Pedicab Driver

A group of pedicab drivers in Macau. Tom and his friends work by day, fight somewhere by night, and are a family among themselves. Tom wants to marry a girl who works in a bakery. His friend Malted Candy falls in love with a woman working in a brothel and tries to get her out. The local boss will not have it. Sammo Hung directs and plays Tom, with Lau Kar-leung, Nina Li Chi and Max Mok. What surprises is the tone. It begins as an action comedy and turns entirely dark in the second half; the story goes somewhere tragic and the comedy never comes back. The fight between Sammo Hung and Lau Kar-leung is among the most cited passages in the genre. Both are masters of the tradition, and the scene is cut not as display but as the meeting of two different schools. Sammo Hung was an extraordinarily fast fighter despite his size, and that shapes all the choreography. The social side is pronounced. Poverty, debt and the trade in women are shown directly rather than inside a comic frame. It did not get the attention it deserved in Hong Kong at the time and is now counted among Sammo Hung's best. Who it is for: viewers who like Hong Kong martial arts cinema and mixtures of genre. Who it is not for: the tone is uneven, the second half is very hard, and the women remain victims inside the narrative.