Everyman chef Fat Goose (Sammo Hung, as if you couldn’t guess) witnesses the murder of a police officer by a gang of extortionists running an illegal brothel. Goose is persuaded by Officer Pitt (Vincent Wan) to testify against Hell (Tommy Wong), the perpetrator of the crime, but when Hell is released on bail and wants to silence the witness, Sammo’s Goose appears to be well and truly cooked...

TOUCH AND GO (Also known as POINT OF NO RETURN, apparently) is an odd film for many reasons. First and foremost, it really doesn’t feel like a Ringo Lam film. Secondly, it stars Sammo Hung, who was truly going off the boil, creatively-speaking. Both men were suffering from poor social standing following insensitive comments or movie decisions at the time of this film. I don’t know if this was enough to sink the film, but make no mistake, it WAS a bomb.

Sammo returns to playing the kind of everyday loser he played in so many of his 80s films. He is the kind of man who pays prostitutes to pretend to be his girlfriend while he visits his over zealous mother in her retirement home, which is more endearing than creepy (but if you haven’t seen it, you’ll have to take my word for it). When he points the finger at the murderer only to see him leave the police station virtually a free man, his cowardly self-preservation is also quite realistic and strangely likeable. That’s one of this film’s main strengths, its likeable characters. Pitt, the cop who takes responsibility for Fat Goose, is suffering the loss of a friend after the gang kills the officer that starts the movie. He lives with his reporter sister Angel (Teresa Mo) in endearingly simple domestic chaos. The characters evolve quite nicely, with Pitt losing some of his uptight nature when he meets one of the victims of the sex trade (and former “girlfriend” of the villainous Hell) and even starts stealing stuff with her from a hotel room they share when surveying the gangsters’ hideout.

The film looks strangely rough for a Ringo Lam film, but there are plenty of nice touches and a fair amount of action. In particular, there are a series of really dangerous looking fire stunts throughout the movie and it looks like the actors themselves were in the thick of it. Although Billy Chow appears, he is sadly underused and only takes a few scant frames of film. But it’s certainly a cut above most of Sammo’s output from the period, even if it wasn’t necessarily a cut above Lam’s. As with most action flicks from the era, there is a fair amount of humour in here, and believe it or not, it’s all inoffensive stuff (except for a couple of toilet jokes) and some of it is pretty darn funny. If you’ve never seen this and been put off by its reputation, my advice is to give it a try. I think it’s greater than the sum of its parts, and I found myself thoroughly enjoying it.