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¤½¹²II (1995)
City Cop


Reviewed by: ekisha
Date: 04/05/2009
Summary: Movie is entertainment!

I expected Lee Sir as the leading man,but instead he's only supporting actor.The leading guys are Michael Chow and Parkman Wong,cops who do their best to catch baddie...some gun battles...and etc.

I'd say this reminded me Danny Lee's old movies like Law Enforcers and Law With 2 Phases(even the chinese title is similar to LWTP).The ending,chasing and almost everything looked like 80's.
Parkman showed his potential as an actor and it's a shame he became unsung hero even he did a lot of movies.And i dare say this movie is one of the last true Lee's cop movies with Asian Connection(same year),then followed by Walk In.Now cop movies are dead,only some Johnnie To films can make it big,but Danny Lee was the best "hk cop" in the past and will remain so....So City Cop is excellent movie if you love this genre!

Reviewer Score: 10

Reviewed by: mrblue
Date: 08/18/2007

City Cop is an entertaining enough cops-and-robbers picture. But, of course, anyone interested in Hong Kong movies has probably seen this sort of thing many times before -- and that's just assuming you've seen your share of Danny Lee films. If you go with the genre as a whole, then saying City Cop is a little generic is like saying that Lindsay Lohan likes to drink just a little.

At any rate, the movie centers on a Hong Konger (perpeptual bad guy Ben Ng) who hires Mainlanders to carry out high-profile jewelry robberies. Two cops (Parkman Wong and Michael Chow) are assigned to bring the gang down, but get this -- it's really brilliant screenwriting -- they're totally mismatched and don't work well together. I have never seen anything like this.

Sarcasm aside, Parkman Wong (who is usually regulated to supporting roles) does a good job with his character. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Michael Chow, whose over-acting threatens to de-rail to picture at many points. Luckily, we get Danny Lee (who's dubbed in by someone that sounds nothing like him) popping his head in from time to time offering pearls of wisdom like "a cop's job is to catch crooks". Wow.

Okay, so this sort of stuff isn't supposed to be Shakespeare, but perhaps I expected a bit more from Herman Yau. He's one of Hong Kong's most talented directors, but you would be hard-pressed to find any of that spark here. There's a flatness to the exposition scenes that just screams out that no one involved really cared, which in turn makes the viewer disinterested.

Thankfully, the action scenes save the day. They're certainly not the best stuff Hong Kong has put out, but Chin Kar-Lok usually does a solid job in this department, and City Cop is no exception. Of particular note are a frentic shootout in a mall and the final chase, which culminates in a tense stand-off inside a movie theatre.

The action bits were so good that I wished the film-makers would have centered on them more, instead on trying to make the end result bigger than the parts that comprised it. There's nothing wrong with trying to infuse dramatics into a police film, but the final product probably would have been better if the crew has gone with a brass knuckle approach instead of a velvet glove.

[review from www.hkfilm.net]

Reviewer Score: 6

Reviewed by: Inner Strength
Date: 04/14/2002
Summary: Average

Unfortunatly the Danny Lee cop thing had worn off by 1995, and the film flops. Not to say it's bad over-all, but it's a subject done too many times with Danny Lee.

Worth seeing, but not something you would see again.

Rating: 3/5

Reviewer Score: 6

Reviewed by: Sydneyguy
Date: 05/08/2001
Summary: Ok-ish

Nothing new here but no flaws either.
Micheal Chow and Danny Lee team up again!! A better movie is ASIAN CONNECTION which these two star in and is highly underrated!!
Well you could see worst tha this!!

6/10


Reviewed by: pablo
Date: 12/09/1999

Hothead Michael 'Rambo' Chow gets paired with aging veteran'Jackson' Wong to inspect a string of robberies committed by heartless Hon and his gang of mainland thugs. Danny Lee plays the SDU team leader who dispenses pearls of wisdom to the two. Michael Chow Man Kin tries a little too hard in this one, but Parkman Wong Pak Man does a good job making up for it. For once Peter Yung Kam Cheung doesn't play a cop, and is a real bad guy. The film itself is strictly by the numbers. Nothing new to see here, but there are no obvious failings either.