Warriors: The Black Panther
AKA: The Black Panther Warriors
1993
Director: Clarence Fok
Stars: Brigitte Lin, Alan Tang, Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Carrie Ng, Jennifer Chan, Yuen Wah
This is one big mess of a movie. It makes most of Wong Jing's films look sedate by comparison. The plot has a group known as the "Black Panthers" (no relation to the militant African-Americans) sent by the police to retrive a box which contains their security software. However, the group has two problems: 1) they spend a lot of their time trying to get into bed with each other and 2) they're generally just stupid.
A lot of the movie's (thankfully short) running time is taken up with really bad jokes, where Clarence Fok tries to create a Stephen Chow-like atmosphere, with rapid-fire dialogue and lots of pop culture references. For instance, Tony Leung's character is a parody of Andy Lau in Saviour of the Soul, complete with a cheesy blue shirt that never manages to stay all the way on. The problem is that most of the jokes aren't funny and the actors seems to be trying way too hard to deliver the lines -- "restraint" is not a word in this movie's vocabulary.
You, however, should show some restraint and not waste your time with this clunker. It's a pretty big disappointment considering the talent involved. What was Brigitte Lin thinking? There's not even any decent action to keep the viewer compelled to keep watching. Like the rest of the movie, it's over-clocked and poorly co-ordinated.
RATING: 3
This DVD is available for purchase at www.hkflix.com
