City On Fire (1987)

Saxophone is the weapon of choice for Teddy Robin’s score to City On Fire (1987). I couldn’t help but think of the David Sanborn sax sound to the Lethal Weapon soundtrack. What I love about Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s (and into the 1990s) is that circuit loop, of taking on influences from western […]

Full Contact (1992)

A night full of rain lit by the flames from multiple explosions. Motorcycle silhouette and hair metal power ballad wailing on the soundtrack. The Whitesnake MTV music video aesthetic crossed with the HK action cinema Heroic Bloodshed. This is Full Contact (1992), directed by Ringo Lam and reuniting him with star Chow Yun-Fat after films […]

In Hell (2003)

If you liked Shawshank Redemption but wanted more bare knuckled fights with Russian dudes who look like Thanos, then welcome to the direct-to-DVD Jean-Claude Van Damme film, In Hell (2003), the last of his three movies with Hong Kong director Ringo Lam. This is more of a brutal drama than an action movie, set in […]

Replicant (2001)

Journeying further into the world of direct-to-video Jean-Claude Van Damme releases from the late 1990s and early 2000s brings me to watching Replicant (2001) for the first time. Released in the waning years of Van Damme’s box office popularity, where his movies were coming out on DVD rather than cinema screens, I had heard some […]