Tokyo Powerman (1985)

Tokyo Powerman: Directed by Sammo Kam-Bo Hung. With Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, Charlie Chin, Stanley Sui-Fan Fung, Richard Ng. Muscles, cop from Hong Kong, is in Japan chasing a bad HK cop. His cop partner gets taken by the ninja gang. Muscles gets his 5 old no-good friends from the orphanage to help find the bad cop. Lots of comedy and kung-fu fighting follows.

“A follow-up to Winners and Sinners,this is,like that film,essentially a comedy starring Samo Hung and some Hong Kong comedians,the Lucky Stars, with what really amounts to little more than an extended cameo from Jackie Chan. He has more scenes in this one,but despite what DVD covers might say he certainly doesnu0026#39;t u0026#39;staru0026#39; in the film.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOpening with some great car and fight action involving Chan and his fellow Peking Opera School graduate Yuen Biao,the film than becomes,for almost the next hour,a series of comedy set pieces involving the Lucky Stars. As well as slowing the film to a halt the problem is that very little of the humour seems funny to these western eyes and may only be understood by Hong Kong audiences {as in a lengthy sequence on a bus involving jokes about Chinese dialects and the like}. Much of it is taken up with the men all trying to find ways to get close to female star Sibelle Hu, in what looks alarmingly like sexual harassment. Only Eric Tsangu0026#39;s childlike behaviour and Righard Ngu0026#39;s double takes,plus a gag about a walnut,seem to work.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAfter what seems like an eternity of this stuff the last 20 mins is all fantastic action,with a very imaginative fairground set piece which may have influenced Beverley Hills Cop 3,ninjas,and some terrific fighting involving Chan,Hing,Biao and some other Hong Kong action folk. Maybe itu0026#39;s a case of too little too late. As with some other Hong Kong films the action seems to cancel out the comedy and vice versa. Itu0026#39;s OK,but Winners and Sinners before it and Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stare are better.”