CITY WAR
(Chinatown Video)
Reviewed by Jonathan
Marshall
City War is another violent Chow Yun Fat vehicle
(The Replacement Killers, The Killer). This time Chow plays
a rational, compassionate and well-liked cop partnered with the usually impressive Ti
Lung (A Better Tomorrow). Ti Lung however has been
saddled with the old ‘out-of-control’ cop character familiar to both Western and
Hong Kong audiences, a portrayal which blunts the usually strong themes of commitment and
vexed loyalties that figure in so much HK action film. Consequently it is only a matter of
time before Chow too is ‘pushed too far,’ becoming his usual,
indestructible, gun-toting self. The main pleasures of this film are therefore to be found
in the extensive lead-up to the final, bloody apocalypse, for although the versatility of
both Chow and Ti Lung is well known to HK audiences, few
Australian releases reflect this. Chow here develops his comic persona -
an ability hinted at in the films of Ringo Lam and John Woo,
but rarely provided as more than an introductory digression - and his romance with the
gangster’s moll is particularly charming, albeit a little naff. His Dirty Dancing
scene is a particular treat. Similarly, although Ti Lung’s
character is fairly one-dimensional, he can play an obsessed cop almost as well as James
Woods (Cop).
Once the guns come out though, the film rapidly spirals into an
over-the-top bloodbath worthy of schlock like Evil Dead or The Hills Have
Eyes. Despite a creative use of location (a double-decker bus repair shop), this is
basically same-old same-old and is frankly a little too self-consciously brutal even for
my tastes - an attack on Ti Lung with an axe springs to mind here. The
violence lacks both Woo’s operatic, painterly flourishes and Lam’s
hard-hitting evaluation of psychological consequences. It is just visceral and nasty. City
War is certainly an interesting change of pace from the more feted HK gangster flicks
and perhaps more accurately reflects the mass of material churned out in the late 1980s.
Beyond this curiosity value though, there is little to recommend this film over other,
finer examples.
© 2000 Jonathan Marshall
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