Odd Couple
May 20, 2001
Review
Format: Chinese Subtitled VCD (no English subs)
Stars: Sammo Hung, Lau Ka Wing, Karl Maka, Leung Ka Yan, Lee Hoi Sang, Mars, Lam Ching Ying, many others

Sammo and Lau are experts at weapons. Sammo uses the blade, Lau the spear. They both believe that they are the best, but whenever they fight neither wins, it's just a draw. So they go out and find students to train in hopes that THEY would fight. Sammo trains a young Lau, Lau trains a young Sammo. Though they face common enemies, to them, the real importance is beating eachother.

Ok, to begin with this movie is ALL WEAPONS (except maybe 2 minutes of one fight). Usually something like that spells trouble for me, but I found Odd Couple to be easily up there with Knockabout, The Victim, The Magnificent Butcher, and Dance of the Drunken Mantis. Sammo and Lau are amazing, their use of their weapons is unmatched as far as I've seen. Best of all, the actors end up using both the blade and spear because their students are THEMSELVES (only switched). I know a lot of you don't like weaponwork, maybe because you find that actors usually don't do much with it. Someone might have a sword and JUST swing the sword around, that's it. Here, that's about 25% of the fighting, the other 75% is acrobatics, little tricks with the weapons, use of environment, and whatever else. Also there are tons of fights in Odd Couple, enough to keep your attention.

It starts out with one of those classic solid color backgrounds, introducing the weapons, some of which are rediculous (a hand holding a little spike?). Sammo (spear) and Lau (blade) have a small fight with some really good choreography, non-stop swinging. It's hard to explain just how good choreography is in this movie, so trust me.



Karl Maka comes into town looking for a challenger and finds Peter Chan Lung (was that him?) sitting under a sigh that he cut. I think the sign once said something about "Looking for one blade master" but he cut it in half, so it just said "Blade Master" (this is my poor attempt at Chinese, bear with me), so Maka, who has a sickle, goes over to him. They have a very funny fight, typical comedy stuff from Sammo crew.



A man goes to challenge Lau at his house and Lau totally destroys him. They both have spear-type weapons, but Lau is clearly better at this. The other guy is a little slow and doesn't do all the cool stuff. Just a small fight.



But right after that Sammo and Lau meet up and perform miracles. Blade vs. spear, they make such a show, doing everything imaginable with their weapons. At one point, Sammo sticks his blade on Lau's spear, Lau catches it on the spear, spins it around, and Sammo grabs it again. How? I don't know. And they're so fast too, Sammo dodging the spear is like watching a fan spin. I've heard they were undercranked at some parts (didn't seem like it at all though), but that's common in almost every HK film I've found out. Here, though, it doesn't seem that way. Totally awesome, here you know this movie will be great.



A young Lau is introduced (different character of course) and gets in a brawl with some town tough guys headed by Lee Hoi Sang. Lee is funny here, he grabs Lau's little knife and puts it under one hat and puts a hat next to that one, shuffles them around and makes Lau guess which one has his knife. Sammo helps him out and it's another comedy fight, Lee gets stuck in the head by a bunch of his own knives at the end.



Sammo starts training young Lau with some interesting ideas. He has Lau hold a little bird and tells Lau to attack him without squeezing the bird to death, but he does that. He tries again but holds it too loosely. I guess the idea is that you want to hold your blade firm but not have a death grip on it. Lau is training a young Sammo with the spear at the same time. Sammo thinks he knows it all but is just a big wimp and knows nothing. They get better though, Lau gets the hang of the blade, and Sammo throws his spear around like it's nothing, doing some really cool stuff. The teachers end up doing little fights with the students, the spear fight is obviously better. Both are great though.



God the next scene is hilarious. Another comedy fight, I can't get enough of these I guess. The money man from Dance of the Drunken Mantis is chasing after a woman, and whenever this guy walks some REALLY generic rap-beat plays, it's great. The woman hides behind the young Sammo and the weirdo guy can't stop making faces at her, so Sammo thinks it's directed at himself. This is a non-weapon fight, with lots of use of the environment, Sammo makes the guy look like a fool but there's some good hand to hand work, Sammo uses a bench, and some of the comedy choreography is great. Sammo makes him swallow raw eggs, over and over, smashes an egg on his forehead, and starts knocking him on the head so he drools out the yolks from the eggs. Totally disgusting! You have to love these.



