Hak pau tin ha

(1993) Black Panther Warriors (In Chinese with English subtitles) ACTION/ COMEDY

Cheesy action film from Hong Kong involving five characters who possess super abilities such as defying gravity shooter who is actor Tony Leung Ka Fei, defying gravity card thrower played by Simon Yam, defy knife thrower played by Carrie Ng, and a female sword expert played by Brigitte Lin and the person who organized the gang together played by known bad guy Alan Tang but plays a good guy this time which they can levitate on the air and fight for several minutes at a time hired to retrieve n envelope unaware that they were only double crossed. Not a huge fan of action using wires and the comedy routines are not funny, almost to the point of silliness. It is because of those reasons this film gets a negative rating.

Spectacular if ultimately silly and fairly incoherent (in its USA version, at least) action fest from HK – a gang of specialty assassins (gunplay, martial arts, swordplay, computer hacking, etc) are hired by the Black Panther to steal a box from a police evidence locker, with a variety of nefarious and back-story motives being eventually revealed. A barrage of atrociously silly, mostly sexual, humor diminishes the narrative focus, but the film has some gorgeously staged sets and action sequences. Brigitte Lin, of course, shines as one of the gang who has romantic ties to the BP; she continually shows up in new costumes and hair styles which are quite provocative. Simon Yam, Tony Leung, Ming Chen-Chen, and Wah Yuen (predating his terrific role in KUNG FU HUSTLE and KUNG FU MAHJONG) are quite good despite much of the script's puerility. Unfortunately the Tai Seng DVD version is ruined by sloppy subtitles, which show up about 2 seconds late making it tough to figure out who's saying what in some of the dialog scenes, and bad editing jumps. But the film's coolness remains intensive, and even its impossible action scenes (incredibly fast swordplay, flying, dazzling gunplay, martial arts, etc) are potently mesmerizing and lots of fun.

This movie is probably the first of its kind. Remembering the timeline that these two genres are set. I was in for a big surprise. Amazingly, the two genres of swordfighting and John Woo-type gunfights seemed to work together. For people who like both genres, this movie's for you. Because there's plenty of action in this movie, with the sword, or with the gun. There's also plenty of hilarious characters in the movie, like Robert Parkinson, the computer hacker, who needs to suck on a dummy or anything in the shape and form of a nipple, or otherwise he goes berserk. This is in total, a funny and good action movie!