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¸sÀsÀ¸»ñ (1989)
Pedicab Driver


Reviewed by: cal42
Date: 07/05/2008
Summary: Melodrama aside, this is FANTASTIC!

PEDICAB DRIVER marks the end of Sammo Hung’s greatest period as both star and director with a mighty bang. Although it seems at times to be a little over-ambitious in its storytelling, with several seemingly unrelated threads working parallel with each other, it does actually work most of the time.

The movie’s opening is definitely one of the finest pieces of Hong Kong cinema, and I defy anyone to disagree. The setting is Macau in the 1930s; two rival gangs of pedicab (passenger-carrying tricycles similar to rickshaws) drivers meet in a teahouse for negotiations, divvying up passengers. The discussion is bitter and hostile, but the two parties eventually reach a cordial agreement. Just as they are able to shake hands on their new deal, the teashop owner, chasing a cat not visible to the gangs, leaps into view brandishing a deadly meat cleaver. Both gangs mistake this for an ambush and a fight ensues. The clash is reminiscent of the barroom brawl from Jackie Chan’s PROJECT A, and features breathtaking action and fantastic inventiveness (there’s even a “lightsaber” duel with two fluorescent lighting strips!). This scene, as well as being incredibly exciting, also underlines Sammo’s generosity behind the camera – instead of hogging the limelight, he lets the others take the lion’s share of screen time for the duration.

After such an adrenaline rush, what follows immediately after could seem a huge let-down: baker Fong (Suen Yuet) tries to court his employee Ah Bing (Nina Li Chi) even though he’s old enough to be her father, while Tung (Sammo Hung) has much the same intention. Well, it’s Nina Li Chi - that’s pretty much EVERY man’s intention.

Anyway, there’s also Master Ng (John Shum playing very much against type), a man so thoroughly evil he would make Hitler look reasonable. Seriously, he’s the most snarlingly evil pantomime villain in Hong Kong cinema, and there have been quite a few over the years. He is a pimp, and in one scene one of his workers is giving birth. He and his men kill the girl’s father (Dick Wei – so you know there are going to be a few fireworks before the end) in front of her as the baby’s being born, then tells them to throw the offspring in the river if it’s a boy and to take it back to the brothel if it’s a girl. He then tells the woman to get back to work.

Last but not least, we have fellow pedicab driver Malted Candy (Max Mok) and his romance with Hsiu Tsui (Fennie Yuen). It’s a somewhat melodramatic affair, this relationship, and is your typical Chinese tragic love story, complete with Cantopop song sung over a montage of the couple falling in love. I don’t know what Malted Candy was expecting of the poor girl. After all, he was initially attracted to her because she reminded him of a character from a pornographic novel he was reading.

While these story threads are certainly only diversions from the main spectacle (the fights), they do seem to enhance the film, and I hold this opinion despite my cynical and jaded nature. Actually, the love story between the star-crossed lovers only seems bearable while you’re watching the film – when you think about it before and after viewing the film it all seems so tackily contrived.

The action scenes are scattered sparingly throughout the film, but the one that stands out has no relevance to the plot whatsoever. Sammo crashes a gambling den and is challenged to fight the boss. Big deal, you might think, except the boss turns out to be Lau Kar-Leung and the fight is stunning. The time that passed between this and his Shaw Brothers heyday seems to have been kind to Lau, and no doubt out of respect for the elder, Hung lets Lau’s character win the bout.

The dramatic events that unfold near the end of the film pay off when Sammo and Rice Pudding (Mang Hoi) take revenge on Master Ng. I argue that the reliance on melodrama gives the film the right tone for this climax as Sammo goes apeshit at Ng’s mansion, taking on pretty much his entire gang (including Billy Chow – always worth watching in a Hung directed film) in a way that only Sammo knows how.

PEDICAB DRIVER is one of the finest examples of 80s action in a Hong Kong film, and as many people cite that decade as the most impressive in turns of action choreography, that’s quite a recommendation. It’s frustrating that the movie isn’t out on DVD yet (legitimately, anyway) as it deserves a much higher profile. No doubt it’ll turn up one day, and those action scenes will blow away a whole new generation of fans.

