The Big Holdup (1975)
Reviewed by: cal42 on 2007-09-29
Summary: Hectic crime thriller
A gang of young robbers steal HK$5,000,000 as it is being transferred from a bank and get promptly ratted on by their boss, Maiguang (Tin Ching). Maiguang then, just as promptly, gets knocked off by his boss. The youngsters, now fugitives from the law, try to piece together what went wrong as they evade the law.

THE BIG HOLDUP is meant to be a taut crime thriller from veteran director Chor Yuen. The first half hour typifies exactly why I love Hong Kong cinema yet sometimes find it so frustrating – the pace never lets up for a second, and packs in so much energy for a full-length film in its own right. Unfortunately, as is quite often the case, this results in one hell of a confusing mess, as characters are introduced with scarcely a line of dialogue, people are casually bumped-off and betrayals are heaped on betrayals.

Thankfully, the second half hour calms down considerably and the film gets a chance to breathe. We find that each of the five fugitives have a good reason to turn from the path of the righteous into a life of crime (we hitherto couldn’t care whether they lived or died – another failing of the earlier act of the film). We have Chen Kuan-Tai as Ma Rulong, who, in a rare non-action role, actually plays an action film star who has fallen on hard times (the scene where he gets screwed over by his film studio is probably not far from the truth), Danny Lee as Jiuzai who just wants to feed his siblings away from their father who is psychotically addicted to cigarettes (that’s what it says in the subtitles, anyway). Elsewhere, we have the former racing driver whose wife has just six months to life but longs for a world cruise and a pair of brothers in trouble with the Triads.

After the backstories have been told, we come back to the present day and rejoin the characters as they fight for survival. The final half hour deals with each member’s varying fate.

If you can make it past the first half hour of this film you might find some enjoyment here, but generally THE BIG HOLDUP feels rather predictable. Incidentally, there is no “holdup” in this film, which I found rather disappointing; I was expecting a kind of early PEOPLE'S HERO. The directorial style seems a bit hackneyed as well now, with a lot of interior shots with overhead lights swinging dramatically where they don’t really have a need to swing at all. In any event, it’s unlikely you’re going to stumble on this film by accident, so avoiding it shouldn’t be a problem. If you do want to seek it out, it’s probable that you already know exactly what you’re getting.
Reviewer Score: 5