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夜車 (1980)
The Happenings


Reviewed by: STSH
Date: 12/25/2001
Summary: Some style but little substance

This is an odd film. A fairly big budget film made by Yim Ho with the resources of Golden Harvest, using a lead cast of mostly unknowns. The first half hour is dull, and looks like a low-rent ripoff of Saturday Night Fever. Things change abruptly from dull to harrowing during the long scene at the service station, around the time of the fatal fight.

From this point, the story seems to cover similar ground to Tsui Hark's stunning DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS, though handled with nowhere near as much skill or violence.

Despite what might have been a change for the better, I was tired of these unsympathetic and rather stupid characters by that time. The ending is hysterical and looks silly rather than dramatic.

Yim Ho's direction is, of course, of quite a high standard, and there is some high-grade cinematography in places, but the story and acting contain little if anything which is original or surprising.

Probably of interest only to Yim Ho completists.

Reviewer Score: 3