| A co-production between Golden Harvest and Australia's The Movie Company, this generally silly and cheesy actioner that is just an excuse for Jimmy Wang Yu to wreck havoc in Sydney thankfully plays matters firmly tongue in cheek. Because if they wanted to be a serious player in world cinema, challenging James Bond, Dirty Harry, Steve McQueen and the likes, this would've today had the tally of a production with its head up its ass. Jimmy is Inspector Fang Sing-Ling who's supposed to extradite courier Chan (action director Sammo Hung) from Australia to Hong Kong but has his sights set on the bigger fish in the pond. Namely powerful crimelord Wilton (George Lazenby, coming off very well in the fight scenes as well as performing one bravura fire stunt). Australia's finest and also most laid back pair of cops (Roger Ward and Hugh Keays-Byrne) try their best to keep up in between playing pool, drinking beer and eating hot dogs...
With wonderfully shameful dialogue to get our invincible, heroic hero into bed with several white women (including Ros Spiers, when she's not hang-gliding her way through the flick), this is certainly action-entertainment of the risque kind as it doesn't dabble in the most politically correct areas. Then again, director Brian Trenchard-Smith has no problem getting the audience on board for a ride that is meant to show off the land of Australia, its very talented stuntmen (especially one car chase is tour de force-stuff) the intensity of Jimmy Wang Yu violently bashing his way through a million bad henchmen (almost getting killed an equal number of times but a veterinarian taking care of him says he finds his internal will extraordinary) and a stock-plot to lift the necessary beats out of any potential boredom despite a 100 minute running time. Totally irresponsible but a very fun effort out of the mold of the buddy cop actioner, The Man From Hong Kong also sports a number of your favourite Hong Kong stuntmen later turned actors/directors and the number one hit single "Sky High" by Jigsaw. |
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