When discussing a film movement, it's always difficult to pin down the exact moment it began. With Heroic Bloodshed it's often considered that “A Better Tomorrow” was the key movie but “The Story of Wu Viet” and “Coolie Killer” before it could be said to have demonstrated themes prior. Going back, we have “The Club” by Kirk Wong in 1981 but even two years before that we have “Cops and Robbers”. So a genre evolves organically rather than emerging fully formed. So it's an interesting release on blu ray and provides a chance to catch a moment in time as a new style of action began to emerge in Hong Kong.
Buy This Title
A team of cops headed by Inspector Chow (Kam Hing-Yin) and Sergeant Kei (Wong Chung) successfully foil a robbery on a security van despite Kei being wounded. A gang of bank robbers including the psychotic Bill (Hiu Bing-Sam) complete a heist that results in several casualties. After their hide out is located, only Bill escapes and seeks revenge on the cops, starting with the kidnap of Kei's son.
From the opening scene of children playing cops and robbers that concludes with a glass bottle being broken to use as a weapon, there is a sense that the adults in the movie are acting out a more dangerous game. Bill is first seen making a model gun and then at an arcade. Before the bank heist, the villains twirl their guns as if in an imaginary western shouting “Pow Pow” whilst the police indulge in baseball. The theme of duality emerges slowly with Bill in flashback failing his police medical, due to being cock eyed. Kei is shown taking down a robber with one shot as though it were a trick shot, a scene that is almost mirrored at the film's final confrontation. Both police and gangs relax at the same bar with no apparent dissimilarities.
The hand held camera work is reminiscent of Kinji Fukasaku's Yakuza series, giving it a more gritty, realistic feel (some undercranking in chase scenes are the exception). As Hong Kong cinema moved into the urban action thriller, the claustrophobic settings of the crowded city made it an ideal locale for the modern neo noir which would be more explicitly demonstrated a few years later in the finale of “Long Arm of the Law”. As the movie heads to its climax in an appropriately nourished night, the outbursts of violence remain very sudden with little stylization that would come to be an expected trait as the genre evolved. The finale feels almost like a horror movie in execution with Bill chasing his prey like a maniac slasher. It's a suitably bloody climax to a film that darkens as it progresses where even the survivors are scarred mentally as well as physically.
Hiu Bing-Sam is exceptional as the increasingly deranged Bill. A complete gun fetishist with anger about his disability that destroyed his chances of being a cop. Almost child like, maniacally laughing as he kills his victims, he is a disturbing presence. The finale as he stalks a policeman through a building is a truly unerving scene with an intensity not often seen to this point. The cops are a broad bunch with little to distinguish them other than a basic character trait. Kei is given a bit more backstory and is the parallel image to Bill. Look out for Phillip Chan as unsurprisingly a policeman and Teddy Robin Kwan as an informer/singer.
“Cops and Robbers” is really well directed by Alex Cheung with a strong sense of location and pace building momentum to a surprising final half hour. The undercranking is a bit too evident if finicky, but otherwise is really well shot. An early entry to the Hong Kong New wave and a forerunner of the action cinema to come. Definitely worth watching.
