The titular street of fury here is Portland Street, a hotbed for gangster hijinks that director "Bloody" Billy Tang had already visited in 1996 with Street Angels. Like that movie, Street of Fury pulls from the "young Triad" well that Young and Dangerous dug. Unfortunately, this release doesn't have the upped quotient of sex and violence that Street Angels presented, and the end results are pretty much just another average Hong Kong crime movie.

In one of his first movie roles, Louis Koo plays Lung, who is being raised by his aunt and uncle after his parents were killed by a gangster. Because of this, Lung stays as far away from the Triads as he can. However, after his brother Foo's (Michael Tse) girlfriend, Yee (Gigi Lai), is raped by a local hood, Four-Eyes (Simon Lui, once again playing the world's oldest teenager, complete with five o' clock shadow and a receding hairline), Lung allies himself with the tough crime boss King (Elvis Tsui) to get revenge.

Street of Fury isn't a bad movie at all. In fact, some parts are quite fun. Elvis Tsui, sporting a bad wig and chewing up enough scenery to feed a family of four, looks to be having a ball poking fun at his usual tough guy image. And one really has to respect how much work and enthusiasm Teresa Mak (who plays Lung's love interest, Shan) put into a role that is usually vapid "jade vase" fare. She brings a great energy to her character, even going so far as to having her head shaved, which was certainly a gutsy movie in the image-conscious world of Hong Kong film-making.

However, when you boil everything down, Street of Fury is really no better or worse -- or anything all that different, for that matter -- than the dozens of similar movies that were released in Hong Kong during this period. There's double-crosses, poorly-dated fashion, some politically incorrect (and badly translated) dialogue, and, of course, plenty of big brawls featuring mobs of people chopping each other with oversized knives. If this is the sort of thing that's in your wheelhouse, and you've already seen most of the "big" movies in the genre, then Street of Fury is a decent way to kill ninety minutes.

RATING: 5.5