On the Run

Chui Pai and Heung Ming aim guns towards the camera

A clever, stylish and refreshingly inappropriate Hong Kong thriller from 1988, On the Run throws a beta-male together with the alpha contract killer who killed his wife and then stands back to ask whether they could ever have a relationship – the killer is a female, before you ask, this is 1988 after all. It’s the odd plot turns, the beautifully choreographed fights and the high-style 1980s Hong Kong looks that are the selling point here. Fighting to get himself ahead of all that is Yuen Biao as decent cop Heung Ming, a man pitied by his colleagues because his wife, a minxy homicide squad somebody, has left him and is now playing … Read more

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In

Louis Koo and Raymond Lam

Blade Runner, City of God, Charles Dickens? Funny the things that sprang to mind watching Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, a self-conscious attempt to replicate the Hong Kong urban crime movie of yore. It’s a dystopian actioner set in a shantytown and focused on a central character who you might characterise as a 21st century Oliver Twist. This recent arrival in Hong Kong is a refugee who gave all his money to a Mr Big (Sammo Hung) hoping for some decent forged papers, got fleeced and then wound up seeking sanctuary from the authorities in the Citadel, a vast, multi-storey warren of crime. From here Chan Lok-kwan (Raymond Lam) attempts, Oliver style, … Read more