DAY 17: Hong Kong Action!

If you’re expecting the poetic, trench-coat-wearing, dual-pistol-sliding grace of John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow or The Killer when you see Chon Yun-fat’s name on the poster, check your expectations at the door. We’ve seen the mismatched partner trope a million times, but Tiger On the Beat pushes the dynamic to its absolute breaking point.

On one side, you have the legendary Chow Yun-fat as Francis Li. Instead of playing the ultra-cool gun-god he usually plays, he shows up as a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing womanizer who would rather scam a suspicious husband or down a glass of raw eggs for a hangover than do actual police work. Within the first twenty minutes, he literally pisses his pants because a crook sticks a gun in his mouth. It is wild to see the coolest actor in the world work so hard to be a goofy buffoon.

On the other side, you have Conan Lee as Michael Tso, a muscle-bound rookie who looks like a bodybuilding Jackie Chan and wants to fight everyone in sight. The real-life bickering between these two on set apparently leaked into the film because they have zero traditional buddy-cop chemistry, which actually makes their constant screaming matches and petty fighting hilariously entertaining.

What makes this movie such a fascinating piece of celluloid history is the man behind the camera: Lau Kar-leung. He directed Disciples of the 36th Chamber and choreographed some of the greatest traditional, old-school kung-fu films ever to come out of the Shaw Brothers studio. But by 1988, the audience wanted modern urban violence. They wanted guns, cars, and explosions. Seeing an old-school master try to navigate the gritty, neon-soaked era of heroic bloodshed is like watching a classical orchestra conductor suddenly forced to lead a hardcore punk band.

For the first hour, the tone is all over the place. The comedy is pure, low-brow, 80s HK slapstick. Plus, the movie drops a heavy, uncomfortable dose of period-typical misogyny onto Nina Li Chi’s character, Marydonna, which halts the fun dead in its tracks. You’ll scratch your head, wondering what movie you’re actually watching.

But then… the final twenty minutes happen.

Lau Kar-leung decides that if he has to make a modern action movie, he’s going to make the most dangerous, jaw-dropping finale possible. First, you get Chow Yun-fat dropping the comedy act, picking up a shotgun, rigging it to a rope and throwing it around corners like a deadly, buckshot-blasting yo-yo to waste bad guys. It’s beautiful, chaotic genius.

And then, the piece de résistance: Conan Lee vs. Gordon Liu in a chainsaw duel.

Yes, that Gordon Liu. The star of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Johnny Mo from Kill Bill shows up here with a full head of hair playing a psychotic villain. He and Lee spark up two massive, roaring chainsaws and start acrobatically fencing with them. They are hacking through wooden floors, grinding sparks off steel railings, and flipping through the air with live, spinning blades. It borrows the pure, raw energy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and fuses it with high-flying Hong Kong stunt work.

Tiger On the Beat isn’t a flawless masterpiece. The tonal shifts will give you whiplash, the humor is an acquired taste, and the plot is standard-issue drug-bust filler. But as an ’80s time capsule of anything goes Hong Kong filmmaking, it’s pretty fun.