China Strike Force
June 23, 2001
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Mark Dacascos, Kenneth Lo, Kim Won Jun (!!!), Aaron Kwok, Coolio, other lame pop stars

Aaron and his buddy are cops who are special agents working for Hong Kong who discover a leak in the force that is allowing drug trading to go on freely.

Pth.., lame story. This WOULD be your typical Aaron+pop stars comedy/actioner, except Stanley Tong, the director, dropped in some incredible talent here and there. Ken Lo makes a FIGHTING appearance for once, and performs excellently. Mark Dacascos arguably has his best fighting here. And, best of all, Kim Won Jun, the super-villian/super-kicker from Operation Scorpio, has a brief scene that completly sets the movie on fire (quickly doused) in the beginning. If you like these guys, I recommend this film just to see what they're up to and exactly how well they can perform these days.

The first scene is the intro where Aaron is practicing. WIREWORK. Aaron starts it off with terrible wire kicks, in the dark (Tong was probably trying to hide this). There's some handwork here and there, one extended part where Aaron pulls off his jacket in the middle of fighting, but he's a little weak looking. Fights like Keanu. His friend is no better.



Alright I'll get on with the important stuff. Our man Kim, playing an assassin dressed as a waitor, stabs someone and Aaron goes out to fight him. Kim is still one of the best kickers I've ever seen. He doesn't seem to have lost anything. He starts it out with a very nice kick block followed by a jumping reverse thrust to Aaron. Aaron takes no damage because he's popular, of course, and NOBODY knows Kim anymore, he's something of the past that a few of us have been looking for. But he's better by a thousand times here. His arms, when he kicks, are positioned like a trained TKD student, Aaron flails. Aaron has an interesting 2 kick combination but falls over (they cut the falling part), hilarious. Kim throws chained kicks perfectly too. After being kicked away, Kim runs outside to the street and gets hit by 2 cars. Yes it's him, trust me. The guy must be 40 or over now too. He then goes from car to car to bus, great! He's even balding. Aaron can't keep up and grabs a motorcycle and has to do a fake stunt where he drives up the back of the bus onto the top, which he actually tried. I guess he broke his shoulder after doing it. Here Kim has another fight with Aaron where he gets some handwork (very nice), chain kicks perfectly about 7 times, and gets nailed off the bus onto the hood of a moving car 10 feet below. Oh and he rolls off too, WHILE the car is moving. Finally he jumps off a bridge into water. What an impression. Too bad this guy wasn't the star of the film, imagine him vs. Dacascos? Kim is shot later by Coolio. Ah, still it is SO nice to see him.



Ugh some Japanese pop idol thinks she can fight, AND speak English. Terrible at both. She fights cops and Aaron's friend. BTW anyone besides Coolio, Dacascos, and Kim CAN'T speaking English worth a damn in this. And there are SO MANY cliches. Aaron's friend is terrible as well. She does the tie thing on the guy, jumps off a balcony and has a wire bring her to the level below. Guess she was hurt a few times doing this too. Dumb scene.



Aaron and his friend go undercover to find Dacascos. Dacascos drives a Lamborghini (I guess?) while Aaron chases after. Aaron has some stuntwork here, one where he jumps onto the top of the car (many cuts but still it took some effort), another where the car narrowly misses a lowering crate, and then Aaron is slammed into the side of a parked semi. He grabs ahold of an F1 car (supposedly his own actual car) and goes underneath another semi. Dacascos narrowly misses an oncoming car, but I don't know if he was actually driving. I doubt it.



Out of no where Dacascos and Ken Lo do some REAL Thai boxing in a ring. Fans will like this, yea they really nail eachother, reminded me of Kickboxer's Tears. Anyone who's afraid Ken can't kick anymore can look at the pics and see, everything is still fine. He speaks English perfectly here too. Dacascos is also equally talented.



The finale is a mix. The good is we get a fight between Ken Lo and Aaron, and one between Dacascos and Aaron's friend. Ken and Dacascos are great. Coolio fights the Japanese idol, it's terrible, I'm only allowing it one pic. Ken's fight is too short, he gets beaten by bad wire kicks but he does his own, well, he does everything, all his falls and rolls. Dacascos, meanwhile, is kicking Aaron's friend's @$$, great kicks, handwork is bland thanks to the choreographer. Aaron intervenes and Dacascos does even cooler stuff. Aaron does a dragon punch, terrible. But Dacascos does an INCREDIBLE kick where he jumps, does a double bike kick, and while still in the air throws his first leg up to the side of Aaron's head, and THEN lands, all in one tiny little hop. He's obviously the better fighter here, I dunno why they didn't pit him against someone more capable, Aaron has to resolve to more wire kicking to beat him. Dacascos loses of course and dies.



The finale is on top of a piece of hanging glass. A bit suspenseful but it's filled with more wire crap and they do this for a good five minutes, it gets a little tiresome. Bad way to end this movie.



Well there was a lot of talent in this. If only they had replaced Aaron with Chin Kar Lok or, even better, Chiu Man Cheuk, this film would have been the best since Fist of Legend. Also maybe if someone other than Stanley Tong had done this, it would have been way better too, Stanley tends to make action look not as good as it could. Sammo would have done better, or Jackie... maybe not, maybe if Yuen Wo Ping had had something to do with this, or Tung Wei, SOMEONE, it would have been good. Ken Lo was wasted but not as much as normally. Dacascos got to shine for a minute or two, and Kim Won Jun's scene was the best in the whole movie, totally outdoing everything else. Still I could see how that one could have been better, but Kim was great. So, just for those guys, 5/5, but the action itself was a little lacking. Too many cuts and the fights were short.

3/5

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