Crippled Avengers Capsule Reviews

Jason Kwan:

Chasing the Dragon (2017) — April 15, 2018

Lotta wig acting going on here. I guess Wong Jing must have seen American Hustle.

The Crippled Ho/Lee Rock hagiography no one asked for.

I haven’t seen the Andy Lau Lee Rock movies from the early 90s (you know, back when he and Donnie Yen were the right age for these parts), but I have seen To Be Number One, the Crippled Ho biopic from the same era. It’s not all that great, kind of a run of the mill gangster film of its era, but at least its plot makes sense and it finds something interesting to do with its female characters and it has no illusions about Ho and Lee being anything but gangsters.

Now that I’ve seen it, I’m not surprised this picked up Hong Kong Film Awards for editing and cinematography. Not that either are particularly good, but there is a lot of both. DP and co-director Jason Kwan did better work I think in 29+1, for which he wasn’t nominated. Our Time Will Come should have won both categories anyway.

Xu Haofeng:

The Hidden Sword (2017) – October 5, 2017

A lot of fun. More in the vein of Jiang Wen's Bullets movies than The Final Master. Plus a big meaty role for Shaw Brothers star Chen Kuan-tai.