Reviewed by: mrblue Date: 09/24/2010 More than a bit "inspired" by Die Hard, Yuen Woo-Ping's 1995 picture The Red Wolf doesn't have much in terms of a story, has very little in the way of star power, features acting more fitting for late-night cable fare than a big-screen release, and there's a horribly annoying little kid running around. But if you're looking for high-octane action delivered at a breakneck pace, you could do a lot worse than this. Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: steve_cole1 Date: 01/07/2007 Summary: average film above average action This film is one that you can watch in full once but then fast forward to the action scenes on further watching the acting isnt that great bar the bad guys Ngai Sing and Elaine Lui Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: dandan Date: 12/30/2006 Summary: what a howler... a cruise ship leaves hong kong on new year's eve, its passengers unaware that the crew have been infiltrated by a group of violent thieves. the group are after the uranium that is stored in the ship's safe; unfortunately for them, security officer alan (kenny ho) has rumbled them. 'die hard' on a boat or a straight 'under seige' rip-off? you decide... this is a great example of a simple story, about simple characters, with touches of brutal violence, melodrama, slapstick comedy and plenty of murder. it all sits rather uncomfortably, in that way that makes it so endearing, in that hong kong way. the plot and characters are simplistic, as with a few contemporary yuen wo-ping action / thrillers, the set ups are telegraphed, but executed with a real, brutal gusto. that is, despite their silliness. the mix of gun play and martial arts is pretty good; the choreography is decent, but suffers from some overly enthusiastic under-cranking and editing. kenny ho does a reasonable job, but is outshined by both ngai sing and elaine lui: the male / female bad guys. persona wise, kenny also loses out to christy cheung, who is likable enough. doesn't say much for kenny. no, christy does a good job, especially in her showdown with elaine; this confrontation starts with some fun slapstick and ends with a prolonged sequence of elaine on fire, that eeks out more screen time than it should. still, that's the kind of film this is. daft, but an entertaining daft...

Reviewed by: ewaffle Date: 12/05/2005 There are two aspects that make “The Red Wolf” notable—it is an otherwise unexceptional action programmer in which a large team of well armed terrorists who have an inexhaustible supply of ammunition and enough small arms to equip a police battalion is opposed in their attempt to take over a cruise liner by a former police officer and a cocktail waitress who is also a pickpocket. The first aspect is the action direction of Yuen Wu Ping, especially the ultimate showdown between Kenny Ho as the ship’s security officer Alan and Ngai Sing, the treacherous first officer. Yuen seems to be using stylized violence almost as early abstract painters used familiar forms, by both exaggerating and simplifying them to the point of getting past what the form might represent and to the essence of the form itself. The last fight is so violent, so prolonged and has so many apparent climaxes in which it seems that one or the other combatant must finally prevail that it ceases to be part of a narrative and becomes an exploration of the choreography of brutality. As such it is an exemplary set of scenes. The other is Elaine Lui who is glamorous, gorgeous, exotic, sexy and extremely deadly, a character who enjoys killing. Cast as the singer/terrorist Elaine, she sings super-saccharine overdone pop tunes—“You don’t have to say you love me” putting all of the overwrought emotion and woman crushed for love content into it, then becomes the out of control sex kitten in a scene in her stateroom and finally a killer whose eyes light up with pleasure as she guns down scores of innocent passengers. In each case she makes it clear that she enjoys what she is doing. Not sure why this talented and beautiful actress didn’t have more of a career in Hong Kong—she is completely credible as a professional killer. One stunt, in which Elaine is set ablaze, might be a bit uncomfortable to watch—and it certainly must have been extremely uncomfortable for the stunt person to perform. It goes on for a long time and while some of its length may be due to creative editing it is impossible for the audience to know that. This is one of those cases where what is real—or what could be real—interjects itself into the way the audience sees the movie. If the sequence was half as long as it was it would be exciting. At the length it was shown it was remarkable and made it difficult, at least for this viewer, to continue to concentrate on the movie as movie and not think about the danger involved for the stunt person. Christy Chung is the waitress/pickpocket/sidekick who is there so that Kenny Ho doesn’t have to kill all the bad guys by himself, to provide a bit of comic relief and to complete the good guys’ side of the male-female equation. She was not a particularly skilled actor in 1995 but with her creamy complexion, bedroom eyes and full lips she didn’t have to be. Through some creative editing she was able to able to do a decent comic scene when she was trapped in Elaine’s stateroom while Elaine and the First Officer discussed their progress so far, planned their next moves and sucked on each others faces. As is generally the case in movies like this the terrorists never missed when shooting at innocent bystanders and always missed when shooting at the heroes. There were a couple of risible lines although the subtitle translators may have been partially responsible. One was early in the movie while various characters (most of whom were killed before long) were established. Dragon, as head of security, is keeping a close eye on the light-fingered Christy. At one point after he discovers her counting a stack of bills—which, in this case, she hadn’t stolen—he said to her “Don’t let me see you again”. Since they were on a ship, on a cruise and Christy’s job was to serve the passengers it would be impossible for him not to see her quite often. The second line comes after a number of pitched battles between the terrorists and Dragon, with Christy helping out. She breaks down, sobbing that she has had to kill people, something she has never done before and which she never wants to do again. Deadpan, Dragon tells her “I have some bad news—we will have to kill more people”. And then there is the uranium which is stored in the ship’s safe.... Reviewer Score: 5

