. 'thunder cops 2', bears no relation to either...

the film charts sandra ng's descent from a happy go lucky cop to a cold hearted vigilante. the first scenes of the film are typical hong kong cop comedy, that is until sandra ng's father is killed as a result of her actions. she then progressivly becomes more detatched from the police force in her quest for revenge, flaunting the law when it suits her and feeding a junkie's habit to garner information.

the film is pretty entertaining and definately the most serious role i've seen ng play. stephen chow even turns up, as the the brother of one of ng's targets, and puts in a serious (occassionally verging on melodramatic) performance. there's a good mix of fighting and gunplay, although the almost surreal slo-mo nature of a couple of sequences could put some people off, i enjoyed them.

decent enough...


Reviewed by: MilesC
Date: 01/29/2003
Summary: The mystery around the movie...

Is more interesting than the movie itself. Another movie that is sometimes called "Thunder Cops" is another Jeff Lau/Sandra Ng collaboration, Operation Pink Squad, which does not share the Chinese title of this film; Was OPS a hit with foreigners?... The new VCD release also has a new Chinese title (something like "two tough heroes," to cash in on Chow's appearance I suppose) and has an out-of-place fight scene (not with Ann Bridgewater as mentioned below) that is missing subtitles, indicating it was dumped at some point and spliced back in.

However, the movie is poor and barely worth so much thought. I think Jeff Lau is a really good, underappreciated second-string director, but I was surprised to find his name on this; it's actually really poorly made. Occasionally some of his attempts at style pay off, but mostly they're just strange, as in some of the looooong, drawn out slo-mo scenes. It also features some of the worst undercranking in HK movie history, as well as some abrupt editing. It is somewhat pleasingly grim, as others mention, but at times it's so excessively harsh that it becomes self-parody; you know, for instance, what's going to happen when some newlyweds show up.

Naturally, it's all pretty nonsensical. Those who think HK movies are sloppy these days should watch some older movies to remind themselves just how loose the "scripts" on some of these movies were.

To top it all off, the subtitler is over-eager to demonstrate his knowledge of English cursing and drops an excessive number of f-bombs where they aren't really necessary.

Do I really need to sum up and say this is a poor movie?


Reviewed by: S.A. Winters
Date: 11/18/2002
Summary: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.......

THE GOOD – Hard as nails revenge drama has a policewoman on a single mission to avenge her fathers death. Some mean spirited stiff going on here, from both sides of the law, in true 80’s HK style. Contains a fight scene between a policewoman and two baddies that is one of the roughest throwdowns that I’ve seen in a while. It was worth the price of the dvd alone.
THE BAD – The last 30 seconds of the print I have seemed to be edited or just plain choppy which left the resolution to the film totally unsatisfying because I didn’t get to see what I wanted to see. ( I can’t say much more without giving away the ending)
THE UGLY – The first 5 minutes of the movie, the reason why our determine heroine is on this do or die mission, is so ludicrous that I could barely get over it and enjoy the movie. The main character, Sandra Ng, acts like someone out of “Aces Go Places”, holding a banana to a screaming psycho’s head and causing her fathers death. There have been some dumb set ups in HK films but this is just horrible, and the dad is Eddie Ko! Then, during the opening credits, she transforms into Dirty Harry!
The So-So – Stephen Chow shows up an hour into the film. You’re either groaning now or smiling. I like the guy, but he is too lightweight for a movie like this.


Reviewed by: MrBooth
Date: 12/24/2001
Summary: Surprisingly good, but took a while to win me over

Not sure what exactly this is meant to be a sequel to. It's broadly a Girls With Guns movie with Sandra Ng in the lead role, directed by Jeff Lau. Given this and the fact that Stephen Chiau has a small part, you might think it would be a silly comedy affair, but far from it... it's actually rather grim. I tend to have a low tolerance for movies where the hero's predicament that we're meant to be empathise with is clearly caused by their own stupidity, and here we have Sandra Ng making a couple of really stupid decisions that have a bunch of bad consequences. For quite a long time I failed to feel at all sorry for her, but somehow the movie managed to win me over eventually and I started to care.

The plot is basically revenge driven, with Sandra becoming a hard-assed CID type determined to pursue the criminals who killed her father, and pushing the boundaries of right & wrong in her pursuit of 'justice'. Ann Bridgewater has a great role as her colleague who gets caught up in her pursuit. Stephen Chiau doesn't really appear until past half way into the movie, but the role he has as the timid brother of bad guy Shing Fui On is a very good one. The chemistry between him & Sandra works really well.

For a long time I was quite set against the movie... Sandra's big hair and the terrible quality of the DVD didn't help matters, but eventually I got caught up in the dark plotline with it's non-black & white moral approach, and reluctantly found myself enjoying it a lot in the end. There are quite a few interesting ideas in there - especially the way some of the action scenes are filmed. In fact, the action scenes are surprisingly good, especially those with Anne Bridgewater (though Sandra Ng does pretty well too). The DVD looks like it was taken from a full frame VHS master, and the subtitles may be removable but they're not well translated. Still worth a look though.


Reviewed by: hkcinema
Date: 12/08/1999

Sandra and Stephen play wonderful serious dramatic roles and bothdo a bangup job. Stephen plays a cripple who falls for her tough-as-nails cop.

[Reviewed by Tsuzi]