Featuring some of the most iconic Shaw Bros' actors in the faces of Ti Lung, Lo Lieh, Wong Yu, Wang Lung-wei, Chan Wai-man and Philip Ko, “Mercenaries from Hong Kong” is also very much a Wong Jing vehicle, with the distinct combination of brutal action, slapstick humor and incoherence resulting in another rather entertaining title.
“Mercenaries from Hong Kong” is screening on Fantasia International Film Festival
The movie begins with a sequence that paves the way for what is about to follow as Luo Li is attempting to assassinate a man who exploited his niece, ending up feeding him his own drugs, before escaping and realizing that there is now a contract to his name by the triads. Around that time, he is approached by a mysterious lady named Hei-ying, who is proven to be the daughter of the richest family in Hong Kong, and whose father has been recently murdered by an assassin, Na Wei, who is now located in Cambodia. Hei-ying suggests paying him and five men of his choice one million dollars each to find and kill Wei, to retrieve an audio tape with corporate secrets that could hurt both her and her company, and lastly, to find who the mastermind behind this attack is. Agreeing, Luo Li brings with him five former comrades. Lei Tai, a former sniper whose daughter needs to go to America for a kidney transplant, Ruan Nanxing, an expert in gun and close-combat fighting, Hong Fan, a brute of a man who is also an expert in driving, Curry, a conman who immediately begins to fight with Hong Fan, and Blanche, an explosive expert who is also an extreme womanizer. After having some fun, courtesy of their new employer, the group travels to Cambodia, where expectedly all hell breaks loose, starting with the fact that Na Wei is protected by a guerrilla army.
Wong Jing directs a movie that moves with a frantic pace, occasionally even including fast-forward to make the battles move faster, from beginning to end, with the action just stopping to present the rather thin main story, and some jokes here and there, mostly deriving from Blanche and the constant bickering between Hong Fan and Curry. Also of note are that some of the comedy does not seem to be aiming at making the viewer laugh, as in the case of the group wearing the same clothes, including some red track suits, at all times, in one of those elements that deem a movie as cult.
Evidently, the pace, courtesy of the editing by Chiang Hsing-lung and Shao Kuang Liu, also aims at masquerading the illogicality and the huge plot holes of the script, but at the same time, results in a film that is very entertaining to watch from beginning to end, also highlighting the level of production as exhibited in the huge number of different scenes and locations. In that regard, Tsao An-sung's cinematography emerges as one of the movie's best traits.
Of course, the focus here is on the action, and in that regard, the movie delivers to the highest degree, both in the scenes where the six fight scores of enemies together, and in the one-on-ones, both in the gun-fu sequences and the martial arts ones. Furthermore, they include car chases, explosions of buildings, and in general, any type of cinematic action one could think of. Also of note is the fact that after a number of secrets are revealed, the approach in this aspect becomes more dramatic and brutal, as former comrades find themselves fighting each other, with a number of the protagonists ending up dead. Add to all that one brief scene of sex and nudity, which moves in the exact same direction as the whole movie, and you have the backbone of the film.
The acting is also fitting to the overall aesthetics. Ti Lung is the definite star here, also appearing in the distinctly SB intro, and delivers in all aspects, while Chan Wai-man as Ruan Nanxing emerges as the most interesting character, along with Yvonne Yuas Hei-Ying who is eventually revealed as a true femme fatale. Chan Pak-cheung is hilarious on occasion as Blanche, with the same applying to Wang Lung-wei, whose raw and violent ways are both funny and captivating, depending on the occasion.
“Mercenaries from Hong Kong” is unapologetically raw, bloody and entertaining, in a way that only HK cinema of the era could exhibit.
