Where's Officer Tuba
12/31/00
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Sammo Hung, Hwang Jang Lee, Yuen Wah, Chang Yi, Jackie Cheung, John Chiang

After Chiang's death, Officer Tuba (Sammo) must take revenge for his death after his ghost comes to haunt him. In the meantime, Tuba is trying to make it with Joey Wong, which doesn't go so well due to the ghost's presence.

I can admit that I was expecting Paper Marriage from this, with some good humor in the beginning with some action in the middle followed by a big finale. I'll say right now that that's not what I got. There's hardly anything in this, which is surprising, except for 2 fights, some stunts, and some funny scenes. That's ok if you want some good humor, but compared to Paper Marriage, though it's not rediculous, it falls short.

It starts out with something interesting. First, someone falls out of a window from a fair distance upward onto a van and rolls off, and then a goon is about to run head on into John Chiang (or his double, poor guy) with a truck and Chiang runs and jumps with a two footed front kick through the windshield, which was broken, but totally nails his hip on the top of the frame there. Check out the clip.



Some good humor here and there, like a bunch of guys coming over to Sammo's house telling him to tell their wives where they were the night before, but the stories are ALL different. So he has to make a bigger story about how they were mahjong fishing while folk dancing at a funeral parlor or something like that. And then he's drawing what looks like a naked woman in front of a video camera, which he thinks his friend is watching but it's actually Joey Wong, and when she leaves he adds hair and a mouth to make a lion's head. Good Sammo humor.

John Chiang gets in a fight with Hwang Jang Lee at a loading dock. It'd be nice if you could see this, but the dark setting makes it almost impossible, like in Cheetah on Fire. Hwang still kicks incredibly well, even though this is around 1982, but it's nice to see him back on duty full force. His fight here is short though, but he comes back later, don't worry.



More excellent Sammo humor (I was wrong when I thought that this wasn't very funny, I just didn't think about it). When he's going to Joey Wong's house, he's in an elevator with a man next to him, and the ghost starts making farting noises and all Sammo can do is close his eyes. Then he finds out that he is Joey's dad (Joey Wong is a woman by the way, in case anyone is wondering), and meets with him at her house. All hell breaks loose, with the ghost making him try to look up Joey's mother's dress, making smirks at her dad, and finally throwing soup all over the place. If you can get into this kind of humor then you'll love it.

Then we get a glimpse of Yuen Wah with no facial hair! God it's almost like seeing your cat shaved!



So we get to the final scene where Sammo is fighting Hwang Jang Lee. It starts off with Jackie Cheung, who isn't really a fighter, taking both Chang Yi and Hwang, but then Sammo gets to fight Hwang which is super impressive. Hwang's kicks still seem to be spot on, with some interesting ones like where he rests his shin on the back of Sammo's neck and follows up with another kick from the other leg. Meanwhile Jackie Cheung is fighting Chang Yi, which isn't very convincing because there's no worthwhile choreography and there are some weird cuts that attempt to make Cheung look like he's able to do this stuff. But back to Sammo and Hwang. Hwang does more great kicks, including one where he steps on Sammo's knee, jumps over him and kicks him in the back. This is standard Hwang stuff, but seeing it in modern times is nice. Cheung kills Chang Yi, oh and about 2 minutes earlier, Yuen Wah fell on an ironing board or something and was knocked out. He didn't get a fight. Sammo gets possessed by John Chiang (or so he thinks) and after getting knocked around for a while, he gets the courage to fight Hwang some more. Still great choreography, and Sammo does some falls, but the ghost lifts him up and Sammo does a wire kick on Hwang and finishes him off. Cut apart, their fight lasts a total of only 1:31, though. Though a great fight, it's short and not worth the rest of the movie.



So that's it. Chiang had a fight in the dark that lasted about 20 seconds, Sammo fought Hwang at the end for a minute and a half, Yuen Wah got knocked out without a fight (what's new?), and Jackie Cheung had a brawl with Chang Yi that didn't impress me at all. On top of that was good Sammo humor. So, if you like Sammo humor, and don't mind seeing a lack of action, this is good. However, if you get movies like this for the action, just like me, then you'll be sorely disappointed, I guarantee. Those who like Yuen Wah will be disatisfied too. Hwang fans will like seeing his 2 minutes of presence, but don't get it for that reason alone. Had there been some kind of large fight in the middle, like in Paper Marriage with Sammo against Billy Chow, and THEN a finale with more than one good fight, this could be a 5/5, but there is clearly less than that. Not enough for me.

2/5

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