City War (1988)
Reviewed by: TequilaYuen on 2000-06-11
Summary: mid eighties action cheese!
This film is so eighties! but i love it anyway, the same way i like Predator, Lethal Weapon andThe Running Man. The eighties were all about cheesy action. But this film has something all the others don't....Chow Yun Fat!

Yun-Fat plays Dick Lee, a hk police negotiator. Always under his control Is Ti Lung, as a veteran hot-head cop with a personal grudge against the criminals he cathes. All hell breaks loose when a criminal (named Ted -HA!) Ti Lung put away gets out of prison, and slaughters Lungs family. Thrown into the mix, Yun Fat is romancing Ted's disenchanted girlfriend.

What i like about this film is it would have been instantly forgettable if is wasn't for the two leads, they both ooze charisma. Yun-Fat's character is obviously modeled after Don Johnson on Miami vice (white suits, pink and blue lighting of Miami nightclubs). Ted's girlfriend wears hideous white sunglasses and a matching polka dot dress looking like an extra in a Wham
video.
The film is also pretty gritty and violent, the Ted character is very believable, especially whenhe is trying to romance his g/f as he burns himself with a cigarette. The slaughter of Lungs family at machinegun point is extremely brutal, and shown in loving detail. But as one assasin takes a header off of a roof with Lungs child in hand, i couldn't help but laugh. The dummy child is horrible!

The finale to this film pulls out all the stops, extremely violent, includes Ti Lung being hit with a fireaxe and Chow yun Fat eating more bullets than he did in a better tomorrow. Beware of the end titles, a paragraph comes up at the end giving some sort of epilogue to the film, however it is not subtitled. If anyone has any info on this, please mail me (Tequila_Yuen@hotmail.com). All in all- good heroic bloodshed fare.