Ye shou xing jing

This movie is a pretentious excuse to exploit the two lead actors and their fans. The script makes little sense, which is a bad filmmakers device to make you watch till the end so that you figure out eventually what's going on while this is definitely not the kind of a film that needs it. Acting is really uninspired from everybody, mainly because most of the time there's little to play with. Action is non-existent, people spend more time loitering, clubbing, eating out and in bed, than racing, shooting, fighting and chopping each other. When the action comes it is shot in a "can't see a thing it shakes so much"-vision and presented very badly to you, often employing speed-ups and various stylish editing techniques...badly! The trailer probably looked worthy of all the awards this movie got. Does it mean that there were no better films that year?

Winner of loads of Hong Kong film awards in 98 (Best Actor, Film Director etc), this built up quite an expectation for me. The story pretty much doesn't make sense (cops and robbers are all best friends), and there is more talk of safe sex and "crabs" than gunplay. Add to that Micheal Wong's totally abysmal acting and you've got a very average film. Anthony Wong was OK and Sam Lee was fairly amusing at times but overall there is not much worth watching in this film at all (Gordan Chan was never that good a director anyway)Disappointing Stuff! If you want to watch a great post 97 HK film try Ringo Lam's "Victim"

It's been sometime since I last watched Gordan Chan and Dante Lam's highly-regarded action-drama, and probably not since Hong Kong Legends released it on DVD way back in the early 2000's. With the bizarre casting of the fantastic Anthony Wong and (the just passable and unrelated) Michael Wong in the leads, I can remember thinking I wasn't going to enjoy this film at all...

Thankfully though, I was wrong. Beautifully shot, with stylish action scenes and brilliantly choreographed stunt-work, Beast Cops isn't as threatening as its title would suggest offering plenty of Hong Kong humour among its drama and violent action scenes. Anthony Wong is just brilliant as the out-of-shape and out-of-luck streetwise cop, and even Michael Wong is enjoyable as his uptight boss who has just been assigned to his unit.

The brilliant Roy Cheung and Sam Lee help fill out the main cast along with Patrick Tam, Kathy Chow and a host of familiar faces, all who give pretty damn good performances (including Michael Wong for a change). One such face is Arthur Wong, director of In The Line Of Duty 3 and cinematographer of many classics including My Lucky Stars, Eastern Heroes, and The Warlords. For this film though, Tony Cheung Tung Leung handles the films gorgeous cinematography. His work includes Jackie Chan's Dragon Blade, Black Mask, and 14 Blades to name but a few!

The gritty and often violent action is handled by the wonderful Yuen Tak, offering some painful looking stunt-work alongside brutal fights with blades, and gritty hand-to-hand brawls that quickly turn bloody. Although it doesn't come every 5 minutes, there's still plenty to enjoy, including a brutally violent finale when Anthony Wong channels his inner psycho...

Although it carries plenty of humour, Beast Cops is a pretty dark movie on the flip side. Far from your typical cops-n-robbers story, the directors try to bring an intense realism to the film showing their heroes to be 'emotional and flawed' as a fine-line is drawn between the world of law-and-order, and the that of its triad gangsters. Winner of 4 awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film, Beast Cops does have its flaws, but is well worth the watch!

Overall: Wonderfully written, directed and acted, Beast Cops is a violent action-drama with plenty of laughs that highly entertains!

A gritty and beautifully shot Hong Kong action film, one that announces all is not lost in the post-Woo/Hark/Lam Hong Kong action genre. Anthony Wong gives an astonishing performance as a cop who walks the line between police officer and triad. Michael Wong is for once not completely bland, and even has a couple of wonderful comic moments. And the violence in this film is remarkably startling, which is not something I find too much in Hong Kong cinema. In most films, even in masterpieces like The Killer or City on Fire, the violence is relatively unsurprising. Here, perhaps because it's mostly committed with crude machetes, the violence is brutal and tough. And the way it's cut and edited makes it all the more effective. For fans of Hong Kong cinema, it's not to be missed. And even for people who aren't usual fans of that genre, this is an interesting film to check out. From me, this is easily a 9/10.

Anyone who didn't like this film must've come to the table with expectations. It does not cascade from one tightly-choreographed action scene to the next like the John Woo classics, which as good as they are to watch, are still played more for bullets and explosions than for story or characters. This is a totally different kind of film, with casual, believable dialogue, some great acting, and its "cowboys" and "indians" not so clearly defined.

Not that it isn't high on stylish shot-framing, editing and dynamite costume design; this is, after all, still a Hong Kong production. But I saw flashes of Cassavettes and Pedro Almodovar-less homage to Ringo Lam or Ronny Yu. Anthony Wong's character, "Brother Tung" still gets to go crazy at the end and spill a lot of blood, in a gritty hand-to-hand fight scene. What more could one ask? I've seen more than my share of slow-motion shootouts. This film is something more: a drama, at times a comedy, with cops and triads as its milieu, rather than its reason for being. An easy five stars.