Movie	Extras
Audio	Video

I have the Korean regionless DVD by SRE.  I’m guessing it’s a direct port of the Hong Kong disk.

Movie
Wow, look at this: ‘Tiger Cage’ (here) came out in 1988, but ‘Tiger on Beat’ (here) came out in early 1988.  ‘Tiger Cage 2’ came out in 1990, but ‘Tiger on Beat 2’ came out earlier in 1990.  How interesting.    I wonder if Yuen Woo-Ping (‘Drunken Master’) and Liu Chia-Liang (‘Drunken Master 2’) were competing with each other.  Whatever the reasons for the movies to come out, this isn’t as good as the original but still provides for some good entertainment.  Like in ‘Tiger Cage 2’ (here), the characters, story and continuity from the first movie are gone, but some of the same actors are kept.  In this movie, Danny Lee (‘City War’, ‘Young and Dangerous 5’, ‘The Killer’) has to find a wife for nephew Conan Lee, on his sister’s request, but they soon get caught up in thief Ellen Chan’s affairs and fight their way out of many situations.  In case you’re wondering, Danny Lee takes over Chow Yun-Fat’s shoes very well.  He’s charismatic and charming enough not to make you mad at him for replacing Mr. Chow.

The action, which is basically the only reason to watch the movie, is good.  They didn’t find a way to beat the chainsaw duel in the first one, and the swordfight in ‘Tiger Cage 2’ is better.  The last gag in the movie is a ‘Die Hard’-type barefoot thing.  It makes you feel pain more than leave you breathless.  There is, however, one stunt, which, I don’t care who you are, simply put, hurt.  From an overpass, Conan Lee (or his stunt guy) jumps to catch a lamppost, but misses his grip and falls 15 feet on his side onto the pavement sidewalk.  Whether that was planned or not, I don’t know, but it was a big stunt in the movie because it was filmed from 2 different angles, clearly showing the painful impact.  The rest of the stunts are typically entertaining, but don’t provide anything new.  They’re just well made and well filmed.  The fight at the end seemed to be a bit short, but I’m still happy.

The plot isn’t the most original thing you’ve ever seen.  I mean, Danny Lee’s job is to find a wife.  When Conan Lee, at the beginning, bumps into a girl and smiles, it’s kind of silly to try to look for anybody else, right?  You kind of know who he’ll end up with.  All the relationships are kind of clichéd after a while.  Liking, breaking up, discovering the truth, liking again… it’s not very new.  There isn’t much time between battles, so the drama doesn’t waste too much time.  Mr. Liu’s forte is action, in any case.

This is just an average action movie from Hong Kong, neither wanting to break new ground or retread old one.  It does just that, but is ultimately forgettable.  I was a bit disappointed, considering director Liu Chia-Liang (‘The 36th Chamber of Shaolin’) did such a job with the first one.  The problem here is that there’s nothing very memorable.  Conan Lee is good, he can fight well, but apart from that fall there’s nothing to grab your attention.  It’s a nice and entertaining movie, if light around the edges.  Not that I’m complaining, it never takes itself very seriously, which is always something that ruins the fun.  This movie doesn’t do that.  It’s just entertaining.

About the film
‘Synopsis’ and ‘Cast and Credits’ are here.  The second one has Danny Lee and Conan Lee biographies and filmographies.  The cast is mentioned, as usual, but only the two actors have any kind of info about them.

Theatrical Trailer
This is a bit less than 3 minutes long, and is all action.  You get some comedy gags, but you kind of guess these guys were marketing the action, trying to get that to sell the movie instead.  It’s a good trailer, it shows you some nice parts in the movie, but not too much.

More Attractions
There are three trailers. ‘Cop of the Town’, roughly 4 ½ minutes, which stars Danny Lee with really scary hair.  ‘Law with Two Phases’, roughly 4 minute and 15 seconds, with Danny Lee and less scary hair.  Within the first minute the title appeared 3 times, at the end of the trailer, I lost count.  The last is ‘Road Warriors’, about 4 minutes 40 seconds, again with Danny Lee with the hair scariness factor somewhere between the other two movies.  The main theme of this last movie seems to be death, as people die throughout the movie.  The one that interests me the most is the second one, as it seems the best movie (logical enough, eh?).

Audio
Well, it’s in 5.1, but all they did was take the (probably) original mono track and blew it up to use all the speakers.  As such, there’s no separation whatsoever.  Oh, maybe a few small directional effects here and there, but nothing more than that.  The dialogue is a bit low sometimes, but thankfully there are many grammatically incorrect sentences to help you out.  Most of the time, though, you can hear what’s being said clearly enough.  The score and sound effects come through all the speakers, and the sub doesn’t get used.  It’s nothing too surprising, but could very easily be better.

Video
1.77:1 letterbox.  Either I’m getting used to these types of DVDs or the picture is actually good.  I think the former applies.  I saw the usual specks and scratches you’d expect to find on such DVDs.  Nothing distracting but still too much to say it’s a really good print.  The colours are passable, don’t flicker too much, but are probably too dull.  The black level is probably a bit too white.  On the good side, there’s no artifacting of any kind.  It does the job, and that’s what people ask for.

11/8/2004