Reviewer Score: 9

Reviewed by: dandan
Date: 03/15/2007
Summary: sammo's hidden gem...

tung (sammo hung), malted candy (max mok), san cha cake (lowell lo) and rice pudding (mang hoi) are four friends who live in macau and drive pedicabs. whilst rice pudding has a family to take care of, and san sha cake spends his time in the local brothel, tung and malted candy are falling in love. tung has fallen for ping (nina li), one of the girls who works at his auntie's bakery, malted candy for siu chui (fennie yuen), after accidentally running her down with his pedicab. things seem to be going pretty well for the four friends, but a run in with master 5 (an exceptionally vile john shum), the local triad boss, leads to tragedy and revenge...

this is a quality slice of sammo; his direction, choreography and performance are all tight. a relatively sedate start to the film allows for some character development before things really kick off, both dramatically and action-wise. some of sammo's other films have had darker elements, but this is easily the darkest; the comic relief is kept to a minimum and themes such as social responsibility and morality punctuate the drama.

as for the action, well, it is pretty full on and every punch, kick and fall looks like they hurt. there's a grand tea-shop fight to open proceedings, followed by a pedicab chase, which ends up with sammo fighting liu chia-liang, and a string of fights between sammo, max mok, mang hoi and master 5's men, who include corey yuen, eddie maher and a hard-kicking billy chow.

the cast are universally great and the film is littered with cameos from the likes of alfred cheung, maria cordero, lam ching-ying, dick wei and eric tsang. all of which adds up to be pretty damn good.

it's a shame that there is no official dvd of this film available (i watched a bootleg, mastered from an old vcd release, with burnt in subs); the sooner someone releases one, the better...


Reviewed by: ewaffle
Date: 02/23/2006

“Pedicab Driver” is an over the top soap opera in which one set of formerly star-crossed lovers dies not quite in each others arms and another pair is reunited on the very last frame of the movie. It takes a long look at working class life in Macao in the 1950s, as interpreted by the gaze of Hong Kong in 1989, with pedicab drivers, bakery workers and prostitutes at the center of the story. There are two beautifully choreographed and executed fight scenes both involving Sammo Hong. The first fight is with Liu Chai-Lang in which the combatants use kung fu and pole fighting. The second is Sammo against an entire gang of thugs—it is as brutal, fierce and deadly as anything on the Jade screen in the late 1970s. Some of the close-ups during this battle give as real a sense of the desperation and ruthlessness of hand to hand combat and some of the falls taken by the stuntmen must have really hurt.

The themes of “Pedicab Driver” are voiced by Bing when she says that “Everyone is a victim of social circumstances” and by a couple of the drivers when they talk about how men are ultimately responsible for prostitution. This takes place after the break-up of a completely disastrous dinner with the two new couples—Malted Candy and Siu Chui, Fatty Tung and Bing, plus several other drivers and the owner of the lunch cart who is responsible for the meal. While there couldn’t be a good time to discover that the woman you love is a prostitute, finding it out during a dinner arranged to introduce her to your close friends and being told by one of them that he paid to sleep with her a few hours ago may be one of the very worst. To underline the plight of women as shown here, Bing says that she wishes she could be a whore, since it would be much better than a bakery worker—especially a bakery worker who gets leered at, pawed and slobbered over the her boss. Macau in the 1950s among those who live from day to day was a tough place. Bing is further identified as someone who has to work in the city in order to support a family back in the provinces when she tells her boss Fong (a note-perfect portrayal by Suen Yuet) that she can’t afford to buy anything because she has to go to the bank and send her remittance.

The depiction of the life of a prostitute in a brothel is stark and unflinching. The john comes to the door, tells Uncle Fe that he can only afford a cheap girl and is sent to the last room where Siu Chui awaits. She tells him to undress, partially disrobes herself, lies down and tells him that kissing is not allowed. From the time the trick walked into the room until he walked out is probably about five minutes. Siu Chui gets her cut of the five dollar fee from Uncle Fe and asks how much she will have to pay Master 5 to buy her way out of the brothel. Even though it is several hundred dollars she still tells two of the other girls that she has to quit because she has met a wonderful guy.

The guy is Malted Candy who has fallen in love with Siu. They “meet cute”—cute and painful, since he runs into her in his pedicab. He is taken with her from the first, happily peddling her around the city and buying her a new pair of shoes to replace those that got crushed in the accident. Later there is a lyrical interlude with sappy music in the background, movie shorthand for the rapture of infatuation.

