Movie	Extras
Audio	Video

If I have to tell you this is part of the ‘Aces Go Places’ box set released by IVL, then you haven’t been reading my other reviews.  It’s region 0.

Movie
When the heroes get trapped in the Chinese prison in Xiangmen, I was wondering what the hell would happen next.  The plot isn’t predictable, that’s for sure.  The comedy is also nice and there’s plenty of time devoted to having Sam Hui and Karl Maka in the same frame, which has been kind of missing for the past two movies.  Their chemistry made the first part popular, so having them together is always great to see.  The movie this time seems to have forgotten the experiments from part four, and picks up basically three years after the end of the fourth movie.  Well, there’s a short scene at the start of the movie that explains the pair’s falling out, but three years have gone by anyway.  In any case, a brother and sister thief team steals something precious, pretending to be the Aces, thus getting Mr. Hui and Mr. Maka in a lot of trouble.

The movie passes the torch to some new ‘Aces’, Leslie Cheung and Nina Li (both of whom, by the way, are absent from the sixth part), and it’s a fitting transition.  This is the first time in the series that the director actually had a career before directing the movie.  All the others were at the start of their directing careers.  Eric Tsang had done 2 movies before directing the first one, Ringo Lam only 3 and Tsui Hark only 4.  This time, the older mentor is giving way to a younger breed of Hong Kong directors.  Mr. Lau was nearing the end of his directing career, and this is a nice bow to the series.  The sixth part had none of the same cast or crew as any of the other movies in the series, so this can probably be considered the last real ‘Aces Go Places’ movie.

The director being Lau Kar-leung, you know what that means, right?  Martial arts.  The movie finds all sort sorts reasons not to have guns and the logic is reminiscent of some of Mr. Lau’s older Shaw movies.  Let me see… They’re terracotta warriors so you have to fight them with old Chinese weapons.  You can’t use guns because…?  Not that I’m complaining, mind you.  The addition of Conan Lee adds a little bit of martial arts talent to the movie, although he’s not as used as he probably should be.  He beats up Sam Hui near the beginning and then he stands around and talks for the rest of his screen time.  Mr. Lee, by the way seems to have been a favorite of the director’s at that time, starring in both ‘Tiger on Beat’ movies (part one, part two) as well.  Sam Hui handles most of the fighting the the rest of the heroes don’t do so bad either.  Even Karl Maka gets a few kicks and sword swipes before the movie is through!  The stuntmen once gain fall in painful ways and make me angry at human beings for having bones.  Well, I suppose if we were all beach balls movies like these wouldn’t be as exciting.

The cast is probably one of the strongest in the entire series, apart from the four already mentioned, there’s also Danny Lee and Roy Cheung.  This time the girl is Ellen Chan, whose career never really took off much, although I find her endearing for some reason.  I find it strange that Sam Hui is perfectly happy with the girl at the end of each movie, but at the start of each new movie he’s got his eye on someone else… I suppose it’s the James Bond syndrome acting up again.  I also had to happen sooner or later, given the way her character was treated in the past few movies.  Sylvia Chang is completely absent from this movie.  As the story goes, Karl Maka sent his wife and child to live in Canada while he stayed in Hong Kong to work.  This poses an interesting question: since when did Karl Maka stop being a cop?  This movie never really explains the complete lack of continuity from the previous movies.  Eh…

The comedy, thanks to the fact that both stars have plenty of time together, is funny.  It’s also nice to see them acting like 14-year-olds instead of 8-year-olds.  There’s no wife and child around so Karl Maka doesn’t do stupid things that irrationally make her mad.  The same chemistry from the first movie in the series is found in here.  Their characters don’t like each other this time, so there’s plenty of chance for funny words being exchanged.  Leslie Cheung and Nina Li only add to the antagonism, and both are capable comic actors, so the whole lot is great to watch together.  It sort of makes me wish the four of them had made ‘Aces Go Places 6: Running Out of Ideas’ together.

The movie is a very fitting sort-of end to the series.  It’s not the best.  It’s somewhere near the middle.  The fighting is very nice, being choreographed by Lau Kar-Wing.  The comedy is probably the best since the first movie – the interaction between the two leads is certainly the best since the first movie.  The new Aces handle things well, but unfortunately a sequel with them didn’t pan out.  If the series had finished here, it would have been a great ending to a great series.  There’s been one more movie but somehow I think the people responsible for these ones had nothing to do with it.  Regardless, I’m glad I saw this movie and if you have the chance to see it, go ahead and watch it.  It’s worth the time invested into it.

Special Features
Unfortunately, there are no interviews or TV specials here.  Just the usual batch of extras.  There’s the original trailer, which is nice.  It’s about 3 ½ minutes long and has a lot of action.  It’s okay, and has some comedy bits as well.  The new trailer is about 2 minutes long and forgets the comedy bits.  There are also 2 galleries.  They’re the same, but one of them is in album form the other in slideshow form.  The slideshow is only a minute long and the pictures in the gallery are very nice.  That’s it!

Trailers
You’ve got exactly 4 trailers here, the trailers to the first 4 parts in the series.  Their respective lengths are 2:18, 1:44, 2:11 and 1:44.  They’re okay but all action, when, as you might guess, the movies are usually more comedy than action.

Audio
Like the four other movies in the set, you can choose a Mandarin track (Dolby 5.1) or three Cantonese tracks (original mono Dolby 2.0, Dolby 5.1 and DTS).  Given my time constraints I didn’t listen to all of them but I’m sure they’re all good.  I heard the DTS track and I was quite happy.  The movie isn’t as dynamic is as the previous part but the mix is still a very good one.  The rear speakers are used often enough, usually for score.  You get a few sound effects coming from the back, and they’re smartly put back there.  Most of the sound, as is to be expected, comes from the front.  The voices, score and effects are all at quite nice levels, and you can hear all the nonsense being said.  There are some nice surround effects and the positions are accurate as well.  The subwoofer kicks in when it has to but given the director and his specialty, there wasn’t much use for it.  It’s a pleasant track and is very well done.

Video
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen.  Once again, Fortune Star did a great job redoing the picture.  There’s really nothing to complain about.  The movie’s from 1989 so the picture isn’t as clear as ‘Blade 2’’s but that’s about the only thing with it.  There are no specks or scratch or other print damage.  Everything is clean as a whistle.  Even the grain in large part has been taken away.  I didn’t see any digital work done, like edge enhancement or the like.  The colours are are strong and they don’t flicker at all.  The black level is also strong throughout the movie.  It’s all around a great picture.

7/5/2005