Okay.  Bear in mind that I can't read Chinese.  I'm sure there's a hell of a lot of stuff out there about Sam Lee/Lee Chan Sam/Li Can Sen/Lei Jai Sum/Li Chan Sum - but I can't read most of it.  I want to give a thumbnail introduction to those of you who also have an easier time with English.

(Note: this page is linear on purpose.  It's to keep me from getting carried away and making some crazy full site.)

If you're going to say "Sam Lee," the pretentious (meaning "close to correct") way to say it is approximately something midway between "sahm" and "sohm," but hell, we're all going to say it like "Yosemite," so that's okay.

He's a Hip Young Thing, and the recipient of the Hong Kong Film Award for Best New Performer for his debut in Fruit Chan's 1997 film, Made in Hong Kong (Xianggang zhizao, which also won Best Director for Fruit Chan, and Best Film overall.)  If you're looking for kung fu, you won't find any here: the films in which Sam Lee appears tend to be horror comedies, urban romances, and Triads dramas.  Sam Lee is a convenient actor for the twentysomething newbie to follow, because he works in a range of films through which one can sample most of the contemporary HK talent.  Young actors such as Daniel Wu, Nicholas Tse, Jordan Chan, and Stephen Fung (calendar boys, all) appear time and again in the films listed here, as do established actors such as Eric Tsang and Anthony "every HK film you've ever seen" Wong.

I am not ashamed to admit that one reason why I buy so many of Sam's films is because I want to try something new, but like to have some sort of lynchpin, something that I know for certain I'll enjoy, even if the movie as a whole turns out to suck.  If all goes well, the movie will rock, I'll discover other new actors and directors, and I'll learn a little something more about whatever genre that film fits.  If all that fails, at least I'll get to gawk at ol' Sam.

Sam Lee, an auto mechanic, was skateboarding near a housing complex when Fruit Chan saw him and cast him in Made In Hong Kong (1997); he had never acted before, and since then he's shot at least eight movies each year.  (Like many HK actors, he often shoots two or three films simultaneously, swapping sets and productions during the course of a single day.  No shit.  And we think filming the scenes for one film out of order is confusing.)

• Variety article: Made in Hong Kong
• FilmFestivals.com article, Cannes 1999

The typical role features:

• A memorable character name: Moon, Crazy Bee, Alien, Frog, Cheap, Nine Dragons (yeah, that one's a Triad boss), Chicken.
• Bad-assitude: drugs, guns, petty thievery, chopper-toting.
• Silly but foxy hair.
• Lots of people calling him ugly.
• Projectile vomiting of white fluid.
• Antagonistic speech and gestures.

And then there's LMF.  (Lazy MuthaFuckaz.  Yessir.)  LMF is a band and a Crew: members DJ Tommy and thrash band Anodize perform as part of LMF proper, and also have albums of their own.  LMF's sound (to American ears) has been compared to that of the Beastie Boys, and the thrashier songs (those with the most influence of attendant band/LMFamily members Anodize) are similar in sound to, say, anything on the Judgement Night soundtrack -- although, of course, I have no fucking clue what the lyrics are.  They could be talking about depilatory creme and Twinkies.  Hell, I dig AC/DC and I don't know what most of their lyrics are, either.  I do know that mastermind MC Yan is a classically-trained musician, and fucking driven: Chinese is a tonal language, which makes inflection and rhyme nigh impossible, but he does it.  He downshifted to Mandarin for the lyrics due to the less complex tonal categories (four, as opposed to the eight-ish employed in Cantonese) but it's still surely a pain in the ass.

Which came first, the medium or the message?  Was crux-fellow MC Yan drawn to rap because he liked it, liked the street style and hated the Canto-pop candyballad junk, and then fit his political sensibilities to the music?  Or did his disgust with HK-vs-Mainland materialistic post-handover snobbery (the pop-fan youth attitude in HK seems to be "We may be Chinese again, but we're HK, and better than you.  Look, we have pink lipstick and glitter."), his horror at the general living conditions of HK uk chuen (the high-rise government dormitory project housing - in '99, 2.3 million HK citizens resided in the estates: that's the entire population of Chicago), and his anger/fascination with dai lo and Triad recruitment demand presentation via thrash-rap fusion?  Does it matter?  They rock, and they do have something to say (but I can't quote it, so don't ask) - and they have balls, to make all that damn noise when most HK youth wants to listen to spangly wet-lipped candypop.

