SYNOPSIS:
An extremely brutal armed robbery case has brought
two very unusual young detectives together in Hong Kong. Both
men have been known not to follow the usual rules of conduct
in solving crimes. Lincoln, the younger brother of the deceased,
an ex-policeman in China, has sworn to find the man who has
murdered his brother. While he investigates the murder on
his own in Hong Kong, he meets Michael, a CID officer on suspension.
Michael has often been warned against insubordination and
for pulling his own stunts to capture criminals on the run.
MOVIE REVIEW:
The differentiating factor in this tired Hong Kong cop genre
movie would be the blatant gimmicky inclusion of “above
the law type” rich playboy in the police force. The
cover and the premise look promising for some high octane
fun with “playboyism” and wild actions in the
midst of some formulaic police story but what Jingle Ma (Seoul
Raiders) had delivered was a lifeless blend of cops with “playboy”
attitude and trying plot that’s thin and predictable
to the T.
First
of all, the supposedly “playboy” cops (Shawn Yue
and Chen Kun) are hardly playboy al all. By any definition,
playboy does not equate to being wealthy but somehow the meaning
was lost in transition and the focus here is clearly about
the spendthrift while solving crimes. They are filthy rich
but spend very little time in actually being a playboy. All
they did was brood and spend time fighting each other like
a gay couple secretly in love with each other. Beside their
good looks (subject to respective standards), this film spend
very little time in demonstrating their charms in mesmerizing
the opposite sex.
Instead
it spends bulk of this film focusing on fighting for the affection
of one average looking lady (as again subject to individual’s
standards). It doesn’t make sense for these supposedly
“playboy” status to go through so much trouble
for the affection one female. It doesn’t help that it
never play much emphasis on why they are so hung up about
her in the first place. Since the film maker didn’t
give much concern about such build up, why would the viewers
be bothered with the plastic love affairs that going on?
Another
half baked notion was the supposedly flaunting of the rich
cop’s wealth. A good way to describe it would be that
the display had been miserly exaggerated. If one would to
pay attention, it would be obvious that the producers had
limited funds and resources to make the wealth bit of this
film convincing. It did show case expensive cars and clubs
but after a while, it’s beginning to look limited in
quality and there weren’t any funds to show more.
Then
when it tried to show how this wastrel is wasting money, it
just came across as naively silly. There are some real rich
squanderers that are wasting their money like nothing but
to waste it to fight crime? Batman and Iron man did it in
a more respectable way while in Playboy Cops, it’s just
so stupidly uninventive that I wonder if Shawn Yue rolled
his eyes at what he was asked to do in this film.
Beside
those couples of silly off putting presentation of playboy
wealth mention above, the rest of the film was made up of
awfully predictable attempt at pull twist and turns in the
plot department.
For
example, it isn’t hard to spot the mysterious killer
that supposedly hiding behind the crime scene. Season viewers
shouldn’t find it to hard to figure out who did it.
The strange and unnecessary emphasis on supportive characters
will stand out like a sore thumb.
Then
there the exaggerated spenditure of the rich man son which
raise alerts that there will be some morale lessons included
which are clumsily included without any importance bearings
to this story and serve no purpose except wasting time.
Without
a doubt, the good looking Shawn Yue’s talent is wasted
in Playboy Cops. Specially coming off from Rule #1 which gave
him more serious material to work on, Playboy Cops had him
playing an unbelievably childish hunk who isn’t in tune
with the object of his affection. It felt that he had a hard
time convincing himself that the dashing character that he
is playing would behave in such petty immature way.
This film also felt like an excuse to pull in China actors
into prominence with the Hong Kong Market (and perhaps the
international market). In this case, the China actor (which
was referred to a couple of times, like it’s warning
viewers) Chen Kun looks relatively good but delivered his
emotion by glazing into nothing like a stoic blind man.
The worst bit was the pairing off of these two and chemistry
here is definitely lacking. Maybe it’s the China investment
in this film production that dumb down the fun buddy rival
films (Tokyo Raiders, Curry and Pepper comes to mind) that
are abundant back in the old days. Or maybe the script writer
ought to be shot for not even referring to the plentiful inventory
in the past to muster up their chemistry. Or maybe the problem
lies with pairing of a Hong Kong star and China actor. In
anyway, Playboy Cops isn’t much of an enjoyable time
waster compared to the good old Hong Kong stuff.
SPECIAL
FEATURES:
NIL.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Presented
in 4:3 letterbox, this DVD features no extras and not even
a menu page to get to. That means the selection of scenes
which is a norm in almost all DVD release is absent here.
The English and Chinese subtitles are burned in and they are
not even selectable like other normal dvds. Haven’t
seen such DVD made since the old days of Hong Kong dvds.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING:
NIL
Review by Richard Lim Jr
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