Righting Wrongs

A Hong Kong action film. Hsia is a prosecutor. In one case the witnesses are killed and the guilty man goes free; he decides the court is useless and starts acting on his own. A police officer stands against him. Cindy is running the investigation and looking for the link behind the dead; she begins to understand what the prosecutor is doing. From there the film sets the two against each other. They want the same outcome and their methods cannot be reconciled. The action carries the whole weight. There are sequences in an aircraft hangar, a car park and on the outside of a building; the fights are fast, the falls are real and the stunt work is as hard as the period is known for. What the narrative is interested in is not justice but cost: the film does not vindicate the man who enforces his own, and it ties the ending off heavily. There are two endings. The original version is bleak; after audience reaction a second ending was shot and shown in some territories. Yuen Biao and Cynthia Rothrock take the leads. Melvin Wong and Karen Sheperd are in the cast. Corey Yuen directed and staged the fights. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1980s Hong Kong action and real stunt work. Who it is not for: anyone looking for plot; the narrative is content to link the fights, and a scene in which a child dies is hard even for its time.