DJ Tommy has just launched a new site which includes a neat Flash thing where you get to scratch.  It's really satisfying.  Go to DJTommy.com and make some noise.  Clips from a number of his songs are also available, as are listings of upcoming appearances.  MC Yan will have a site up soon at http://MCYan.com.  The web designers for all of these sites are great.
 

Our "lustrous calf," Li Chan Sum, is one of the semi-regular performers in LMF (which rotates performers much like Pigface does).  He's a vocalist.  As of yet there has been no rap-star action figure made to represent his stage persona (Monkey Boy, aptly enough) but there are two versions of MC Yan in action-figure form, both designed by Michael Lau, both hard to find and dang expensive, but funny anyway. Article/show review at MCities.com Interview adjunct to MCities.com review Giant Robot magazine, Issue 21, has LMF/Michael Lau stuff There are also now Sam Lee figure sets by Eric So.  Out now is the standing-pose Sam Lee;Scooter Sam, Sam's Cats, and the Plugin Toycon figures (limted to 200.)  Editions of each limited to 500.  If nobody saves me one, I'll commit crimes in order to get one, so watch your back.  These are Estate series figures.

This table gives wee details on each film.  Those marked with this [] clickable symbol are films on which I comment: click on the symbol and you can read my review.  As a device simply to force myself not to make a huge warren of web pages devoted to my little obsession, I made this a single linear page, so use the target links to hop to the reviews and back again.  The more movies I buy, the more  thingies you'll get.

Note: unless you're blind, there's no excuse that'll save you from my wrath if you watch these films (or any, for that matter) dubbed.  Watch the damn things as they were filmed.  Despite the fact that Chinese is a tonal language (which means no vocal cues like interrogative lifts) there is important characterization in spoken dialogue, and a lot of Sam's charm lies in his aggressive delivery.  Give him a line, "I like butter," and he'll deliver it like a punk.  It's hilarious and wholly Sam.  Aside from that, sheesh, dubbing is a crass insult to intent, no matter who is in the film, or what the original language.
 

• My VERY favorite DVD/VCD retailer is Poker Industries - they have excellent prices and the delivery time is akin to goddamn teleportation.  These guys are really nice and I'm telling you, they whupASS on pricing and shipping.  If I get a Sam Lee jones on Monday, I usually have the discs in hand by Wednesday, no later than Thursday.  Incredible.

 
• I haven't purchased from HKFlix yet but here's a direct link to all their Sam Lee titles.  This site is searchable by star, in English.  Prices could be better.

• 3D-Express is decent if you can fudge reading Chinese; if you have a Big-5 browser (this is a HK retailer) you can search by star.  Prices & shipping charges (from China) are okay.  Perks: good soundtrack selection and music cds.  Here's the direct link to their Sam Lee selections.  Look here, and order through the main site.

