A BETTER TOMORROW (1986)

 As far as action movies go there's not much better than 80's/90's Hong Kong. Kind of like how Italy reinvigorated the western back in the 60's Hong Kong took the standard American action flick and added a certain style and level of violence that reshaped the genre. This one here, directed by the master of these sorts of movie, John Woo, is a gangster/action movie containing tons of gun-fu and graphic bloodshed. Chow Yun Fat is featured, although he's actually not the main star here since 70's kung-fu mainstay Ti Lung has the main role. I think it's great to see Mr. Fat in a slightly lesser role and he gets to be a real bad-ass as the sidekick character. The story concerns two brothers who end up on the opposite sides of the law, one being a cop and the other a criminal. It all ends with lots of bullet holes, exploding barrels and lots of people dead. There are a couple of segments that lay a little heavy on the drama but I think the kick-ass action more than makes up for these slight slow overly-dramatic spots.
 There was A BETTER TOMORROW II the following year and A BETTER TOMORROW III: LOVE AND DEATH IN SAIGON in '89. I think I have seen both of these but I should probably re-watch them since I'm not 100 % certain. There was also a South Korean remake in 2011 that I have definitely not seen.

TRAGIC HERO (1987)

 The original title of this is RICH AND FAMOUS 2 and I've never seen the first movie but I don't think that makes much difference since this feels fairly complete by itself. Chow Yun-Fat is the titular "hero" here and that title is a little bit off since he's not really all that heroic. He's basically just a gangster fighting with his insane and very cocky brother(Alex Man) for control of the mob. Watching this right after viewing Chow in HARDBOILED KILLERS was a slightly strange experience since both films couldn't be further apart in tone. That film is straight up slapstick/pratfall comedy and this one couldn't be any more serious. This does lead to it getting bogged down a bit in the heavy dramatics but there's enough gun-fu and other bloody action sequences that make it a bearable watch.  There are better Hong Kong action flicks out there but you could also do worse.

Bizarrely enough this is called BLACK VENGEANCE in France even though there are no black faces to be seen anywhere in it:

This Youtube version has way bigger subtitles than my old crappy VHS!:

HARDBOILED KILLERS (1980)

  "pussy house?"

 This title, which combines 2 of star Chow Yun-Fat's best known movies, HARD BOILED and THE KILLER, into one is pretty misleading. For one thing it's pretty much a total comedy and there's not much action to be seen. Secondly it's not directed by John Woo so it doesn't have any of that stylishness going for it. Thirdly neither one of those movies had even been made when this was originally released. The only similarity to those films is that it features Chow. He looks very young here as a rookie cop who gets promoted to detective very quickly and ends up going up against a criminal mob. The leader of these mobsters has a little pet monkey which makes me think he can't be all bad. Basically all the action and kung-fu (including some very ridiculous toilet-plunger-fu) happens at the very end. The three main bad guys are introduced as The Knife Witch, The Ninja and The Fiery Gunman which sounds pretty awesome but unfortunately they turn out to be just your standard kung-fu baddies. Pretty bland overall as far as these Hong Kong action flicks go and the VHS copy I have of this has tiny subtitles for added frustration. Watching one of the Woo-directed flicks would be a better time.
 Alternate titles include POLICE SIR and MODERN HEROES.

FULL CONTACT (1992)

                        "Doing business is like shitting, smoothness is most important"

 I've owned this Ringo Lam-directed Hong Kong action flick on an old VHS for many years now but thanks to it's super-generic title I just recently got around to watching it and that's too bad because I probably would've appreciated it more back in the 90's. It does veer towards the predictable action sequences, especially towards the second half of the film. You even get star Chow Yun Fat in the typical training-to-get-revenge montage popularized back in the 80's.  It starts off pretty cool though with an interesting gang of bad guys, including a nymphomaniac lady named Virgin, a large Bolo Young-looking muscular fellow with a punk rock mohawk haircut and a flamboyantly gay leader, all robbing some golden Buddhas. From there we end up at a what might be the world's worst strip club where nobody gets naked and everyone does interpretive dance routines while the song "Get The Funk Out" by 80's hair metal band Extreme plays. The whole movie is packed with cheesy metal-sounding riffs which add unintentional laughs and drive home the point that Hong Kong was at least a few years behind when it came to popular culture at this point.
 Probably the biggest plus this movie has is that our hero, Mr. Fat, is the most bad-ass that I can recall him being in anything. He wears denim and leather, has tattoos, is a biker and a criminal who doesn't mind shooting people. Also he shoots a guy in the neck and tells him to "masturbate in hell". I think that's pretty bad-ass myself. It's not until he gets the old double-cross that he becomes the guy we all know from those John Woo movies. Apparently this was a big flop in Hong Kong since people there didn't like the idea of Fat not being a super goody-goody which is a shame cuz he woulda made a great villain. Worth a look for the kung-fu, gun-fu, knife-fu and all around crazy action if you're into that kind of thing.

This American trailer makes this movie look super serious which it isn't:

HARD BOILED (1992)

 As I've probably said here more than once before the 90's were a bleak time for U.S. cinema.  Anything cool that remained from the 70's had been turned into complete shit by the awfulness of the 80's and now we were entering the black hole of a self-aware mocking parody of consciousness which still lingers on today like an old stale fart.  Real horror films were practically non-existent and action movies had become lifeless predictable boring jokes. The only place to find anything remotely different was Asia and directors like John Woo.  It's hard to see looking back now, after he had been co-opted by the Hollywood shit-spewing machine, to remember how fresh his films seemed at the time.  There really wasn't any comparison.  The violence, action and stuntmen willing to risk their lives just to make a scene look good were sorely lacking from most American flicks in this genre at the time.  Compared to some haf-assed jokey movie like DIE HARD this movie seems so much more iconic to me.  Check it out for Chow Yun-Fat as a cool mother-fucker and people eating in restaurants full of birdcages.  If you are gonna watch this though stick with the subtitles since the dubbed version makes this movie seem way too fucking goofy.