Oh! Yes Sir!!! 神探POWER之问米追凶

Police Inspector Power Chan (Frankie Chan) and his partner (Wanda Yung) cross a powerful mobster (Fung Hak-On), who, in order to get rid of the persistent cops, hires virtuoso hitman Lise (Lau Tak), a master of disguise capable of changing his appearance beyond all recognition. Having disguised himself as Power, Lise kills a small-time gangster who had agreed to testify against his boss, so the real Power and his partner are forced to go on the run and finish the investigation without police help. The neighbor of Power's girlfriend, a medium (Eric Tsang), offers to help them.

Impressions: In the first half of the 1990s, Hong Kong cinema was dominated by comedies of the absurd (mo-lei-to), perfected by Stephen Chow, while action films steadily lost popularity, so former action stars had to urgently find new uses for themselves — some began casting glances at neighboring countries, some moved into the "veteran" category and settled into supporting roles, and some tried to adapt to the new life and change professions — like Frankie Chan, for instance. His staying power didn't last long, though — after 1994, Chan stopped acting, worked for a while in his second profession (as a composer), and then broke with cinema altogether. And indeed, sometimes it's better to chew than to talk.

No, I have nothing against Chan as an actor or as a composer, but as a producer and director (and on top of playing the lead in Oh! Yes Sir!!! he also took on those duties) he frankly doesn't measure up, especially when he tries to master territory that is clearly alien to him. The film mixes action, comedy, science fiction, and even the supernatural — at first this potent brew resembles the creations of the Yuen clan from the first half of the 1980s (Miracle Fighters, Drunken Tai Chi, and the like), but after a while it starts to seriously grate — Chan's sense of humor is highly idiosyncratic.

In comedies of the absurd, much is permitted, but some logic — even if only internal — still has to be present. Oh! Yes Sir!!! has plenty of oddities and incomprehensibilities, but they're piled on top of each other without any system or explanation — just because. The main puzzlement is evident from the plot description alone — Eric Tsang plays a woman, and Wanda Yung (who looks a lot like Anita Yuen, only bigger) plays a man, and each of them is dubbed by a voice of the corresponding gender. And while Tsang can still be tolerated, Yung frankly doesn't fit the overall picture — her mannerisms are blatantly mincing, and a prominent bosom clearly shows through her shirt. I could understand it if this were somehow played for laughs in the film, but the filmmakers simply ask us to accept these "rules of the game" as a given, which raises a perfectly legitimate question — was it really necessary?

Perhaps with this move Chan was trying to somehow "soften" the characters — the thing is, you want to strangle Wanda Yung's character with your own hands about ten minutes into the film. A cowardly, arrogant creature who happily throws her friends into the line of fire and gladly leaves them behind when the situation takes a sharp turn, provokes insurmountable irritation — though why mince words, she's just downright infuriating. To be fair, Power Chan isn't much better than his partner, but at least all the blows ultimately land on him. Stephen Chow can easily play the most hardened scoundrel in such a way that the audience sympathizes with him, but Wanda Yung and Frankie Chan aren't charming enough for their "harmless" antics to be forgiven — for example, slipping a ticking bomb to their boss on the run, nearly killing Eric Tsang's heroine by violating, during the séance she conducts to help them, every one of her instructions, or beating up a witness who has just been through a shock. Believe me, if any of this were even remotely funny, I wouldn't be complaining.

The humor in the film is, frankly, in short supply. The script is a string of comic sketches, many of which are only loosely tied to the main plot, and nearly all of them are flat and infantile. If the film deserves praise for anything, it's the action, though even that is good only "with reservations." Naturally, seeing names like Jeff Falcon, Kim Maree Penn, and Mark Houghton—those "white masters"—in the credits, you expect something incredible, but Falcon and Houghton get just one brief scuffle in the entire picture, and Penn is limited to shooting. Fung Hak-On, as the chief mobster, never even joins a fight—what the hell?! The main action is concentrated in the final twenty minutes of the film—that's where a large-scale battle between Lau Tak and Frankie Chan unfolds. Both Tak and Chan are in excellent form (ropes are used only a couple of times), the drive and choreography are superb, but unnecessary "comic relief" has seeped in here too—the fight is regularly interrupted by Wanda Yung and Eric Tsang, who try to help Power with various magical tricks. Honestly, I'd have preferred it if they'd been bumped off somewhere near the beginning—the film would have lost nothing. It probably wouldn't have gotten any better either, though—that's not something you can cure.