Review written in 2007 for a different website, and updated and posted to IMDb in 2024.
When her cop boyfriend (Wilson Lam) puts her supposedly reformed triad father (Foo Wang-tat) behind bars, trading company exec Joey Wong aims to rid the organization of it's dirty ties, but chief goon Jimmy Lung Fong - - in a moustache-twirlingly over-the-top portrait of scumbaggery that ranks among the most entertainingly sleazy of his many such roles - - has plans for a very hostile takeover. To ensure her cooperation, he rapes her, videotapes the deed, and sells copies to his pals when he's not whipping her, insulting her, killing her relatives, making her watch him have sex with hookers, and revelling in her utter defencelessness (which actually lasts longer than logic would dictate). Lam's conflicted detective is ultimately painted as an ineffectual, emotionally constipated hero-by-accident, which doesn't exactly win back his girl, but hotheaded partner Max Mok - - whose unrequited love for Wong is sketched in montage while he sings Mandarin karaoke to a soaring Dave Wong Kit power ballad - - doesn't fare much better when he goes above the law to get things done. In fact, the filmmakers strongly suggest that triad "troubles" take care of themselves, though to prove it, they go a little nuts in the second half, with catharses and plot twists and fight scenes - including a king-sized gang-on-gang chopper battle that spills through a restaurant's windows and into the street (those VCD-sourced clips on YouTube since 2008 are mine!) presumably so a fire hydrant can be broken open to make everyone look even cooler fighting in a downpour - piled on at such a ferocious clip that a viewer's emotional circuits might need rewiring after all the yanking around.
2024 addendum: as of this posting, Vinegar Syndrome has just announced (but not yet released) this movie on a special edition Blu-ray, listed with a run time of 93 minutes and labelled a director's cut. The film's rating history has always been somewhat confusing, as cuts were indeed made prior to its Hong Kong theatrical release in 1990. Some sources and retailers list a run time of 85 minutes, which I can't confirm for the original theatrical run. I can confirm that the Hong Kong DVD and Blu-ray editions released by CN Entertainment in 2021, which are listed at virtually all Hong Kong retailers as running 85 minutes, actually run 90 minutes based on my purchases and screenings of both. These Hong Kong discs are also rated Category IIb, the rating most commonly attached to the film since the 1990's, and the film itself is still as bloody and violent as it has always been. It appears that Vinegar Syndrome's edition will best the current HK edition by about three minutes, which suggests the film will finally meet the requirements of the Category III rating that has often been mistakenly attributed to the extant version up to now, and that's potentially great news.
