Tough Guy
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Chen Zhan Peng, Yu Rong Guang, Billy Chow

Pan (Chen Zhan Peng, who played Bond from Shanghai Affairs) is on a case where stolen diamonds are being traded between Billy Chow and a guy named Chi. Chinny (Guang) is a cop with Peng, but is also in the business with Chow. To make matters worse for Pan, he has a virus that will kill him.

This movie reminds me of Shanghai Affairs in a way because it has both Chen Peng and Guang, and also because it doesn't seem to be a BIG movie, epic, like the Once Upon a Time in China series. It's easy to digest, which can be a good thing if provided with a good atmosphere and characters. This one, well, it has some emotional parts, and some action parts (which will be the focus), and it's not an entirely bad package for something I just found and never knew existed, really. The mood is hampered with the colors, like Iron Monkey 2, where there is blue and red and green and all sorts of weird colors that are used like affirmative action or something.

Things start off with Guang beating someone up, but there are too many cuts and nothing really special happens except Guang sweeps the guy, who flies into the air, and Guang does a front thrust kick on him. Let me mention that Guang didn't dress extremely well here (my opinion), wearing black and white checkered pants and coat, with a blue shirt. Well, it's interesting I guess.

The next batch of fights are between Billy Chow and Chen Peng, and they're not so bad. Chow overpowers Peng all the time, as I would expect. Their punches look good, and the kicks are good too, and at one point Chen Peng busts out some fast punches and Chow, well, doesn't have much trouble laying him out again. But there really isn't much of it. Guang gets in a small fight with Chow with some clothes grabbing, nothing great, and then Guang fights with Chen Peng and something happens. Guang all of a sudden gets chubby, his hair gets long, and his ass gets stuffed with a turkey, not to mention he shrinks by 8 inches. They doubled him with some guy who's pretty good, yea, but he doesn't look anything like Yu Rong Guang. AT LEAST they could have cut the guy's hair. Why did they do this? He does simple stuff that Guang does. I want to know these things. Did the choreography not work with Chen Peng and Guang's heights? Did they have to shring Guang just for a small piece of choreography, and show the double's face the whole time?



Hey where'd this ugly guy come from?



Oh well. Guang and Chow fight again, and they put the first part of the fight (like 30 moves) in slow motion... wait a second, is this good? Remember in Tai Chi 2 when I mentioned that the fight in slow motion was actually very well done? (If not, then I didn't put it in, but anyways, I stand correct). Here, it's just as effective. The two of them look good in slow motion. Chow uses his waist to do his hits, while Guang has this incredible ability to throw a flurry of punches with just his shoulders, and still facing in the same direction he started in. Very cool looking. A few drops to the ground, Guang gets pissed, oh it's cool. Guang also does a good looking low forward jumping toe kick that is blocked, Chow throws 4 great looking kicks. Nice thing about slow motion is you can go into real detail about all the hits. After that it goes back to regular speed. Guang, again, turns into a double when his back is turned. This is annoying but doesn't happen for the whole fight. This double, though, does a picture perfect single HK spin to avoid a kick, and it looks wire assisted but for some reason it just looked too good to be on wires. Some more punches, and then they stop.



The last fight between Guang and Chen Peng is in slow motion too, but it's that Mr. Nice Guy slow motion, where they film in 30 fps but just put spaces between the frames. That's bad, bad because they had some good motion going on there and it was pretty well wasted. I mean, you can see what's happening, but now how you're supposed to see it. Guang does some good kicks, Chen Peng gets beaten up, and his wife comes and stops the fight.



I think that there needed to be more action, different colors, and stop that crap slow motion at the end (again, regular slow motion is good, just not the jerky kind). Besides that, I was pretty satisfied with what was there. Oh and ditch the double for Guang. If he doesn't work with the choreography, CHANGE THE CHOREOGRAPHY.

6/10 - For a movie I never knew existed, that's not so bad and I don't regret buying it. No fan of Yu Rong Guang should come away disastisfied.

UPDATE - 10/5 - Ok I was a little excited about a movie that really didn't have great action. Not enough and not good enough, but it has Guang and Chow, so I keep it at a

5/10

UPDATE 10/9 - Rating System Change

2/5 - A little weird, not enough action.

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