Expect the unexpected

This flick starts off as a typical Hong Kong cop movie, with a dream team of post-unification stars as the good guys: Patrick Yau (who also directs), Lau Ching-Wan and Eric Tsang. There are all the staples -- nasty villains, a beautiful love interest, lots of gats blazing. But you know what? The predictable plot falls apart and leaves you agape, wondering what will happen next -- and the ending... well, I'll let you see the end for yourself.

Expect the Unexpected(1998) is a supurb police thriller that reminded me a little bit of Dennis Hopper's Colors(1987). It is good at looking at the friendship and working angle of a police unit. The movie deals with a crime unit who are after two sets of jewel thieves. The ending is one of the most surprising ones that I've seen. Expect the Unexpected's finale is something you will never see in a Hollywood action or buddy film anytime soon or in the near future.

A police unit, led nominally by Simon Yam and smokey-eyed Lau Ching-Wan, pursue two gangs, each heavily armed and dangerous, not least of all to themselves. Expect the Unexpected begins conventionally enough, but a nudge to the plot here, a detail of characterization there, and the odd bit of unexpected humour, and before long the story is in territory at once familiar and unfamiliar. For the viewer the results are nothing less than exhilarating, like seeing an over-familiar genre through fresh, new eyes.

One interesting touch for a HK film released in May 1998: the mainland Chinese in one gang had come to Hong Kong due to economic difficulties back home. (One government, two systems in effect?)

Cacine Wong's routine and seemingly off-the-cuff soundtrack was the only really jarring element to Expect the Unexpected (the effects of low budget filmmaking in HK being pretty much a given these days). Other film scores by Wong include the very good spaghetti eastern-sounding Peace Hotel, co-written with Healthy Poon, and the equally good neo-noirish Too Many Ways to be Number One.

Your best chance of seeing Expect the Unexpected is on video or in a rep theater. But however you see it, and whether you come in expecting the unexpected, I think you'll be in for a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately, as it is in many Asian crime films - and not only crime - you have here a mix-up between action, romance, comedy - light hearted touches that have nothing to do here - and tragedy. So, in a way, you have some unexpected moments, especially in the second and last parts. The overall result after watching is though above average. I saw many of those crime action flicks from the Far East and I belong to those audiences for whom it is agreeable, this melt of emotion annd action; a trademark, I guess, for this kind of stuff. But it remains a culture very different from ours. Bollywood - Indian film industry - also gave us somme neraly similar crime films: tough and fun, cheesy and brutal, poignant and lousy. Terrific ending, in the line of Abel Ferrarra's KING OF NEW YORK.

Expect The Unexpected is one of those Hong Kong films that

switches from lightweight romantic scenes to hard-boiled details

(like the dead baby in the washing machine), then back to more

upbeat scenes. This kind of thing just isn't done in Western pics

and can be disconcerting to viewers used to one kind of story or

the other. The romantic interludes are accompanied by an amiable score

from Cacine Wong, which suits the atmosphere of those scenes. But where the film scores highly is with the series the gritty street

shoot-outs that are well-done and vicious. Parts of this film just ramble along, with conversational sequences

that are just not needed, but Yam & Ching Wan are good, and the

ending really is unexpected. Uneven but watchable.