Yee daam hung seon

City War is yet another Hong Kong-action flick with friendship, vengeance and honor as the main-ingredients. Chow Yun-Fat and Ti-Lung makes this a good movie, and its worth seeing if you like these films. But I would also like to mention that there are other far better Hong Kong-movies available like The Killer, Hard-Boiled and the A Better Tomorrow-series (chapter one and two).

City War is just another action flick from Hong-Kong, but it is viewable because Chow Yun-Fat is in it. 7,5/10

The second to last film of Shaw director Sun Chung's career reunites him with his long time best actor Ti Lung. It's also Chung's only effort to work in the new style action cinema of late 1980's Hong Kong.

The film has many of the hallmarks of HK cinema of the late 1980's and early 1990's, frenetic action, over the top near hysterical acting, stunt men being throw over all sorts of hard objects, extreme pessimism with the system and a feeling that chaos and crime is just around the corner. Distrust of Mainland China is a repeated theme as the HK criminals smuggle in assassins from there. While the character of "Dick", played by Chow Yun Fat, behaves like a clown at times and many of the early scenes reflect that, the film is really about as downbeat as one can get. If the citizens of Hong Kong really felt that the system was as bad as portrayed here, it a wonder anyone stayed there before China took over.

As a film it certainly has the solid and stylish direction that Sun Chung put into all his work even with the lower budget he clearly had to work with here. The action scenes are generally well done, better than other films of the time, but the plot leaves a bit to be desired. A fascinating husband and wife assassination team is introduced at the beginning of the film only to be seen going back to China by train in the middle, never to return. Why bother introducing them at all if the heroes are never going to battle them?

Not bad if you like this genre, the actors are great, and the film isn't too long.

Oddly enough, then I hadn't heard about "City War" (aka "Yee dam hung seon") before now in 2021, as I had the chance to sit down to watch it. And with it being a Hong Kong movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I jumped at the chance to watch it.

And with it being watched now, I must admit that "City War" was a fairly typical movie in the Hong Kong action genre. Sure, if you are new to these movies, then "City War" will prove to be quite interesting. But if you are familiar with the genre and have seen more than your share of the movies, then chances are that you will find "City War" to be just another generic run-of-the-mill action movie that are found in great abundance in this period of the Hong Kong cinema.

For me, it was the somewhat stale storyline that was holding the movie back, because the action sequences in the movie were definitely good, and there was quite a bit of action throughout the course of the movie. But the storyline was just a bit too generic and mundane to properly entertain me. Now, don't get me wrong here, because "City War" is certainly a watchable movie, it just wasn't and outstanding movie.

The movie did have some good lead actors to portray the main characters, those being Yun-Fat Chow and Lung Ti.

Writers Lu Tung, Wai Ting Leung and Kai-Cheung Chung just seemed to put their money on the safe bet and go for something that everyone else was doing at that time in the Hong Kong action cinema. And that made for a somewhat mundane addition to the genre.

My rating of "City War" lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars. If you enjoy Yun-Fat Chow movies, then there are far better action movies with him in the lead role.

Chow Yun-Fat and Ti Lung are a good team, and any film with these two actors in it has an automatic quality quotient. Without these two, City War would have been just another violent, blood-spattered look at the never ending-battle between good and evil as played out in the streets of Hong Kong.

Ti Lung plays Ken, a 20-year veteran cop with a temper who ten years ago shot not to kill but to capture a criminal named Ted (played with an astounding amount of malevolence by Norman Chu); Chow Yun-Fat as Dick Lee is a younger cop, a crack shot and skilled mediator who, though ten years less on the force, is his buddy's superior officer. When Ted gets out of prison the first thing he does (after an unsuccessful quasi-rape of his girlfriend) is go looking for the guy who sent him to prison. Hiring some Mainland baddies to do the dirty work, he plots his revenge but things go wrong and only Ken's wife and daughter are killed and his son seriously wounded.

Because of the way things happened leading to his son's injury, Ken blames his friend Dick for the mishap; Dick, in order to redeem himself in Ken's eyes, goes on a murderous rampage which sees bodies flying left and right.

The chemistry between Chow Yun-Fat and Ti Lung makes this film worth watching at least once. The final scenes in the bus terminal are violent enough for any HK action fan. For those sensitive to such things, there's a fair amount of violence involving women being beaten and shot and there is violence done to children in the storyline.

The character of Dick Lee is interesting, and there is a very erotic scene between Dick and his flame-of-the-moment in a discotheque. The real emotion though is reserved for the "until death do us part" relationship between Dick and Ken.

Rent it for the performances of the two leads. Just to see these two greats performing together is worth the time and money spent.

Ti Lung as Ken and Chow Yun-Fat as Dick are back as policeman only this time, Dick is the calm negotiator and Ken the hot head, flying off the handle. These guys are such good actors that they make their characters believable. City War has the usual very bad guys and lots of guns and bloody battles. But it also has some music and domestic scenes with Ken's family - and Ken's wife fixing Dick up with a woman and the funny scene with the two of them getting acquainted.

The scene of Chow dancing with the villains girlfriend Penny (before he knows who she is), is one of the most erotic ever in one of his films. This guy can do anything - he is just amazing and each film shows another of his great portrayals.

This is not a must have but for true CYF fans, or Ti Lung, it is one to see at least once.