City Cops has Ken Tong as a jewel thief on the run from some baddies in America, so he goes to Hong Kong hoping to fence the stolen merchandise. On his trail is FBI agent Cindy (Rothrock), but to get her man, she has to team up with two local HK detectives, Kiu-Wai Miu and Fui-On Shing, who are also on Tong's trail. Wackiness ensues, as Miu has a thing for Tong's sister May (Suki Kwan), and a romance may or may not be budding between Shing and Rothrock. In the meantime, they need to find Tong, as the baddies have taken May. This leads us to a final showdown at a factory. Will our heroes prevail? And how much damage will they do to the factory in the process.
This is a pretty good deal. Not the best of Rothrock's HK films, but she has some great martial arts scenes, in particular a fight at the end with Michiko Mishiwaki. On the other hand we have this comedic element which works sometimes, others it drags the film down a bit, and then others it either makes you cringe with the kind of jokes they make--or makes you laugh in spite of yourself. Tong is playing a gay man, who is originally busted by Miu and Shing in Hong Kong while dressed as a woman. There's a whole joke while the three of them are getting a meal at a hotel restaurant, where Tong and Miu tell Shing that Tong has AIDS after Shing accidentally drinks from Tong's water glass. On the one hand it's like "can you be making AIDS jokes?" so there's that cringe element; but then there's the gallows humor element, where they're not making fun of AIDS and the suffering it causes so much as making fun of Shing's ignorance of the disease, thinking he could catch it by drinking Tong's water--plus the fact that Tong doesn't have AIDS anyway, Tong's just making them think that because he's gay and wants to mess with them. So I'm watching this bit play out, where I'm like "I can't believe they're making a joke about AIDS," but also laughing as Tong and Miu are playing off each other, convincing Shing he'll be dead in seven years. Anyway, I think this film has enough action, especially with Rothrock in some sweet fight scenes, to make this worth a watch, especially while it's on Tubi.
We're now at 43 for Rothrock on the site, which puts her in a three-way tie with Cannon and PM Entertainment for fifth-most all-time, and third all-time for actors after Dolph and Gary Daniels. Looking at where she is on the actors list, she's probably not going to move up or down anytime soon, because she's 16 behind Daniels, who has 59 films, and the closest behind her are Seagal with 39, but he hasn't made a film since 2019, and Wilson at 37, who does have some stuff we can cover to at least get him into the 40 Club, but I don't know if we have six for him to catch Rothrock. The other issue is the quality of her newer stuff. I was trying to think how many are near this film, and other than New York Ninja, which is her voice work, the best I could come up with was Outside the Law, which came out in 2002. Death Fighter was decent too, but not as good as this, and the rest of it, over the last 20+ years, has been her in tiny parts, not a lot of action--if any at all--and even worse, a lot of them haven't even been released--and I don't mean not released in the US, I mean not released period. That's what makes it so great that we have movies like this on free streamers, and if you search her on Tubi, you'll see some other greats she did. This is the Rothrock you want when you see her name on the tin, and while she doesn't have as many fight scenes, what she has are fantastic.
In addition to Rothrock, we had some Hong Kong film greats. Ken Tong (playing a character named Kent Tong) was our thief, and while he's in the film even less than Rothrock, he's cool as he's outsmarting Miu and Shing while trying to stay one step ahead of the baddies on his trail. It looks like we've seen him here one other time, when we did Police Story. Then we had Kiu-Wai Miu, who's our womanizing detective. It's always interesting how that character is played in Hong Kong versus the US, they're much more handsy and sexual assault-y, but then they can redeem themselves by looking cool smoking a cigarette, which Miu does here. It's like all the HK action stars were expected to be Bruce Willis: equal parts comedic and serious action lead, and Miu hits all those notes. And then we have Fui-On Shing, who we've seen on here before as well, in John Woo's The Killer, which also came out in 1989--in fact, he had 34 films come out in 1989, Eric Roberts eat your heart out! He's more the comedic foil to Miu's leading man, but he does get to be with Rothrock at the end, so it wasn't all bad for him. Unfortunately he passed away in 2009. Finally, a few other names, Fung Woo plays their police captain. He also was in Police Story, plus Millionaire's Express, so we've seen him a couple times here. He also did the Rothrock film Prince of the Sun, which we haven't covered yet, but we will eventually, so this won't be the last time we see him on the site; Suki Kwan, who played Tong's sister May. We haven't seen her here before, but I recognized her from a couple other Hong King films; and Michiko Nishiwaki, who was great in her one fight with Rothrock. It would've been nice to see her do more, maybe another fight scene so it builds better to her fight with Rothrock, but at least we had the one scene.
I wanted to spotlight a couple things that stood out in this film that you probably wouldn't see in an American film like this--or at least done as well. First, look at that cat painting below. This is in May's place, and that cat watched over the proceedings that took place there, from knock-down-drag-'em-out fights, to Miu's bungled attempts at romance leading to all manner of John Ritter-style physical humor, with a sphinx-like stoicism, expressionless, possibly judging, but never letting on either way. Can you imagine a modern USA action flick doing that? Or if they did, the cat painting would come up constantly in ironic tongue-in-cheek conversations. This was the perfect use of a large cat painting, and I loved it. The other one was the use of Pee Shyness as a plot device. Pee Shyness is when someone can't pee with someone else near them. At the end of the film, Rothrock is handcuffed to Tong, ready to take him back to the States, but he has to go to the bathroom, and he says he can't go with her standing there, so he goes in the stall, still handcuffed to her, while she stands outside, and then he makes good his escape. While she's waiting, another guy comes in and tries to go while Rothrock is standing there, but can't either. I personally experienced it more when I was younger, especially if there weren't barriers between the urinals, and once there was a delay, I'd almost feel like the guys standing on either side recognized I wasn't going, which made it worse. Now that I'm older, for whatever reason, that Pee Shyness is gone, which makes it all the weirder that it existed as an issue at all. Anyway, this is another thing that a Hong Kong film uses as a plot device that an American film either won't think to try, or if they did, it would also be filled with not-so-witty but so-dripping-with-irony banter. In the Hong Kong film, it's a goofy buttoner on an overall fun actioner, and they leave it at that.
Finally (I know, usually the paragraph above would be the "finally"), I wanted to do a second Rothrock paragraph. In discussing how she hasn't had much to hang her hat on film-wise in the last 20 years or so, one thing she does have coming is her own film, Black Creek, which is listed in post-production on IMDb, and has an Indiegogo that's still live. According to that, the red carpet premier is set for July of 2024--one of the support packages is two tickets for $450 bucks. On the one hand, I think it's definitely cool, and even if the tiers can be expensive, donating $10 isn't the worst thing to help push it over the goal line. On the other hand, if this film is successful, you'd hope that this is the last time she needs to bother with Indiegogo and she can get future films funded through more traditional means, and I think that's more of where we come in as fans. Yes, she can definitely use the Indiegogo donations, like all indie creatives, but if Black Creek ends up on Tubi and we all watch it--and people with sites like mine review it--I think she can go to backers and say "this is the kind of following I have, and these are the kinds of numbers I can generate if you give me a chance." At least one can hope.
And with that, let's wrap this up. This is available on Tubi here in the States. Maybe not Rothrock's best Hong Kong film, but she's great in it, and has enough action to get you to the church on time, especially as a free streamer.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099614/
And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.
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