China Heat
1992; directed by William Cheung Kei and Yang Yang

Despite an obvious ultra-low budget, a title that sounds like something more appropriate to a softcore "adult" film, and one of the worst taglines ever in the history of straight to video releases with "Super cops. Super bad.", China Heat actually manages to be a fairly entertaining girls-with-guns romp that fans of the genre will probably dig -- though it would probably help to ingest at least a couple of cold malted beverages beforehand.

Like a lot of junky cheap action movies, the set up here is simple. A drug runner (Allen Lan) kills a cop and heads off to New York City -- which actually looks to be Vancouver, since I don't recall being able to see mountains while there. Anyway, this leads to a group of Hong Kong cops (who are dressed and act more like Mainland officers) led by Sibelle Hu heading to the States, and along with a hot-headed NYC officer (Michael Depasquale Jr.) they try to bring the miscreant to justice.

Frankly, the plot and acting presented in China Heat is below average -- and that description is being kind. If you're the kind of person that nit-picks Rumble in the Bronx, you might just experience a full-on hemorrhage after about fifteen minutes into the running time here. With two directors and three stunt choreographers working on this production, there doesn't seem to be any sort of continuity, and, as such, there's tons of gaffes thrown at the viewer. Not the least of which is seeing stuff like the cops and criminals using the exact same type of machine guns, the actors' costumes not matching from scene to scene, and Sibelle Hu being very obviously doubled by a male stunt worker wearing an ill-fitting wig during her fight sequences.

It must be said though, as bad as many of these types of releases were in the overall realm of film-making, they could at least deliver some good action, and China Heat is no exception. Sure, you're not going to mistake the proceedings here for A Better Tomorrow or Drunken Master II, but there is some fun to be had here for Hong Kong action junkies, especially during the finale, which throws in gweilo favorites Sophia Crawford and Mark Houghton into the mix, with solid results.

RATING: 6