Leofwine_draca
IN THE LINE OF DUTY III: FORCE OF THE DRAGON is the third of an excellent series of Hong Kong action films about female cops kicking ass in the city. The first two had Michelle Yeoh as lead actress, but for this instalment she was replaced by the great Cynthia Khan, who would stay on for the rest of the series. Khan is very much Yeoh's equal in the high-kicking action stakes, and she's a fine actress too.FORCE OF THE DRAGON is a high point in a series packed full of them. In fact, the first four films of this series are simply great, and this one has more intense action scenes than in many a rival Hollywood flick from the time. Khan and her allies (including Hiroshi Fujioka as an imported Sonny Chiba-alike, complete with '70s hair do) go after a couple of Japanese jewel thieves who have nefarious plans to smuggle arms to Japan's Red Army.It's pretty much wall to wall action here from beginning to end, and it's expertly choreographed by Brandy Yuen, one of Yuen Woo-ping's brothers. Although the action is near non-stop, none of it ever feels tiresome or repetitive, and instead it remains electrifying throughout. The fights are incredibly hard-hitting and the use of wirework to show characters being tossed around like rag dolls is very effective.Fans of Hong Kong cinema will spot plenty of familiar faces here, including Melvin Wong and cameos from three of the LUCKY STARS performers, but best of the lot is Dick Wei in another villain performance. Wei is the most intense and violent I've seen him yet in the fighting stakes, leading to an incredible climax that has to be seen to be believed.
david-sarkies
This is a series of Hong Kong action movies staring Cynthia Khan, a fairly famous Hong Kong actress. As with many Hong Kong movies, it is not the plot or the theme that matters, but rather the action. This is a typical movie, except the leading character is a woman, and this makes things interesting. The woman is promoted to the detective department and her uncle, who is also her guardian, runs it. As such he decides to keep her safe, even though it has been shown that she can seriously handle herself in dangerous situations.The bad guys in this movie are three members of the Red Army from Japan. They make a deal with a Japanese jewellery king and rob one of his exhibitions. During the flight, the partner of a cop is killed, and he vowels vengeance. They flee to Hong Kong, but discover that the jewellery is fake, and vowel vengeance on the jewellery king. The cop also travels to Hong Kong to deal with these terrorist.Once again, this seems to follow a theme of Hong Kong movies: the police are very friendly to each other, to the point of incompetence: all except for Cynthia Kahn, who simply wants to be on the team. In a nutshell, this is a fairly good movie - the action, martial arts and everything else is there, but it is quite standard. I still enjoyed it, but thought Naked Killer was a billion times better.
Gatto
There's never enough of Cynthia's fighting or her lovely face. I love watching her fight.I think that she's so beautiful. She would be a great candidate for a long shot of her face. Notice the long shot on Shu Qi in Millennium Mambo, or the shorter long shots of her in So Close. Tarentino used that well with Pam Grier in Pulp Fiction. The 8 minute opening of Natalie Portman's face in Free Zone was pure bliss.The scene at the beginning where she rips her skirt to fight the bad guy, wow.What I couldn't tolerate was the horrible dubbing. I didn't know they spoke Cantonese in Japan.The love scene was so HK. I'm from HK. It wasn't sensuous, it wasn't realistic, it wasn't believably passionate. The love scenes in Tampopo were shockingly erotic and passionate. The sex scenes in Korea's Bad Guy made me feel such genuine disgust, but it was real.Logic, are at least a semi-smooth flow of credible story line, was missing.That leaves nothing but more Cynthia. I don't know, maybe I'm just gushing. For me, never enough Cynthia.
fertilecelluloid
Hong Kong action films of the Eighties were so bloody tough and so beautifully made, especially films that had budgets (like this one).Against the bland, CGI-driven Hollywood action flicks of the Noughties, a film like IN THE LINE OF DUTY 3 looks like an artifact from another planet.Everything you see was done for real. Every sequence was staged by stunties who risked their lives.There is an amazing relationship between two Japanese lovers (Michiko Nishiwaki and Stuart Ong) in this mind-blowing film. Ong is dying of leukeamia, and in one scene, they make love while Ong's hair comes off in Nishiwaki's hand. Later, after Ong is killed, Nishiwaki vows a brutal revenge that we clearly understand because we've been intimate with them.It is this kind of attention to nuance that lifts this Arthur Wong-Brandy Yuen-directed pic to classic status.Cynthia Khan, debuting as D & B Films' replacement for Michaelle Khan, does a terrific job as a cop assaulted at ever juncture by the murderous villains.A sequence involving a jewellery heist is one of the best of its kind and possesses a kineticism rarely seen in any films these days.Ditto an incredibly violent and realistic fight sequence between genre stalwart Dick Wei and Hiroshi Fujioka's hardcore cop.Relentless, operatic and explosive.
AD
