This was a pretty boring week when it came to films.
Amsterdam Connection ( 1978 )
I am really going o have to rethink my strategy of randomly picking martial arts films off my shelf. Here is something I bought nearly a decade ago from Crash Cinema, just about the time they went OOP. Crash Cinema had access to hundreds of 35mm prints of dubbed old school Hong Kong martial arts movies, and began releasing high quality letterboxed DVDs of these films. Amsterdam Connection was one of the higher profile films of that era, mostly because it's producers spent the money to have it shot on location in Amsterdam and Paris. It had a very decent cast featuring the best actors not under contract by either Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest, including Bolo Yeung, Chan Sing and Fan Mei Sheng as the villains. But despite the location and above average cast, it is a boring film when the characters aren't fighting. And that is most of the film. Tony Wong and Jason Pai Piao are two childhood friends who end up in rival crime gangs. Both gangs have relocated in Amsterdam to sell drugs and run underground casinos. You would think that both gangs would be constantly fighting, but that doesn't happen. You have to wait until the film is nearly halfway over for a big gang fight scene, and that is between Fan Mei Sheng's gang and a drug supplier ( Chen Sing )and his gang he tried to cheat.
In a sub plot Fannie, the girlfriend Tony Wong left behind in Hong Kong desperately wants to be a movie star. She just happens to run into Fan Mei Sheng, who has return to Hong Kong posing as a movie producer. Actually, he is just looking for beautiful girls to act as drug mules, and hen intends to sell them to brothels once they reach Amsterdam. Tony realizes his boss is going to do this to Fannie, but never bothers to warn her. Finally he goes to the brothel she is forced to work in to free her ( after she has already been forced to sleep with a few clients ) and has a very brief fight with the staff, only to then pay them the money they paid for her. We then find out in a flashback that Jason Pai Piao was once also in love with Fannie. He shows up in the rival gang's casino to take Fannie back, and ends up in a very brief fight with Tony. But then they decide to settle things with a bet. Winner gets Fannie, looser has to give his head to the winner. Jason looses the bet, but then chickens out on the whole beheading thing and instead talks Tony into accepting money instead. As Tony follows Jason back to his apartment for the money, someone shoots at them. They both run off, and once out of range of the gunman, begin accusing each other of hiring the gunman and begin fighting. But Fannie arrives and breaks the fight up. She had overheard Fan Mei Sheng hiring the gunman to assassinate Tony for some strange reason.
Tony and Jason decide to turn against their respective gangs by stealing the cash and drugs from a deal going down later that night, so that each boss thinks the other was responsible. This finally gets both gangs about to rumble. They all show up in front of the Eiffel Tower holding bats, chains and other weapons. BUT THEN THEY DONT FIGHT!! Fan Mei Sheng and Bolo Yeung exchange words, and then the gangs go their separate ways. Finally Tony and Jason take things into their own hands, fighting Bolo and a couple of his men. And you only had to wait until the film was nearly over for this scene. After Bolo is defeated, Fan Mei Sheng shows up with a bunch of men to take out Tony and Jason. It had been some sort of elaborate plot to get Jason and Tony to take out Bolo. Huh. Jason and Tony battle the men, most of which are Europeans. On man turns out to be unusually tough. He has zero fighting skills, but kicks and punches don't seem to effect him. Nor does even blows with a pipe to his head. Eventually Jason and Tony find some weak spots(?) and manage to kill the man. They finally get into a fight with the films main villain Fan Mei Sheng, only for it to be interrupted after a few seconds by the arrival of the police. Fan Mei Sheng jumps into a waiting boat and takes off. Jason and Tony jump onto the front of the boat to stop him, but he pulls out a gun and shoots at them, causing both to fall off into the river.
And here is the most entertaining part of the film. We see Fan Mei Sheng a few months later walking down the street in Amsterdam with his lieutenant when suddenly you hear the sound of machine gun fire and both men act as if they had been shot. And while the ending music to Rocky plays over the soundtrack, a caption comes onto the screen explaining that some unknown men shot them to death. Adding to the absurdity of this scene, there are a bunch of people watching from across the street. No doubt curious onlookers to a film being shot. And none of them react as if there had just been machine gun fire, that couple of men have just been shot to death. The End. Music from Rocky is used a lot in this film, as is Pink Floyd's Time. Thankfully Crash Cinema was not one of those companies that try to remove unlicensed music from old martial arts films by playing some sort of loud generic music over it.
Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie ( 1997 )
This was also boring. It was a decent enough story, but seemed more like a padded out episode. Even when they get to the action scenes, everything seems lackluster. The Turbo from the title refers to a set of cars the Power Rangers are given that when combined turn into another giant robot. They may be called Turbo, but these cars don't seem to go that fast in the movie.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1540201 times)