 
• Coolest (if crashiest) non-English-language Sam Lee fansite: SamLee.cc

 
• The ever-helpful HK Movie Database listing for our Lustrous Calf

Made In Hong Kong 10/9/1997 Dir: Fruit Chan With: Li Can Sen (Sam Lee), Neiky Yim,Wenbers Lee, AmyTam, Carol Lam.	Nude Fear 1998 Dir: Alan Mak (Mai Zhaohui) With: Kathy Chow, Tse Kwan-Ho, Sam Lee, Cheung Tat-Ming (Sam Lee in cameo.)	Beast Cops 1998 Dir: Gordon Chan/Dante Lam With: Anthony Wong, Michael Wong, Kathy Chan,  Sam Lee.	Young and Dangerous: The Prequel 1998 Dir: Andrew Lau Wai-Keung With: Nicholas Tse, Sam Lee, Francis Ng, Chi Hung Ng, Lillian Ho.
Bio-Zombie (aka Bio-Zone) 1998 Dir: Wilson Yip With: Jordan Chan, Cheung Kam-Ching, Sam Lee, Angela Tong	The Longest Summer 1998 Dir: Fruit Chan With: Tony Ho, Sam Lee, Jo Kuk, Chan Sang.	True Mob Story 1998 Dir: Wong Jing With: Andy Lau, Gigi Leung, Mark Cheng, Sam Lee, Alex Fong, Ben Ng	Rules of the Game 9/10/1999 Dir: Cheng Wai Man With: Louis Koo, Kristy Yang, Alex Fong, Sam Lee.
Little Cheung 1999 Dir: Fruit Chan With: Yiu Yuet Ming, Mak Wai Fun, Mak Wai Man, Lai Chi Ho, Ruby.  Cameo Sam Lee.	Gen-X Cops 1999 Dir: Benny Chan With: Nicholas Tse, Stephen Fung, Sam Lee, Grace Ip, Daniel Wu,  Francis Ng, Eric Tsang, Jaymee Ong.	Untold Story 3 1999 Dir:  With: Sam Lee,	Believe It Or Not 1999 Dir: Wellson Chen With: Francis Ng, Sam Lee, Yo Yo Mung.
King of Debt Collecting Agents 1999 Dir: Ivan Lai Gai Ming With: Francis Ng, Nick Cheung, Li Chan Sum,  Anthony Wong, Gabriel Harrison...	Metade Fumaca (Half Smoked) 1999 Dir: Sally Yeh With: Nicholas Tse, Stephen Fung, Sam Lee, Hsu Chi, Eric Tsang, Kelly Chen, Sandra Ng, Anthony Wong.	Afraid of Nothing, the Jobless King 1999 Dir: Joe Ma Wai-Ho With: Gallen Lo Ka-Leung, Gigi Leung Wing-Kei, Brother Jing, Spencer Lam, Seung Yi, Sam Lee (cameo, I'm sure.)	A Man Called Hero 1999 Dir: Andrew Lau With: Ekin Cheng, Kristy Yang, Nicholas Tse, Anthony Wong, Elvis Tsui, Grace Yip, Francis Ng,  Sam Lee.
Trust Me U Die 1999 Dir: Billy Chung With: Simon Yam, Mark Cheng Ho-Nam, Sam Lee Chan Sam, Chan Ying Lai.	When I Look Upon The Stars 1999 Dir: Dante Lam With: Leo Koo Kui-Kei, Anita Chan Wing Yin, Sam Lee Chan Sam, Eric Tsang.	Wan Chai Empress (sometimes misspelled as Wan Chai Express) 1999 Dir: Kenneth Lau. With: Michael Wong, Sam Lee, Simon Lui, Wayne Lai, Lee Siu-Kei, Winnie Leung	Moonlight Express 1999 Dir: Daniel Lee.  With: Leslie Cheung, Takako Tokiwa, Sam Lee, Jack Kao, Lee Heung Kin.
Rave Fever (aka Christmas Rave Fever, aka Rave Party, etc) 12/23/1999 Dir: Mak Siu Fai.  With: Mark Lui, Terence Yin, Jaymee Ong, YoYo Mung, Sam Lee.	Phantom Call 3/16/2000 Dir: Sam Ho.  With: Anthony Wong, Sam Lee, Samuel Chan, Tracy Wong.	Bio-Cops (aka Bio-Crisis Cops) 12/1/2000 Dir: Steve Cheng With: Stephen Fung, Sam Lee, Chan Wai Ming, Alice Chan, Lai Chun, Frankie Ng, Chi Hung Ng.	Gen-Y Cops 12/14/2000 Dir: Benny Chan. With: Edison Chen, Stephen Fung, Sam Lee, Richard Sun, Maggie Q, Sophie Ngan, Christy Chung, Anthony Wong.
Life 3/16/2000 Dir: Kenneth Lau Hau Wai. With: Michael Wong, Sam Lee, Gwong Man Chun, Siu Suk San.	Skyline Cruisers 11/24/2000 Dir: Wilson Yip With: Leon Lai, Hsu Chi (Shu Qi), Jordan Chan, Sam Lee, Michelle  Saram.	A War Named Desire 9/9/2000 Dir: Alan Mak With: Francis Ng, Daniel Chan, Gigi Leung, Dave Wong, Sam Lee.	Fist Power 1/21/2000 Dir: Aman Chang With: Zhao Wen-Zhou, Anthony Wong, Gigi Lai, Sam Lee.
Heaven of (the) Hope 1999 Dir: Tung Sum With: Anthony Wong, Sam Lee, Jimmy Wong, Michael Chan.	True Love 5/11/2000 Dir: Ivan Lai With: Sam Lee, Elle Choi, Bao Hei Tsiag, Cheung Kwok Keung, Joe Junior.	Fing's Raver 2001 Dir: Sherman Wong With: Sam Lee, Loletta Lee, Sophie Ngan, Karel Wong, Chan Wai Ming.	Scaremonger 2001 Dir: Aman Chang  With: Sam Lee, Jerry Lamb, Angela Tong, Myolie Wu, Wai Ka Hung.
Visible Secret / Youling renjian June 15, 2001 Dir: Ann Hui With: Eason Chan, Shu Qi(Shu Kei), James Wong, Sam Lee VisibleSecret.com	Final Romance June 28, 2001 Dir: Alan Mak Siu-Fai  With:  Simon Yam, Raymond Tso, Sam Lee, Terence, Edison Chen

