Young and Dangerous 3 (1996)
Reviewed by: MilesC on 2000-08-02
Summary: Won't win new converts, but worth watching.
I was never a particularly big fan of the first two movies, so I didn't hurry to see this one... When I did finally get to it, though, I enjoyed it more than I expected to. Y&D are ultra-commercial youth films, and thus will always contain a certain degree of silliness, and this installment is no exception, with a lame amnesia sub-plot and Karen Mok's pointless (but fun) new character. But there are enough bright spots to overlook these problems; while Roy Cheung isn't on par with Anthony Wong or Francis Ng as an actor, he carries on the Y&D "colorful villain" tradition fine. As with the previous installments, it's simultaneously glitzy and grimy, and is fairly fast-paced for the most part. Several highly-unexpected deaths shake things up a bit. But the icing on the proverbial cake was, for me, the climax. While the first two movies were lacking in terms of climaxes, the third ends with what is probably the best gang fight scene I've ever seen. While Y&D 3 isn't a great movie all in all, it's well worth watching; I enjoyed it enough to watch it again sometime, which is more than I can probably say for parts four and five.