Hong Kong 97

It's a tragedy to see Albert Pyun slumming it with this sort of direct-to-video car crash, Hong Kong 97 is far from his finest hour, a shame given the potential of the story and setting is a winner. Robert Patrick takes the lead alongside a bunch of B-movie frequenters, including Andrew Divoff, Brion James and Tim Thomerson, they do what they can with the rather poor, cliched script but even then their natural chemistry can't lift what's fundamentally shoddy writing. Pyun's direction is alright but his action scenes rely too much on choppy slow-motion, lacklustre gunfights and poor staging, I don't think even a better quality of print would be able to save these. I can give some credit to Michael McCarty's score which does a decent job of matching the mood and atmosphere of the setting but that's about it. While there's a bit of B-movie fondness to be found with Hong Kong 97, it doesn't mark many of its contributor's finest hours and is probably best left forgotten for the most part; just stick to the AVGN video.