Book & Sword - The Final Battle (2pc) (Full Sub)
from Tai Seng
The Suspect
by Ringo Lam
from Tai Seng
Director Ringo Lam briefly flirted with Hollywood with the lean, assured Jean-Claude Van Damme revenge picture Maximum Risk before returning to Hong Kong with a darker, more somber style. The Suspect concerns former teenage hit man Don (Louis Koo), released after a 12-year prison stretch, who's pressed into a political assassination and framed by his one-time best friend, who carries out the killing when Don refuses. Sought by the cops, targeted by the crooks, and hounded by a shadowy mercenary force hired by the dead man's associates to capture the real killer, Don travels from the Philippines to Hong Kong and back again to find his phantom former boss Chan Hung (Simon Yam) and confront his former comrade in arms. Lam fills the film with impressive action scenes: assassination by rocket launcher, a car chase through Manila city streets, and raw, explosive shootouts. Where John Woo turns violence into a kinetic ballet of pure cinema, Lam pares action to the essentials and makes every death resonate, and it's that gritty intensity that makes the film work. Don't expect the brightly colored, roller-coaster-paced comic book craziness of 1980s Hong Kong action cinema. This is a dark thriller with a somber look, and though Lam still subscribes to the romance of the gangster code of debt and honor, he takes the sheen off the armor. --Sean Axmaker
Flash Future Kung Fu
by Kirk Wong
from Tai Seng
Imagine an old-school martial arts melodrama about competing fighting schools dropped into the grungy sci-fi world of Blade Runner, and you have an idea of the curious mix of styles in Flash Future Kung Fu. Eddy Ko is the maverick star pupil of an honorable school who secretly engages in underground "Black Boxing" bouts, a black market sport off limits to the school. The ambitious X-Gang, a bloodthirsty neo-Nazi-like organization, plots to take care of Ko and his friends and take over the city with their army of mind-controlled zombie soldiers. In true Hong Kong fashion, it boils down to a showdown of champions, and this one takes place in a boxing ring in an eerily empty warehouse with video coverage broadcasting the event all over.
This 1982 thriller has the cyber-punk look and texture down cold: misty dark rooms lit by the cathode-ray blue of TV monitors, a funky mix of punk fashions with decorative gas masks and radiation suits, and bizarre nightclub theatrics (two women in pink tutus savagely club a third in a leopard-skin jumpsuit, then try to drown her). It doesn't make much sense, but this pre-Hong Kong New Wave adventure from future Hong Kong luminaries director Kirk Wong (Crime Story, The Big Hit) and editor David Wu (Hard-Boiled, The Bride with White Hair) is a fascinating twist on a familiar genre. --Sean Axmaker
The Great Conqueror's Concubine
by Clara Law
from Image Entertainment
Great Conqueror's Concubine
by Clara Law
from Tai Seng Entertainment
The Great Conqueror's Concubine Pt. B
by Clara Law
from Image Entertainment
+++
