This movie is available for purchase at www.hkflix.com

Rating:

5

Year of release: 1990

Genre: action/comedy

Director: Blacky Ko

Action director: Blacky Ko

Producer: Peter Chan

Stars: Jacky Cheung, Stephen Chow, Ann Bridgewater, Blacky Ko, Eric Tsang, Chow Mei Yan, John Shum

Rated II for language and violence

DVD Information

Company: Universe

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin

Subtitles: Chinese, English, Thai

Extras: trailers

Notes: Typical of Universe's early releases; the picture and sound is a bit washed-out and there's almost no extras. The DVD crapped out on my Panasonic player and a PlayStation 2, but played okay on my computer with Power DVD.

Related links:

Stephen Chow biography
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Curry and Pepper

Despite his co-starring role, don't confuse Curry and Pepper with a "real" Stephen Chow movie. The picture was made early in his film career, and Chow had not yet produced works that featured his "moy len tau" ("nonsense comedy") style; that would come later in the same year with movies like God of Gamblers II and All for the Winner. Curry and Pepper is actually closer in style and tone to the "buddy cop" flicks that both Hong Kong and the US cranked out during this period.

Chow here plays the "loose cannon" role, while his partner Jacky Cheng plays the more straight-laced partner. Even though they are screw-ups on the job, the duo are picked by a reporter (Ann Bridgewater) to "star" in a Cops-esque documentary. Of course, both guys fall in love with the reporter, which leads to friction between the friends. Eventually, Curry and Pepper have to put their differences aside to take down a vicious gun-runner named Mad Dog (Blacky Ko).

The plot here is nothing mind-blowing, but then, these types of movies aren't exactly known for their deep stories. Curry and Pepper's main problem is that the comedic bits just aren't that funny. I wasn't expecting much from the dramatic parts (again, a given for the genre), but the comedy here is simply lame for the most part. Mostly, it consists of people yelling a lot. Sometimes, they yell in English. And for those times, when the film-makers are going for the big laughs, they have the actors swear in English. I will grant that there are a few funny bits presented here, but, for the most part, it looks like both Stephen Chow and Jacky Cheung are having as much fun as passing a kidney stone, and that isn't exactly conducive to initiating belly laughs from the audience.

What really saves Curry and Pepper from being a total stinker are the action sequences. Even though Blacky Ko isn't too well-known by western audiences, he was actually one of Hong Kong's more solid action directors, and he definitely puts on a good show here. The gunfights aren't up to the levels of the Hong Kong classics, but they're still very tight and almost make the viewer forget about the crap that surrounds them. Almost. Even though I'm a big action junkie and there's some good firefighting on display here, the shootouts simply aren't good enough to negate the sinkhole of lame comedic attempts which surrounds them. Huge Stephen Chow or action fans might want to check this one out for the sake of completism, but there are certainly a lot more movies out there which are more worthy of your hard-earned time and money.

A bit of trivia: John Woo's "Hard Boiled" also had a tough gun-runner character called Mad Dog, and a scene in "Curry and Pepper" takes place in the same jazz club featured in Woo's bloodshed epic as Tequila's hideout.