San cheung sau yue ga lei gai

1992) Pom Pom & Hot Hot (In Chinese with English subtitles) ACTION/ COMEDY

Exploitation cinema at it's best produced, written and directed by Tung Cho 'Joe' Cheung which the almost non-existent plot serves nothing more except as a backdrop for unfunny comedy gags and impressive carbon copy inspired John Woo gun action sequences. It has unfunny bumbling cops of Shin Chin-Chian (Jacky Cheung) and Chiang Li-Chi (Wei-Tung) with the help of their friend, Lam Ho-Yang (Ching-Ying Lam) crosses paths with triads This rating is based on well choreographed and directed never-before-seen action sequences on top of anything else that happened.

I decided to give Shen Qiang Shou yu Ga Li Ji (a.k.a. Pom Pom and Hot Hot) a shot after reading a review referring to it as a prime example of "gun-fu". I expected a John Woo style actioner, but what I got was an amalgamation of a film. Yes, there is stylized violence with some amazing gunplay gags. I was pressing rewind saying things like "Get the Hell out of here!" or "That is not possible!" What made this an even crazier film was the unique comedic

presence. This film is not like the Naked Gun series with all of the slapstick comedy and police-action aspects playing themselves out at the same time. The action and comedic elements run side by side with one another. It's almost like watching two different movies at the same time. One scene may have the characters laughing it up with one another and the next scene may have them in a serious gun battle with people dying. Furthermore, the brand of comedy is of the Hong Kong brand: physical comedy and sex jokes. The Western viewer may find this Asian style of inducing laughter as irritating and annoying, so beware. The plot deals with the usual cops vs. gunrunners battle. Jacky Cheung and Tung Wei play the goofball duo out to catch the bad guys. Lam Ching Ying sheds the Taoist-hopping-vampire-fighting-priest role to play the duo's serious superior. Instead of using amazing Taoist tricks with red ink, yellow paper and sticky rice, Lam uses shotguns, magnums, and bullet magazines to spectacular cinematic effect. The ending of Pom Pom and Hot Hot ranks in the upper echelon of gun violence. It is definitely up there with the conclusions of A Better Tomorrow II, Hard Boiled, and The Killer. Love it or hate it, it could have only come from Hong Kong.

This slapstick/wacky 80's Chinese comedy will be a brutal time for most Westerners to sit through, however the last 15 minutes of this movie features an well choreographed gunfight which is one of the best out of Hong Kong during this crime-action-obsessed period. The Heroic Bloodshed genre features bizarre childish comedic elements injected into extremely violent scenes. The tone of such movies must be taken from an open minded approach, otherwise you'll become frustrated by not understanding what type of movie it wants to be. (The flaw is it doesn't know) If your looking for a good Heroic Bloodshed ending, and I do stress only for the ending, then check this one out. Last 15 minutes deserves a 10 out of 10, the rest of it 2 out of 10, overall 6/10.