Interpol Connection
Review
Format: Dubbed VHS
Stars: Robin Shou, Yukari Oshima, Phillip Ko Fei, others
Robin Shou plays a cop looking for a guy named Lone (Ko) with the assistance of Oshima. They go and fight him.
To start with, I bought this movie for $15 at a Virgin Records store in San Francisco, as a VHS, dubbed, released by Tai Seng. That's bad news. Any VHS released by Tai Seng is bad enough, but dubbed by those guys, ugh. That's how it was, too, UGH. The people at Tai Seng obviously don't really care about making the movie sound legitimate, but instead want to release the movie as soon as possible and go through the dubbing like they're practicing for a community service play. The film quality is low. It isn't wide screen, and it's all faded and stuff, with a brown look to it that reminds me of a dirty, wooden bathroom most of the time. The sound quality is terrible and the characters sound like the people on the phone in Charlie Brown cartoons (not really, but it's bad).
Why I think this is a Filipino production.
To top it off, there isn't any action (besides some stupid gun fights) until the end when Oshima gets involved and meets Shou at a gang hideout. She fights Phillip Ko with just kicks, which she does over and over (though she can kick extremely well and looks good doing it too), and Shou looks good with his fast hand techniques. There are too many cuts, though. There isn't enough here for viewers to start widening their eyes.
If you find a magnum that can make a hole this big, I'll buy it.
Oshima and Shou have a tiny little match with no more than 8 hits inside a hospital, but Shou still looks good and Oshima is a good match against him. Shou's bodywork is really fun to watch. His blocks look almost perfect. Let me mention something here before I go on. Robin Shou and Yukari Oshima are very good looking people, which gives them a strong presence on the screen. Oshima isn't just another Michelle Yeoh, she has a different style, and Shou is Shou, I can't explain how he moves, but it seems as though he's always pretty upright to keep balance and all of his hits are direct. What I don't like about Interpol Connection is that they don't get enough time to show what they're made of. Shou walks around looking tough most of the time, Oshima looks beautiful, but they get maybe 2 or 3 small fights each. So I discredit Phillip Ko for this movie (he directed it) because it seems he has 1. a serious desire for gun play and big tough guys wearing tank tops, 2. a need to keep the fights extremely short, and 3. A CUT FETTISH.
The best piece of choreography in the entire movie, 5 big seconds long too!
Senseless Acts of Choreography by Phillip Ko
The last batch of fights (yes, already) aren't extremely good. Shou fights a westerner who looks dumb and Oshima goes against a short dude who looks like her type (height and build wise). They are obviously too powerful for their opponents, Shou beats the whitie without any problem and does a really cool looking kick where he jumps low and kicks way high, almost looks straight out of a videogame. Oshima's fight, however, isn't so pretty. The first part of it is just kicking from both of them, and it doesn't look very good. And I didn't mention this before, but the chick who dubbed Oshima's voice while fighting should have been shot and killed. This isn't the way women sound when they fight. Watch any HK movie with women fighters and you'll see. So that hurts the presentation, but I imagine the VCD wouldn't suffer as much obviously. Anyways, this fight has so many cuts that you'd think Ko would have filmed all of the 360 degrees around the two of them before they threw 40 punches. It's aweful. At one point it seemed as though there was, on average, MORE THAN 1 CUT PER HIT. That's totally unforgivable. Oshima throws a kick and the camera changes twice. Each hit afterwords gets its own angle, which speeds up the action too much. And it's not effective the way it was in the last fight with Sammo against Billy Chow in Pedicab Driver because you could see where the moves came from and why they were happening. Here, you see a punch, kick, punch, kick, bam bam bam. Shou kills Phillip Ko in a few seconds at the end.
Ok all done, push eject unless you want to see Oshima in a car
I think I've seen stuff like this before done by Phillip Ko... ah yes, EAT MY DUST!!!. He directed that piece of mayhem and it had that stupid camera-in-the-sky technique to make people look like they were jumping high. Doh! I don't like his movies so far. Too many cuts, not enough action, TOO MUCH USELESS NONSENSE! Oh and let's not forget Bolo Yeung (I am almost positive it was him). He plays King Kong (a dubbed name of course), and the dubbing job they did on the poor guy almost made me throw the vcr through the tv screen. Plus, he gets no action except for hitting a guy after twisting his arm.
3/10 - I give it a 3/10 because of Oshima and Shou only. The dubbed version gets a 2/10. Without Shou or Oshima it gets a 1/10. Basically this movie was really boring and I didn't care to watch it half way through, and I didn't miss anything. Not even a worthwhile plot. Stupid Fillipino production (pretty sure about that, there were lots of Filipinos and Filipino movies are crap, I think Crystal Hunt was one too). I don't recommend unless you want to own all of Shou's movies. Don't bother for Oshima's sake unless it's a free rental.
UPDATE 10/9 - Rating System Change
1/5 - Hardly anything worthwhile here.
UPDATE 10/15/00 - Just wanted you all to know that Oshima and Shou look really good in this movie and move well, and if you're serious fans of them then you might as well own this, but if you want GOOD HK action then pass this up.
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