Tiger on the Beat (1988, aka "Tiger on Beat")
literal translation: Tiger Goes on the Beat
cast: Chow Yun-fat, Conan Lee, Nina Li Chi, Shirley Ng Ling, James Wong Jim, Gordon Liu Chia Hui, Norman Chu, and Philip Ko Fei

I'm going to file "Tiger on the Beat" (commonly referred to without the) under guilty pleasure cinema. The first 20 minutes are slow, Chow Yun-fat's humor is decidedly as silly as ever, and comedy was never director Lau Kar-leung's strong suit. Some might even find the film too misogynist if only for a sequence involving the brutal beating of a cocaine mole (portrayed by Nina Li Chi) at the hands of Chow, an undercover cop.

However, there is so much more here to savor; the film in itself is the explicit expressionism of the joys of Hong Kong cinema. Plus, it involves one of the island's most famed old school directors (Lau), Hong Kong's favorite leading man (Chow), and Lau's adopted brother (Gordon Liu, who starred in most of his big brother's chop sockey classics) playing a vicious cocaine dealer--a departure from Liu's days of old as underdog champions and patriotic folk heroes.

Then of course you have American actor Conan Lee, the Ng See-yuen discovered talent who fell from stardom shortly after "Tiger on the Beat" pulled in impressive enough figures at the local box office.

For the here and now anyways, Lee gives an exuberant performance as an undercover cop teamed with Chow Yun-fat, who he saves during a botched robbery at a restaurant. The two discover both are undercover C.I.D. officers when their superior (portrayed by chop sockey icon David Chiang) forces them to work together.

Lau mixes martial arts with brutal violence as the film's climax reinvents the chop sockey finale with a chainsaw duel between Lee and Liu that is one of several things to look at, while Chow Yun-fat gets to play a neat trick on a group of drug dealers with a rope and a shotgun.

Funny how we so easily forgive lame humor and horrendous Western actors in Hong Kong cinema once the martial arts and stunts (some of which rival the work of Jackie Chan here) are paced with precision and all of the mayhem hits the screen like a bug on a windshield.