Sheng zhe wei wang

Keep in mind that the title here is "Young and Dangerous Part 6." It would be an insult to the audience if each of these flicks had to recap the previous plot points for those who can't make it down to the local video store. Personally if I see Kickboxer III on the shelf I look again till I can find Kickboxer. It's the best of the series since part I, and chicken again steals the show from Ekin Cheng as his character allows humility and depth. Real treat to see Sonny Chiba of the over-the-top streetfighter series hold it down. It was nice to see Gigi Lai overshadow Shu Qi even as a dobbleganger. This genre of hong-kong action flicks often asks the western audience to suspend their standards of Hollywood style visuals and comprehendable plots. But "Born to be King" is visually appealing throughout and is logistically comprehensive. We need not know the backstory of each of our leads to grasp their current position on the triad totem pole and their moral dilemmas in a grasp for more power and responsibility.

The movie was like the Godfather Part II. The truths of the triad society is shown. The loss of each person reveals that they are not heartless. Ho Nam had a heart. Chicken was capable of caring for a woman. The men's love is shown more in depth in this movie than all of the other movies.

Ho Nam's love for Smartie had never been forgotten after her death. He changed his life after her life. What he had held most important, the triad society, changed. Losing Smartie was his awakening. While Ho Nam was in Taiwan helping Chicken with his situation, he saw a girl that looked like Smartie. But the girl was not Smartie, she only resembled Smartie and her name was Tuan Mu Rong Yu. He approached her with his situation and learned more about her. She was completely different from Smartie but Ho Nam was not the same Ho Nam before Smartie died. Ho Nam had developed into a more mature person after seeing the repercussions of his triad lifestyle. A girl like Tuan Mu Rong Yu was right for Ho Nam. Mei-Ling did not like that Ho Nam found someone that looked like Smartie but kept it a secret from her. She believed that Ho Nam would pick a person that resembled Smartie over her because she had started like Ho Nam because he resembled her ex-boyfriend that died.

The movie has a good ending but there should have been more scenes with Ho Nam and Tuan Mu Rong Yu. The movie shows a good portrayal of the good in bad guys and the bad in bad guys that pretend to be good. All the secrets between the triad groups were exposed.

While I have not seen earlier films in the Young and Dangerous series, I did find the plot easy to follow and reasonably engrossing, despite some rather awful cinematography. Jordan Chan carries the movie with a remarkable performance. Sonny Chiba plays his customary gangster role to perfection. Other characters are two dimensional. Ekin Cheng looks sullen and pretty; how does he see with all that hair in front of his eyes? Shu Qi pouts and looks beautiful, and plays an airhead so well that one wonders whether she is acting. Indeed, her efforts at crying look suspiciously like laughing. All in all, "Born to be King" is a quite a decent B movie, if one ignores the smarmy bits about Asian brotherhood.

The stage changes to Japan where Chicken (Jordan Chan) marries a Japanese Yakuza boss' daughter.

The story is rather same ol, same ol. There's senseless fighting between the gangs, and a traitor within the clan. It's rather a pat formula for this series. The movie is oriented for the juvenile audience who's looking for the cool in these movies, so I guess the story is designed to meet these expectations.

But one thing I can say about this series is that it was gritty compared to other comedic happy Hong Kong movies of the '90s. In this respect, it was singularly unique.

All the movies in this series has a disorganized look to it. I'm not sure why this is, but Ekin Chen and Jordan Chan and few others were the only characters that had discipline in their acting. In this movie, the acting style of Jordan Chan, Sonny Chiba, Anya, and Roy Chueng didn't match at all. I also wish that Sandra Ng would stop spoiling the mood of every movie she stars in. Her character was totally unnecessary.

So more of the same, but there was closure (or was there ?) to the story, and the series ends with a not so interesting of an ending.

Having never seen another "Young and Dangerous" movie, watching part 6 in isolation is rather like viewing a single episode of a long-running soap-opera, in which you have no idea who the characters are or what their backgrounds might be.

The film is surprisingly talky, with lots of double-dealing and back-stabbing, and the odd action set-piece to spice things up. The sub-plot concerns Chicken's attempts at communicating with his new Japanese wife (the highlights of the film, very funny). The moral of the tale seems to be "why can't we (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Beijing, Japan) just get along?".

Overall, its all rather baffling to an outsider, and I would definitely recommend watching the previous films in the series first.