 |  |  | | | Five mainland thugs, led by Lam Wai, plan a day trip to HK for a jewelry shop robbery, which goes horribly wrong. While basically animals loyal only to each other, they occasionally show a little humanity. This film is simply stunning, although the first half-hour is rather slow. The later City On Fire was clearly inspired by this one, and it seems likely that John Woo used this film as a blueprint for movies such as The Killer. If anything, Woo's gunfire ballads look pretty tame compared with Long Arm's straightforward documentary feel and brutal honesty. Clearly a big success, this film spawned at least three sequels I could trace. Ultimately very grim, but highly recommended. | | LOG IN TO COMMENT ON THIS REVIEW! |
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| The Hong Kong of 1984 appears to have been an incredibly cheesy time and place to have lived in. Pink sweatsuits on men, hideous stock soundtracks, bullets removed from wounds undeformed and unspent, surveillance cameras producing grainy-looking copies of the actual movie, and security monitors being shot out instead of cameras or tape decks. Despite the heavily dated and cheesy aspects of Long Arm of the Law, it is an exciting and revealing look at Mainlanders who seek their fortunes illegally in Hong Kong. The characters and their motivations are developed well enough to make them involving, but Johnny Mak never lets us forget that they're dangerous, brutal, unrepentant criminals. The use of amateur actors adds to the realism, giving us average, not-necessarily-attractive characters instead of brooding, pretty-boy anti-heroes. Despite a middle section that could stand to be tightened up by a few minutes, the last half-hour really cements the movie's reputation; the finale is particularly good, making absolutely brilliant use of confined spaces to create a sense of terror and desperation. Some of the long takes of Lam Wai desperately running through tunnel-like alleyways looking for a way out are heart-stopping. For all its '80s kitsch, Long Arm of the Law is a film well-deserving or its reputation. |
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| | | | | One of the best Hong Kong action movies I have ever seen. This movie is very grim and very violent. A gang of Mainland Chinese plan to get rich quick by crossing into Hong Kong to do a big jewelry heist. Unfortunately things do not go according to plan and slowly spins out of control. The action scenes are done very well. Two of my favorite scenes include the killing of the policemen, which results in his body sliding across the crowded ice rink. The second is the shootout with the police in the maze of the Kowloon City slum. This is very 80's film not only in terms of fashion and how the film looks but how it depicts Mainland Chinese. More than ten years before the 1997 hand over, there is distinct them and us attitude. All the Mainland characters in this film are either criminals or prostitutes. | | LOG IN TO COMMENT ON THIS REVIEW! |
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