Reviewed by: Arshadnm6 Date: 04/21/2005 Summary: Too Short and Too Simple, with a bunch of no-bodies..... Dragon (played by Kenny Ho Kar-King from ‘Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars’, ‘Project A part II’ and ‘Police Story II’), a security officer is onboard a luxury cruise-liner, celebrating the New Year in high-classed style. The boat gets taken over by a group of hijackers (led by Ngai Sing from ‘The Blade’, ‘The Kung Fu Cult Master’ and ‘No Problem 2’) as the co-captain, but his real intentions are to steal uranium shells secretly stored on the cruise-liner. A classy singer (played by Elaine Lui) also participates in the hijacking and Lai (played by Christy Chung from ‘Tai Chi 2’, ‘Gen-Y-Cops’ and ‘The God of Cookery’) a cruise employee acts as a con-artist to strip money off the wealthy passengers. A little girl (Ng Sin-Si) has both of her parents murdered on the cruise-liner during the takeover and becomes a soft target for the hijackers. The Red Wolf also co-stars Wu Feng from ‘Project A part II’ and ‘Miracles’ and Yuen Cheung-Yan from ‘Once Upon a Time in China’, ‘Iron Monkey’ and ‘Tai Chi Master’ as some of the passengers. The storyline is too simplistic, there are no twists and very few sub-plots, the setting has no inspiration behind it and worst of all characters are paper-thin and not explained clearly on their background and the circumstances which have landed them in the situation at hand. Moreover, the character-development is non-existent and no deep issues are tackled whatsoever. Ng Sin-Si, Christy Chung, Wu Feng and Yuen Cheung-Yan play forgettable roles irrelevant to the unfolding of the storyline. The genre of this movie is a serious action-thriller with some romance and comedy injected into it but the later seem to dominate the main theme throughout. Although, the action choreography for this movie was done by Yuen Woo-Ping, he was teamed up with two completely unknown action directors, Cho Wing and the infamous actor Yuen Cheung-Yan. This may have been done to give Yuen Woo-Ping additional space to deal with directing the movie which may explain the short fight-sequences observed as they did not look like they were polished in any way and appeared rather scattered at points when the movie ran out of ideas. Although, this was a direct translation of ‘Die Hard’ from a skyscraper onto a cruise-liner setting, the parallels are many and the original concepts are thin and hard to find. The acting also was fairly abysmal (tired and lifeless) and had no life injected into it by any of the actors, partly because the hero was lesser-known and inexperienced Kenny Ho Kar-King and also due to the inclusion of sex-symbol and seductress Christy Chung from Wong Jing’s vast lineage of X-rated/action movies. The main problem with the acting is that there were no well-known actors present to take charge and the movie is dominated by the likes of comedians such as Wu Feng and Yuen Cheung-Yan. Failures in most of the above areas could be due to a lack of focus as well as the inexperience of Yuen Woo-Ping in trying to go it alone in the movie production industry. He can hold his own in action-directing sequences but not in directing a whole movie and this feature is living, breathing proof of that fact. This movie must have been unsuccessful at the box-office takings which did not do any participating bodies any favours and probably explains why one more similar directing/action-directing production featured after this film (‘Wing Chun’) by Yuen Woo-Ping when he decided to take his gloves off, call it quits and opt for a solely action-choreographer role and rightly focus on his strength in that particular area which has made him the leading success everyone knows today. Furthermore, Yuen Woo-Ping’s directing of other less well-known movies such as ‘In the Line of Duty 4’, ‘Tiger Cage 2 and 3’ and ‘Heroes among Heroes’ (with the exception of ‘Iron Monkey’) supports the above opinion. Overall, the movie is watchful (not unbearable in the least) but very forgetful and not appealing in any area since it tries to capitalise on too many tried and done techniques in the movie industry already. This movie also proves that the people behind the cameras do not always make a successfully production and some consideration should always be given to the selection of the actors as not everyone can become a megastar like Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat or Jackie Chan overnight! Overall Rating: 6.7/10