There are a few more that I haven't pinned down yet.  Something about a wolf, something about a washroom, something about a cop, something about woeful love (maybe the same as Final Romance?)  There are also cameos so tiny that I didn't feel like fooling with them (like Jackie Chan's Gorgeous) and items like the video A Small Miracle about which I know zero.
 

Films:
BIO-ZOMBIE
This was my introduction to the silly and oddly appealing chap himself, in the role of Crazy Bee.  He plays opposite Jordan Chan (as Woody Invincible) as a VCD bootlegger.  This is the typical Sam Lee-as-Sam Lee role: mon frer is gawky, goofy, and too dang cute for his own good.  The film itself is addictive as all hell; it's one of those movies you just toss on while you're doing the dishes or balancing your checkbook, or as screen fodder at a party.  Crazy Bee and Woody Invincible are trapped in a cramped, glittery HK shopping mall with a few other employees and some cute-girl customers (which lets Woody get some nasty lovin' in the loo.)  Badly made-up zombies (I'm talking oatmeal slathered only to the jawline) start chomping on everyone: this is more of a nod towards video games than towards Dawn of the Dead, but brothaman, the shit is funny.  It's supposed to be funny, by the way.  That's pretty clear.  We won't discuss the fact that the first time I saw it I burst into tears, either, will we.  No, we won't.  Fuck off.  This film is cheesy, I admit, but it's also witty, sweet, and fun for the eyeballs.  Be sure to get the DVD with the alternate endings.  [grid]

WAN CHAI EMPRESS
What the fuck is going on with this movie, I ask you?  Stay away unless you're an uber-fanatic of Sam Lee, which you aren't, because you aren't a freak like I am.  I picked this one because my poor male-type roomate already had to suffer through fifty bazillion prettyboy HK flicks and I thought he might like a little softcore massage-girl treat.  Well, this bombed.  Nobody got naked, and the movie made no sense.  Plot: three giggly club-going girls decide to make extra cash by becoming massage girls.  The club DJ is Sam Lee.  There are three lead girls at the massage house who are all freakin' gorgeous, but in the context of the film they are supposed to be considered ugly and old.  Whatever.  They are kickass.  Let me remind male readers that none of them get naked.  The most risque thing you'll see is a handjob hidden under a towel.  So these girls learn the ropes of massage-girldom and then some other young girl, Bear, (and we never figured out where she came from or why we cared) falls in love with DJ Sam.  Then comes the "subplot" which goes on for nearly an hour, during which all of the other characters are just gone.  "Wasn't there a massage parlor once?"  my roomate asked.  I'd thought so, too.  Then that subplot wraps up and zammo, back to the massage parlor.  We never see Bear or Sam again.  (Actually, I think we do see Bear, but it's like there never was a Sam.  I forget.  I was baffled.)  Then there's a new subplot, a zany bunch of crap in which the young girls compete with the old ones for business. Then a SWAT team arrives (led by the man standing front and center in the cover shot, in a 2-second onscreen role) and everyone laughs and hugs each other, the end.   We blinked.  "What the fuck?" we said for the thirtieth time.  Sam isn't enough to save this movie.  Avoid. [grid]