Ah! Another comedy scene, at least it starts out that way with the same guy getting his foot burned and goes from yelling and screaming to yelling "Teen" which is "heavens", in an opera fashion, it's hard for me to stop laughing at anything this guy does, he's a comedic genius and I'd like to see more of him. This starts an opera-esque fight I guess between Sammo and 2 others, the first fight them has the sound effects all from Peking opera. One guy pulls out a shotgun (!!), which has 2 blades come out of the end and the other has a mauled blade. Sammo is all over the place, acrobatics over the tables and everything, except I believe he was doubled for some of the stuff. Young Lau helps Sammo by taking the guy with the shotgun, which he splits into 2 weapons, and they have some long cuts of fast stuff.



Both old Sammo and old Lau go looking for their students and end up meeting Leung Ka Yan, who has his men fight the 2 of them. This is easily the best fight in the movie. First they quickly dispatch 6 or so guys with grace, and then take another 4, 2 each. They're all from Sammo's team but I could only identify Lam Ching Ying. They're unarmed but have metal shields over their forearms and go in pairs. Some of the best 3D fighting I've ever seen, camerawork is a spectacle. Lam Ching Ying seems to get the longest solo choreography too, going against Lau who has a spear (as the story goes). I forgot how good a screen Lam was before he was cast into non-fighting roles. Everything is so fast here, just as fast as the best stuff from, say, Prodigal Son. Some good dark comedy here too, like Lau trying to kill Sammo's assailants and Sammo getting mad and attacking Lau WHILE fighting the others. And there's one part that's especially funny when they super-undercrank Sammo and someone else but amazingly it still looks awesome. He finishes him off by sawing at his chest REPEATEDLY with his knife, probably 14 times. Finally, Leung Ka Yan fights them both and he's armed with a staff that has a big blade on the end, I've seen these before but don't remember the name. He and Lau start it off and have a LONG cut, Leung surprised me with his weapon skill. More awesome camera work, the camera tracks along with the action and there's a great parallax effect in the background the entire time. I believe Leung was doubled only when doing some spinning with his blade, but the rest of the time it's him. Again, there's some deliberate super-undercranking which is hilarious, it's not meant to make them look good, they move so fast with it. During this Lau goes off to get young Lau and Sammo out of prison, something that must have been a little difficult considering they had totally different outfits on when playing the young and old characters. Some more fighting in a cramped spot, sometimes 2 on 1, and the young ones escape while their masters die, which is hilarious as well because first when Sammo is dying, he looks at his disappointed student Lau and makes sickening coughs, tongue sticking out and everything, making a huge scene and then fakes like he died, Lau runs over scared and Sammo SCREAM at him to scare him. Then when Lau finally takes it hard he says "You died before me", and Sammo gets up with a scared look on his face, smiles and says the same thing. Such a good scene.



Sammo and Lau are weaponless, but make their hands out as weapons against Leung the next day. Lau makes a blade with his hand, Sammo uses his fingers like a spear. Fast stuff again, some acrobatics as well and again camerawork is especially nice. They move into a greened area and Sammo grabs some magnets out of his bag, more good choreography and more than normal acrobatics from Lau. Leung's weapon is thrown off and he uses his hands only, this should please those who don't fancy weapon fights because it's an AWESOME hand to hand fight. Sammo uses jabs (spear), Lau uses swinging movements (blade) and sometimes go 2 on 1 against Leung, who uses more kicking than normal here and he does a lot of backfalls too, which surprised me, and takes a nice arial front horse kick from Sammo. Ah great stuff, can't beat it. And I bet you think it's over too...



It's not. Sammo and Lau are now compeditors and think that their master is better than the other. They have a fight similar to the one between their masters earlier in the movie and are just as impressive. It's non-stop for a while, with good acrobatics and nothing short of incredible. They stop for a second to talk about their masters, and then end up fighting over their weapons that they threw trying to kill the other's master. Hand to hand stuff here and there, but it's mostly funny stuff from here on out. But how can one be disappointed at all, this end fight is great, everything in this movie is excellent. No fight disappoints.



This is the Knockabout of weapon movies. If you don't like weapons, let this give you a light of what weapon fights could be if they were always so good. It might be the only one you ever watch, BUT PLEASE WATCH IT!!!

5/5

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