Reviewed by: pjshimmer Date: 11/04/2002 Summary: Great fun Do you like Kenny Ho Ga Chin? Do you like Ngai Sing? How about Cho Wing? Wait, you've probably never heard of them. Or maybe you have. If you like them, this one will be a nice addition to your collection, especially since it also has a hilarious Christy Chung and the lady killer Elaine Lui (Martial Law) in it. And if you don't like any of the cast? Well, what can I say, you must be crazy. Anyway, I love Kenny Ho. I want to see more of Christy. I've been tracking down Ngai Sing's movies. Anyone who can fight is cool with me, so Elaine and Cho Wing are cool. Now you must be thinking "well aren't you just lucky; this is the perfect movie for you." And isn't it, indeed. From the very beginning, I knew I was going to love this movie. Actually, I started having this feeling 3 years ago, but it took me a while to see it. This movie has been hailed as "Die Hard" on a cruiseship; you might even have heard it as a straight copy of "Under Siege." Yeah yeah whatever. It might be "Die Hard" with 10 times better action; that's what I say. Kenny Ho is easily one of the most able action actors. The first time I saw him was in the a Taiwanese TV series called "The Young Tai Chi Master," and he was awesome. Then came "Justice Bao," the most successful Chinese TV series ever made, and Kenny was shining all throughout. Lucky enough, I rediscovered him in the Shaw Brothers movie "Long Road to Gallantry," where he proved himself a skilled fighter. He can fight, all right. Not exactly something to say about Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung -- all though they could have easily fooled you. Moving on, Christy Cheung is a delight here. I still think her acting is fake, but she played the role just fine. Maybe it was her dub that covered it up. She kinda serves as a comic relief, and there are several humorous scenes. I was laughing out loud (LOL) a lot, in fact. Yuen Wo Ping, Yuen Cheung Yan, and one other guy directed the action. You have the most talented choreographers in the world, so you can expect some great action sequences. So, what can you expect from this movie? Magnificent fight scenes that will make your jaw drop, impressively dangerous stunts that will make you go "SHIT," crazy moments that will keep you on the edge of your couch, and (unintentional, perhaps) funny stuff to keep you awe and cry your tears out at the same time. This is a good one. Oh yeah, I usually hate modern action movies. Just thought I'd let you know. A little bit about the HKL DVD. It's got a nice treatment. 88 minutes, nice transfer as usual, 2 discs platinum edition, tons of extras including 5 hours of interviews and commentary, Cantonese 5.1 and English 5.1 audio, removable subs, blah blah blah. It's HKL, and it's one of their best. [8/10]

Reviewed by: Inner Strength Date: 06/28/2002 Summary: Poor Well, for Yuen Wo Ping, a lot more should be expected from him than this film. This just goes again to my point I have made before, that although he is a great fight choreographer, he is pretty average when it comes to directing the overall film itself, which is very clear in this film. It's certainly not BAD, but if you are expecting anything more than just action, then I suggest you do not bother watching this, as it's another average action film with so much more potential than is actually used. [2.5/5]

Reviewed by: MrBooth Date: 03/16/2002 Summary: Throw-away action movie Everyone always says "It's Die Hard on a ship", and it is. Not in a bad 'oh, they've just ripped off Die Hard' kind of way - doesn't feel like a rip off, just a fairly honest decision to make the same basic movie in a ship-board setting. Kenny Ho is the ship security officer who ends up alone and in danger when the ship is taken over by thieves after the Uranium in the safe. Christy Chung is the waitress/pick pocket who ends up either helping him or impeding him, depending on the situation. Ngai Sing & Elaine Lui are the bad guys. It's not a bad movie, but basically feels like "throw-away action movie no 14". Just something to pass Yuen Wo Ping's time, and give some under-utilised fighters some screen time. The plot set-up is pretty perfunctory (it doesn't need much explaining), and after that it's all action/thriller scenes in a die hard meets Yuen Wo Ping style. Less tensely filmed and technically polished than Die Hard, but more violent & destructive. There's some flashes of nice choreography, but most of it is fairly by the books, and often ruined by ridiculous speed up. Yuen Wo Ping does fall into that trap from time to time Christy Chung is quite charismatic - it's hardly noticable that it's not her voice you're hearing. She has some fairly funny scenes. Elaine Lui is the real revelation though - cute, mean, and a great fighter. Wonder why I've never come across her before? Wonder where she is now... Ngai Sing gets a decent amount of screen time and uses it well. I like him. Kenny Ho is ok, not dazzling. Basically, Red Wolf is an OK movie, but a strange choice for Hong Kong Legends to give "Platinum" treatment to. What I've seen of the second disc of extras so far has been fairly interesting - a Ngai Sing stunt workshop and half a documentary on HK stuntmen. Both of them tend to focus more on the industry side of stuntmanship than e.g. showing how they do the stunts. Haven't checked the audio commentary, so I can't offer an opinion as to how convincing Christy Chung's orgasm is Reviewer Score: 6