TRUE LOVE
This looks like sap.  It is sap, but it's really depressing sap.  Man.  The pretty girl, Elle Choi, on the cover wants to be a pop star.  Sweet Sam, skinnier than ever, plays a Domino's delivery boy who is in love with her.  The pretty girl lives in the wealthy part of town, but isn't wealthy.  Her mother is a widowed schoolteacher; her little brother likes pizza.  Anyway, life is nice, life is going fine, then tragedy upon tragedy starts wolloping little Elle.  Delivery boys are well-paid in HK, as evidenced by Sam's large flat and rooftop balcony.  Boy, Sam loves the hell out of this girl.  He goes above, beyond, and further to protect her and keep her safe, regardless of whether she loves him back.  He loves her for free.  Beware the misty eyes.  Ow.  Then girlie gets back on her damn feet and hurts my boyo, and then, tra la, more tragedies abound.  The damn ending is nigh impossible to watch, it's so drawn-out.  Ow, pain pain in the Bel-girl's heart of hearts.  Stupid movie, with all the sadness and freaking emotional manipulation.  I'm a sucker.  My male non-weepy roomate cried too, but that time we were drunk and lowdown.  Hush up.  This one is better than it ought to be.  [grid]

BIO-COPS
New Bel shopping rule: if it's got BIO- in the title, it's going to be good.  BioCops is scarier than BioZombie, and very cool, and motherfucking hilarious.  Sam Lee outdid himself.  I broke my face laughing, and then for months afterward, we all shambled around imitating him imitating a Zombie New Human.  See, Zombie New Humans were developed in Texas to be the ultimate Painless Warriors.  One bites a fellow, who flees to Hong Kong, which fellows are wont to do.  This nice man (Jude Poyer, fresh from his appearance as a Russian Mafia member in Tsui Hark's Rob Schneider/Van Damme 1998 blockbuster Knock Off - yes, I laugh with you, and I laugh hard, sorry Hark) gets all sexed up and does badnesses and then transforms into King Zombie, and is badass, in a Lost Boys spiked-hair and slinky-pants type of way.  While in jail, he bites a lot of Triads, so we now have gangster zombies.  Sam Lee, one of the gang (Brother Cheap), feigns New Humanitude and from that point on, wild audience cackling ensues.  Stephen Fung is one of the titular cops, and Alice Chan is the foxy babe sent to track down the King Zombie.  There's a great deal of political anti-army subtext here, and hell, it's not all particularly subtext.  People like the ubiquitous tough Frankie Ng get spectacularly munched.  There are some genuinely creepy scenes in this film, if you stop laughing long enough to catch them.   Super popcorn Zombie New Fun. [grid]

RAVE FEVER
This is another of the things I bought more to entertain Robert than myself.  Rave anything is anti-Bel, even when I take into consideration that HK "rave parties" are basically plain old clubs.  (The "rave clubs" in this film, Propaganda and Zip, are in real life the hippest gay clubs in HKSAR.)   This film stars Jaymee Ong (Australian model who first appeared as Haze in Gen-X Cops) as such an incredibly nasty bitch that I don't know whether or not she was acting.  If she was, if in real life little Jaymee is a pussycat, then the girl needs awards, because this character needed a brutal backhand to the chops.  WHAT a bitch.  Anyhap, Rave Fever is a spastic, clever mystery, handling the main plot and all interrelated subplots from different perspectives and overlapping timelines.  We first meet a businessman (Don, played by Mark Lui) who, after a night out at the rave club, remembers nothing, but vaguely recalls sex with a leopard-booted woman.  He's got hickies and a Filofax.  He returns to the clubs in search of the owner of the Filofax, and meets some folks, including Jaymee the BitchGoddess and Sam Lee (Gordon, in one of his foxiest roles yet) the addled drunk junkie.  He loses the Filofax, which is found by Perspective Number Two, Ashley (YoYo Mung.)  Ashely falls in love with suave Stephen (Terence Yin) whose girlfriend, Sonia, just left him.  On Stephen's behalf, and to clear her own decks, Ashley decides to seek Sonia.  The real mystery is underway now, with car chases, knives, and butchery amongst the clubgoing.  After a while of that (which is fun, trust me) we turn to Perspective Numbah Three, that of Gordon Kam, the wobbly junkie.  Now it's outright funny, and stuff happens and eventually mysteries are resolved.  Rave Fever is really cute, and worth repeated viewings, because the activities going on in the background tell their own stories too.  The film is a mixture of cliched formula and cutting originality; by the time the ending arrives, you know it's got to be one of a dozen cliches, but you don't know which, so it manages to be a suprise anyway.  Awesome.  Mark Lui is, by the way, a pop star, and is responsible for the ridiculous soundtrack (which still gets stuck in my head now and then, causing me to become suicidal.)  And yes, Jaymee is hot, and yes, Sam is fucking adorable, and funny as hell.  As usual.  Sorry. [grid]