The scene in which the lovers are almost forcibly reunited was moving, poignant and quite original. Malted Candy had gone to the brothel to tell Siu that he loved her no matter what and that he still wanted to marry her. She refused to believe him—which made sense because he had driven her from the celebratory party earlier that evening. Both of them used the term “forget the past” during this scene but in completely different ways. Malted Candy meant that he would forget what he had learned that day and would remember only his love and wanted her to do the same. Bing, being much more practical and closer to the reality of the situation meant that they should forget everything that happened since they first met and were meeting now simply as prostitute and customer—that he should pay her, have sex with her and leave.

When Malted Candy returns to her, he is being carried by the drivers—being borne spread-eagled, almost like a sacrifice. They tell her he is dead—that he couldn’t live without her and wanted to die in her presence. Siu is persuaded to admit that if she would marry him if he were still alive—and he is, of course. The two of them, having gone through more emotional upheaval in a day than many people do in a lifetime, are now deliriously happy with each other, a state that cannot last in a movie like this. Being that happy is simply a prelude to being dead.

The end of the movie was thrilling. Fatty Tung has already shown that he is a master with his hands, feet and various weapons. Now he goes after the well guarded and completely egregious Master 5. He begins by making short work—very short—of several bodyguards. One punch or kick each is all it takes for them, then moves on to a much tougher thug, the guy who was the leader of the chopper wielding toughs who sent doomed lovers on their final journey together. When Fatty Tung is finished with him he is not only defeated but dead. The next opponent is the lead thug and the brother of the man that Fatty just killed. He is very big, skilled, ruthless and fit and is within an inch of beating Tung. He doesn’t, of course, and his dispatch leads finally to the creepy and cowardly Master 5 who is fittingly betrayed by his father and beaten to death.

This last sequence of fights was Sammo Hung at his best. They fought up and down a long staircase, jumped or were thrown from a high balcony and used whatever weapons that came to hand. It was meticulously staged and choreographed with the action building and becoming more brutal with the entry of each new participant in the carnage. Close-ups were used to heighten intensity of the battles and purple bruise make-up was liberally applied—these punches and kicks were supposed to hurt.

“Pedicab Driver” is a very good movie with well drawn characters. It is easy to feel empathy for the plight of the hard working drivers—things begin with the most recent chapter in what seems to be a long running jurisdictional dispute over which set of drivers carry passengers and which carry cargo—and the people around them. They have to be tough but also fall in love, get hurt and bounce back. The bad guys couldn’t be much worse—we first meet Master 5 when his gang beats a man to death while his wife is giving birth on the floor next to him. He then orders the wife (now widow of about ten minutes) to be taken to the brothel and the newborn raised to be a prostitute if a girl and thrown into the river if a boy. The characters wind up in situations that make sense within the overheated context of the setting and deal with them in ways that also make sense. While not quite a masterpiece it is well worth seeing.

Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: mrblue
Date: 10/26/2005

A pedicab driver, "Fatty" Tung (Hung), along with one his friends, Malted Candy (Mok), find love in 1930's Macao. Unfortunately, Malted Candy's girlfriend (Yuen) is a prositiute owned by a local crime lord, Master 5 (Shum), who doesn't want to let go of his "merchandise" that easily and so he kills them on their wedding night. Tung goes out for revenge of his friend.

Pedicab Driver was the first "true" Sammo Hung movie I had seen. I'd seen some of the "three brothers" stuff he did with Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao, and a bit of his US TV series Martial Law. What always impressed me is how damn agile Hung was. To paraphrase Pulp Fiction, "I wouldn't go so far as to call the brother fat." But for a guy his size, damn, Sammo can move... he also has a great sense of humor and Pedicab Driver showcases both these talents.

The movie kicks off with a huge brawl between the taxi and pedicab drivers (complete with a duel where flourescent lights are used like lightsabers) and it only gets better from there. The next big action sequence starts off as a chase, where Sammo gets to show off his considerable stunt skills (and his pedicab gets chopped to bits in the process), and ends in a great, and I mean great, duel between Tung and the head of a gambling house (Lau). You might not think that a fight between a portly guy and a 55-year-old man would be that exciting, but this one sure as hell is. Hung and Lau beat the crap out of each other for a few minutes (during which one of the best badly translated subs is played -- "You, fatty, with thick face have hurt my instep!") and then pick up poles and beat each other up with those for a while. It's a great scene that ranks right up there with the Jackie Chan/Ken Lo fight at the end of Drunken Master 2.