Reviewed by: danton Date: 01/03/2002 This Yuen Woo Ping actioner, shot in 95, is sort of a "Die Hard on a cruise ship". City Hunter ventured into the same storyline on a more comic tone and with a much bigger budget, whilst this effort was probably shot for less than the catering budget on an average Hollywood production, and it shows... But noone watches these types of movies for production values - it's for the fighting, and on that front the film delivers. Plenty of well-choreographed battles involving the usual assortment of gwailo bad guys as well as Elaine Lui and Ngai Sing as the evil masterminds. They are stopped and defeated (was there ever any doubt?) by our heroes, Kenny Ho and Christy Chung. The script is weak, the humour labored and some of the situations were very contrived, but I didn't care - on the action front, the film delivers. The stuntwork is impressive and highly entertaining. Elaine Lui is particulary memorable (except that once again she can't refrain from using that totally annoying laughter that almost killed BWWH for me...) and Christy Chung has some nice moments as well. Only available on VCD, but the picture quality is ok, it's letterboxed, and the subtitles are readable (and they're occasionally hilarious: the First Officer on the ship is constantly referred to as "Vice Captain", which I guess is not too far-fetched given what normally goes on on these floating casino ships...)

Reviewed by: foleyisgravy Date: 12/27/2001 Summary: Blood, broads, and some fine hand-to-hand combat! Excellent action film with a good mixture of gunplay and martial arts. Ngai Sing and Elaine Lui play a villainous pair of baddies who plan on stealing uranium which is on board a cruise ship. Kenny Ho is the security staff member who foils their dastardly plan and Christy Chung is the hot little number who helps him on his quest. The plot is formulaic, but the movie still kicks ass! It has just about everything you could ask for in a Die Hard/Under Siege ripoff. Many of the villains from this film are also featured in Sammo Hung's Don't Give a Damn, which was filmed around the same time. This flick also features one of my perennial favorite foes, Cho Wing (In the Line of Duty IV, Bury Me High). Ngai Sing is great as the evil villain, Kenny Ho (never heard of him before this movie) does a commendable job as the hero, and there is a hilarious and brutal fight between Christy and Elaine Lui. What's not to like? Highly recommended to buy if you like action flicks.

Reviewed by: Ash Date: 02/04/2001 Summary: Typical actioner from yuen woo-ping! The red wolf is basically a remake of ''die hard'' ,starring Bruce Willis, but this time the action is set in a cruise ship and not in a building. There is a good amount of action but the action is separated in little sequences(1 or maybe 2 minutes each) and the climactic fight does not even last 5 minutes. But the action is good (what else do you expect from Yuen woo-ping?) and Christy chung is looking better than ever(she even has a catfight in this one!). This is an entertaining movie to rent but don't buy this one, buy Yuen woo-ping's masterpiece ''Iron monkey'' instead. This movie deserves 7,7/10

Reviewed by: hkcinema Date: 12/08/1999 Modern-day action movie on board a huge yacht, with many nicetouches: terrific fight sequences, lots of gun play, funny bits, a bit of a romantic interest, lots of standard HK bits (looking around the corner in reflection of sun glasses, etc.) and really appealing stars, whom I don't really know from other films. But the female lead (I don't know if she's Christy Chung or Elaine Lui) is really fun. The non-Asian actors I recognize from other HK movies, like the Black actor in Don't Give A Damn. A bit over the top, but quite enjoyable. [Reviewed by Eduardo in NY]

Reviewed by: spinali Date: 12/08/1999 Summary: NULL It's New Year's Eve on the cruise ship The White Whale, and for small-time triad chief Dragon (Kenny Ho), it's not been amusing: his girlfriend's been shot to death, his buddies have become turncoats, and a team of thieves have taken over the ship to steal a cache of uranium in the ship's safe. Service girl/pick-pocket Ah Lai (Christy Chung) signs on to help him, but matters get out of hand at the New Year's countdown to 12:00, after which the conspirators, vocalist Elaine Lui, the ship's staff, and the band (!) start unloading Uzi's into the crowd. Ho gets shot, chained, kung fu'd, pummeled in the weight room (a great place for a fight scene), locked in the ship's freezer, drops from a chandelier, has to fight with his arm on fire, and -- after killing all of the bad guys save one, tries to save a little girl rigged up with eight sticks of dynamite! This vivid but not atypical actioner makes up in general fun what it lacks in inspiration. (2.5/4) [Reviewed by Steve Spinali] Reviewer Score: 6