They Came to Rob Hong Kong 八宝奇兵

A bandit (Roy Cheung) who barely escaped the Hong Kong police arrives on the mainland, where he plans to lick his wounds and plot his "second coming." To that end, the gangster recruits a team of bumbling losers and takes them with him to Hong Kong — according to his cunning plan, they are to draw the police's attention to themselves while the real robbery takes place somewhere else entirely...

Impressions: A "star-studded" kung fu comedy in the style of My Lucky Stars and Inspectors in Skirts, so fashionable in the second half of the 1980s — not the most notable, but nevertheless definitely worth a look. It was directed by Clarence Fok, and his hand is felt — Fok has always been characterized by not the smoothest combination of low-grade vulgar comedy à la Wong Jing and a highly stylized, dark and tough action film with violence overflowing and villains who are anything but comedic.

In this case, after Roy Cheung's vicious and electrified fight with a squad of policemen (at the beginning of the film), the picture loses its seriousness for a good hour and turns into a typical comedic romp, in which a bunch of idiots "learn" the finer points of the thief's trade from the stern Chingmy Yau (while actually trying to catch a glimpse of her underwear) and simply fool around, playing harmless pranks on each other. You won't find anything special in this part, but there's plenty to laugh at — at least at the amusing "romance" between the hot-tempered Sandra Ng and the weak-willed Dean Shek.

In the last half hour, however, the film transforms somewhat — the humor doesn't go anywhere, but excellent first-rate action appears. Most of the fights are staged in a comedic vein, but connoisseurs of late-1980s kung fu action films will still have something to watch — Chin Siu-Ho alone sets the screen on fire for ten! Besides the series of fights featuring him, worth singling out are the amusing brawl between Chingmy Yau and Sandra Ng (yes, yes, Sandra also kicks quite confidently!) and the duel between Kara Hui and Roy Cheung at the very beginning of the film — there's nothing special about it choreography-wise, but it does feature one very risky stunt — Roy Cheung tumbles off the roof of an old multi-story building, but instead of falling to the street, he crashes through the balconies.