Azzy

two men walk in the forest on an island. they are briefly separated, when the fatter of the two is attacked by four men with cleavers, wearing aprons and leatherface masks. after he is hacked to death, the other one is cornered and brought back to a village, he pleads "can't we all get along" and then he is put on a table and sawed in half.. no none of this is half as gory as is sounds. in fact it is oddly funny. After all these four are just feeding a large community who don't have enough meat. unfortunely, there favorate meat is called traveler (the other white meat). the leader of the the group (eddy ko ,LEATHAL WEAPON 4, HEROS SHED NO TEARS), who dresses like he just robbed a third world dictator, is giving most of the meat to the 'security forces (leatherface look alikes) and the population is getting restless. he manages to placate them a bit, by sending them to a funeral, but all is not well in this glorious canabal paradise (yes there are serious overtones of comunism in this film). now enters security agent 999, hot on the trail of a bandit who now lives in the village. he comes to town, amidst much applause (he looks mighty tasty), and manages to fight off every hungry attacker, all of whom he thinks are sent by the bandit. and then things start getting bloody . . .

this whole movie has the feel of an extended sick joke, but it stays funny throughout, thanks to inventive kung-fu deaths (involving messy means) throughout lots of inventive fight scenes. their are dozens of intricate sight and situation gags, even in the middle of combat scenes. my personal favorate is when agent 999 rolls a cigarete on the face of an attacker before beating the crap out of him. the violence is gorier than a kung-fu flick, but tame compared to most horror films. i managed to catch a screening of one of the two last remaining prints, but i think it is available on vcd and tape. it is a great late night party films, especially with buckets of popcorn on hand to throw at the screen

It took me a long time to finally get a hold of this film. it was worth the wait. Ringo lam is one of the most original directors out of hong kong. this is the finest work of his that i've seen. chow yun-fat worked very hard for the best actor award he got for this film. and danny lee ain't bad either. Ringo Lam's handling of the action is where this movie really shines. it is brutal in the fashion of an old Walter Hill or Peckenpah film, realistic and frightening. hong kong is displayed more accurately than i have ever seen in a movie, with its streets crowded till they appear ready to burst. in the final robbery sequence, the streets appear to be impenetrably thick. it is just a reminder that hong kong has more than four times the population density of new york city. many people have accused tarantino of ripping off this movie, and claim that reservior dogs is an exact copy. first of all tarantino gives credit to chow yun-fat as an influence at the start of the screenplay for reservior dogs. second of all the entire movie of reservior dogs is a expansion of a ten minute sequence near the end of the movie. and over here it is done totally different. so lay off of him mkay.

This movie happens to be the first directorial effort by Sammo Hung. It certainly doesn't do to badly. It starts off decently, and the learning curve is very sharp. Each fight in the movie is more surely Choreographed and is faster than the ones that preceded it. There is a prevelance of armed combat and acrobatics (non-wire) which are all well done. Sammo is as young as you'll see him in any movie except ENTER THE DRAGON. There is however an annoyingly large amount of nudity in this movie. The plot has Sammo training as a civilian in a shaolin temple in order to avenge the death of a neighbor at the hands of some manchu thugs. He has improved to the point of teaching classes to other non-monks at the temple. He decides to head out after the manchus, after his skills have reached a certain level. he is assisted by the brother of another victim of the manchu's, and his instructor, who is the title character. Sammo and the monk are both extremely fast and athletic, doing some impressive back flips and leaps. give it a try if you run across it.