Pom Pom And Hot Hot: Quick Takes

Unrelated to the Pom Pom films starring Richard Ng and John Shum, Joe Cheung returns to the directing chair but makes the worst of the two movies contained within Pom Pom And Hot Hot, giving us off the wall humour (or rather off the plot humour) that interacts little to not at all with the minute gangster plot. Filler like mahjong playing, urine throwing, and limp romance logically actually fills the time, albeit in a devastatingly, boring manner while the pairing of Jacky Cheung and Stephen Tung is a failed one. Cheung is briefly a good energizer bunny to Tung's straight man and if Pom Pom And Hot Hot could've stuck to a strict buddy cop-formula, it wouldn't have been as much of a chore.

However action directors Stephen Tung and Benz Kong takes over at select points and the ending, thus creating a fine reference material for the heroic bloodshed genre. It turns into fantasy scenarios, evident in the incredible acrobatics of the Lam Ching Ying character but the 90s cannon of gunplay Hong Kong action benefited from these ventures, even in Wong Jing's films. No one will blame you for skipping the first 80 minutes of this one though. Also with Alfred Cheung and Rachel Lee in a supporting double act not too distanced from Her Fatal Ways, only with Cheung in command this time. Austin Wai and Bonnie Fu appears as well.