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| B I G B U L L E T ( C H O N G F E N G D U I N U H U O J I E T O U ) |
| 2 6 D E C 2 0 0 7 |
| e-me (willykwa79@gmail.com) blog me Creative property of W.L. Kwa. A completely personal and non-profit endeavor. |
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| W A R N I N G ! S P O I L E R S A H E A D ! P L O T P O I N T S R E V E A L E D ! |
| 1 |
| Police story The Beginning Like most Hong Kong movies, there will always be a reckless cop who has an intuitive sense greater than Colombo’s and Sherlock Holmes’ put together. Lau Ching Wan (as Bill), plays this role in Big Bullet. I am not surprised why he got this role because I always felt that he possessed the capability to portray these kind of roles. His versatility in serious and humorous acts often make him a great person to watch. He is something like Chow Yun Fat, except that he lacks the good looks! But not bad, really! Anyway, the movie started off with some classic cool cop versus baddie gun battle. At this point, I was really convinced that this movie was going to be good. Brief introduction to Annoying/ Comic-strip Cop Ng Ting Yip (as Inspector Cheung) is the best humor/comic relief character in Big Bullet. Sporting a moustache, he can’t be any funnier. His annoying, ever-sarcastic, yet stupid character reminded me of Jacky Cheung playing funny roles. He’s the Jar Jar Binks of Hong Kong movies. Brief introduction of a Close Friend Bill has a close friend, an intelligent and cool cop called ‘Yang’ played by Francis Ng. Francis has a small role in this movie… further details later on. Brief introduction of Lethal Enemies Bill was introduced to the notorious ‘Professor’ when he was detained at the police HQ. This was the first classic sign of a rivalry that were to come. Later on, there was this scene where Bill walked past Anthony Wong a.k.a. Bird (wearing a police uniform) and gave him a short speech. I was really taken by surprise when Bird actually turned out to be a bad guy! Bird and his henchmen blasted all da cops to pieces in an attempt to rescue the so-called ‘Professor’ from an ill-fated police mobile truck. The superb gun fighting scene was really intense and great to watch. Awesome stuff. There was this part where the two cops seated in front of the truck got showered with bullets… it immediately reminded me of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Anthony Wong makes a damn cool ‘don’t give a shit’ bad guy in this movie. I’m not sure whether there are anyone out there who is worthy enough to play the role as impressive as he did. Humour, and introduction to Good Guys What I actually like about this movie are the interesting characters and the well-balanced humor throughout the movie. There are times when the movie got pretty violent and intense, but then the audience gets time-out by watching the funnies. I respect Jordan Chan in this movie because he played the decent, serious but reasonable cop. The role suits him well and I’ve nothing to complain about it. The only person I felt to be quite irritating at times was ‘Apple’. She’s supposed to be cute and funny, I guess, but maybe a little overacted her role, perhaps. Cheung Tat-Ming (as Matt) lived up to my expectations; he played a funny cop with a sound knowledge in weaponry. His humour wasn’t as excessive as most of his other movies, therefore I can safely say that he did well this time. More shoot-out scenes! The bad guys received information that there were a lot of money being kept in the Interpol building and were about to be shipped out. In order to get into the Interpol building, they needed to lend a hand from an officer who was also responsible for putting ‘The Professor’ into jail. Sweet revenge? You bet! Bird and his gang met the fat officer, accompanied by a girl in a restaurant somewhere. The initial plan was to bring the fat ass to the Interpol to use his hand print to pass through security. But his lady got so nervous and started to cry, an act that triggered Bird into blasting her to pieces. Not only that, the fat officer tried to shoot Bird, but not before Bird blasted his whole hand out! As a conclusion, not only did they get his ‘helping hand’, they actually got his whole hand and kept it as a souvenir! How convenient that was! Then suddenly, a scene which reminded me of Heat surfaced, providing an excellent shoot-out between cops and baddies. Their extremely high-end artillery proved that the cops never had a chance against them. Yang versus The Professor The cops chasing bad guys part led to the death of Yang. His death was quite a predictable one, maybe because I watched the movie A True Mob Story which has an almost similar situation. I felt that Yang was made to be like the brother of Van Damme who always gets killed in all the Kickboxer movies. This is to accelerate and boost ‘the call for vengeance’ for Bill and increase his anger and thirst for justice. There’s nothing more gruesome than to be stuck with a 6-inch knife deep into the abdomen while being sliced right up to the chest and later bled to death. This was the fate of Yang. Distraction at the Interpol The bad guys had a very good idea to create distraction, by hiring some street hooligans to loot the town while they continue with their heist at the Interpol. This distraction method was practiced in Die Hard With a Vengeance, where all the cops were distracted to a specific area whereas the bad guys were aiming for other bigger things. With the ‘helping hand’, the bad guys, led by Professor and Bird, managed to enter the Interpol without much trouble. When they were finally detected by the police, we were entertained by another explosive blast-off between Interpol officers and the baddies. The good guys died like Lemmings, similar to the way the bad guys died in A Better Tomorrow 2’s ending, minus the excessive blood. In this scene, the Professor gets to show his raw talents in kickboxing, when he executed some perfect blows to the unsuspecting Interpol officers who never stood a chance. The Ending Part: Plane Getaway As predicted, the good guys win. Fully equipped with a strong spirit and decent weaponry, the gang, led by Bill, entered a British military airbase compound which was supposed to be the departing place for the baddies. The police outsmarted the military and made them looked like fools in this scene. Bill managed to trace the fleeing plane and performed a feat that even the Guinness World of Records have never seen before, by tailing the plane with a jeep and having all his crew member form a human tower to enter the back door of the plane before it managed to close completely. After that, the fight between the good and the bad took place. Well, I didn’t like this part onwards because the fighting was quite average. Good guys won in the end and that was about it. This is a common Hong Kong movie type of ending, therefore I was not too surprised. Anyway, this show is definitely above average and the action scenes are worth watching. Don’t expect a perfect ending, and just keep to the humour and action. I would give it 3.5 out of 5 , which should be a ‘GOOD’. If the ending was better, it would have been a BADASS for sure. |