Whatever the faults of Hong Kong action cinema, editing certainly isn’t one of them, and one of the people responsible is editor extraordinaire Marco Mak Chi-sin. His directorial debut, The Blood Rules, has the pace and rhythm one would expect from a picture helmed by one of the best editors in the business. The weak link, as usual, is a less-than-credible plot, though the script penned by Richard Yuen Sai-sang and Andy Lo Yiu-fai deserves points for injecting more personality than is customary in crime capers of this sort.

The gang of four behind the crime spree is a disparate lot. One wonders how they came together and remained a cohesive whole, but perhaps that is another movie. Mike (Michael Wong Man-tak) is a handsome, middle class family man with a doting wife and child. Q (Jackie Lui Chung-yin) is an impetuous tough guy in love with an opportunistic floozy. The voluptuous Kwun (Suki Kwan Sau-mei) is deadly with a gun and carries a torch for Mike. Suet (Lam Suet) is the coarsest of the lot but displays a surprisingly tender side, his two passions being Kwun and tropical fish.

It is this last aspect that gives the movie a unique quality. From the aquarium-based opening credits to the final shoot-out among huge tanks, the fish motif adds visual flair and hints at some psychological depth to the implausible relationships and situations.

The most interesting characters are the subsidiary ones. Au Kam-tong leaves a strong impression as a quirky detective while Tin Yui-nei, the Delilah to Q’s Samson, is the very personification of femme fatale. Most impressive is veteran director/actor Wong Tin-lam as Uncle Lam, the corpulent mastermind who, not unlike a Chinese Sydney Greenstreet, pulls the strings while indulging his taste for “smelly bean curd”.

There are plenty of nifty action scenes, masterfully edited by Poon Hung (though one imagines the director had something to say in the matter). But the overall effect is blunted by the ridiculousness of some of the scenes. The biggest laugh, entirely unintentional, was generated when Mike offers to donate blood for Kwun’s makeshift transfusion. “I’m also type O, no problem,” he grimly states, his serious countenance fueling viewers’ guffaws.

The Blood Rules’ Chinese title, which means “guild rules”, is identical with a classic 1979 production (known in English as The System) which otherwise bears no relation to its Y2K counterpart. The theme of “rules” and the issue of honour among thieves are subtexts of The Blood Rules, giving the movie an extra dimension but never explored with the insight or profundity that might have made this a modern classic.

2 1/2 Stars

This review is copyright (c) 2000 by Paul Fonoroff. All rights reserved. No part of the review may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.