I won't ruin any more of the movie for you, but it ends with a great brawl where Sammo takes on several guys and a somewhat unconventional ending. Pedicab Driver is a great movie from start to finish (though I could have done without the sickly-sweet musical montage in the middle) and I highly recommend it to any martial arts fan.

[review from www.hkfilm.net]


Reviewed by: pjshimmer
Date: 12/19/2002
Summary: Great movie

Granted, the beginning is as dull as watching paint dry, but the rest of the movie is good drama and heartpounding action.

I'm not sure why this is considered Sammo's greatest achievement. It will never be so long as there exist a thing called "Prodigal Son."

The action is nothing compared to the likes of "A Book of Heroes," but it's still some of the best ever. HK action rules.

[8/10]


Reviewed by: Inner Strength
Date: 11/16/2002
Summary: Okay

A classic to a lot of people, but I was never a fan of this one. Sammo had some good fight scenes in this, but when it comes to down to everything it’s clear that Sammo didn’t have many ideas.

2.5/5


Reviewed by: SUPERCOP
Date: 12/27/1999
Summary: One of Sammo's best.....

Generally considered to be Sammo Hung's finest accomplishment, this diversly mixed film set in the 1930's features all of Hung's trademarks set within a tightly edited storyline. Hung, Mok, and Meng star as a trio of lowly pedicab drivers who must face numerous trials and tribulations in their quests for love and adventure in post-war Macau. Featuring a finely textured screenplay which successfully combines comedy, drama, and action (penned by the late writer Barry Wong), along with some of the most fast paced and brutal martial arts choreography in recent memory (including a bout between Hung and Shaw Bro. vet Lau Kar-leung), this film is a classic in the HK cinema genre, and is one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.


Reviewed by: jfierro
Date: 12/21/1999

Regular guy Samo Hung tries to gain the affection of a girl, but must compete with her rich boss. Fellow pedicab driver Benny Mok pursues a romance of his own, but a secret threatens to destroy his love just as it starts. Some great fight scenes, but a pretty uneven movie.


Reviewed by: hokazak
Date: 12/09/1999

A couple of pedicab drivers fall in love, but trouble also crossestheir paths. In the end, it is Sammo taking revenge in incredible style! (Some amazingly choreographed major fight scenes, by Sammo Hung). Notable moments: the great stick fight with Lau Kar-Leung, the light-saber scene, Sammo's acrobatic death-delivering blow.


Reviewed by: hkcinema
Date: 12/08/1999

The 'popular' style film that has everything for me. I'm not a big fan of "Project A" and it's legacy but in this film Sammo Hung has changed his usual subject matter and style and provided the goods. It defies genre quite skillfully, rather than having a bit of everything - everything seems to co-exist without boundarys. The 'bad-guy' is at the same time both ridiculous and totally serious, i'm not sure if it was meant to be this way? Great action and some very funny gags. There are two highlights of the film for me : One is the Liu Chia Liang cameo. Sammo fights Liu and after a close fought opening round, he mocks Liu's older style ... so Liu Chia Liang beats him sensless in the most complex bit of pole fighting you'll see for a long time, quite rightly too. Two is Fennie Yuen ...all the performances are well judged but she shines out as a class of her own. The scene where she refuses Benny Moks apologies after the'dinner table incident' (i wont give it away)is a stirling peice of serious acting. There is no need to mention her stirling looks either. The ending sequence storms off without any regard for the style of the earlier film either, Hollywood studio execs would have a nightmare trying to classify this one, although I have seen the tag "Sammo's out to get even" ...someone needs to get a brain.

[Reviewed by Andrew Best]


Reviewed by: spinali
Date: 12/08/1999
Summary: NULL

Pedicabbers Fat Tung (Samo Hung) and his pal fall in love with a bun-maker and (unwittingly) a whore, (Nina Li, Fennie Yuen), and get into trouble with a triad boss along the way. The only worthwhile things are the action sequences (including lots of fast-motion fights and chases (including a car chasing Samo on pedicab)) -- and of course the bone-itchingly lovely female leads.

(1.5/4)



[Reviewed by Steve Spinali]

Reviewer Score: 3