MADE IN HONG KONG
Sweet crap, this is a depressing film.  Ache.  But it's excellent, and worthy of the loads of Hong Kong Film Awards it won (Best Director for Fruit Chan, Best Film, Best New Performer, and nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Editing.)  This film, made for the equivalent of US$80,000 - yes, eighty grand - and filmed on scraps of stock left over from other productions, was Sam Lee's first.  The story follows Moon, a low-level street thug who dabbles in Triad dealings and romanticizes them to some extent, but still has hope for better things, and therefore avoids too much involvement.  Moon befriends a big dolt, harrassed by schoolboys (one thing you decide, after watching films like this, is that if you ever go to HK, you should studiously avoid all uniformed schoolboys) and Ping, a darling, terminally ill girl.  They find letters written by a girl who has committed suicide, and Moon becomes obssessed with the girl, even as he falls for Ping.  The three of them live in uk chuen, which is miserable enough - I can't get over the living conditions there.  The handover is imminent and everyone is nervous about it, and the city's youth are really in for shit, when it gets down to it.  All kids feel that their future is uncertain.  Put those kids in tiny squalid apartments, give them crappy parents and family debts, tempt and terrify them with gangs, force them to choose between education and survival, and then, only then, take away their nation.  Hell, the ones with parents are the lucky ones.  The ones without terminal diseases or rock-bottom IQs are the lucky ones.  I wonder what the suicide rate was like, what the murder rate was.

Anyway, Moon dreams of dead Susan, and reads her letters, hates her and desires her.  (Is Susan a metaphor for pre-handover HK?  You decide.)  He protects his friends, and looks happier than anyone in his circumstance could be.  Ah, youth.  The last vestiges of Moon's innocence are demolished soon enough, and what was a bittersweet film turns into an agonizing, miserable nightmare.  Ow, ow, ow.  You'll be sick at heart and sore at soul after seeing this one.  "Gee, Bel, sounds like fun, thanks," sez you.  It's worthwhile, I promise.  People lap up movies like Kids and Traffic when they ought to be watching movies like Made In Hong Kong. [grid]

LIFE
Life is odd and interesting; it's like a made-for-TV movie, and was probably knocked out pretty quickly.  There are few sets, few characters, some neat visuals, and some sweat.  Sam Lee acts in this one: he's Jack, a very sweaty Triad member who, after getting swarmed by a rival set, is taken in by two thieving girls.  They sit around on the couch and eat and giggle and go to the park.  Both girls fall in love with Jack, who seems obliging enough to both of them.  The girls have been best friends since grade school, and the rivalry Jack inadvertantly causes is a real threat to everything they've ever known.  Jack, meanwhile, has bigger problems: he met the girls in the first place because they stole the delivery he was supposed to retrieve for his dai lo, and seriously needs the money he'd been promised for the retrieval.

Lau's direction includes some really supercool image expression: there are two points in the film where the scene of action (first, Jack walking on the street, then later, the people walking in the street around him) turns to a frame-jumping slow motion, during which people whom we understand are walking normally (as they were before and after these slow-modes) are shown lurching about like spastic zombies.  I don't know if this just looks cool, or if it signifies something (we're out of step with each other, we don't have our footing, or, my favorite, there are monsters among us, and they are US!) - but it's very disturbing and effective.

Life was in theaters for 2 weeks and grossed $10,250HK.  That's, uh, $1,300US.  Hoo, boy.[grid]

FING'S RAVER
This is a Triads drama, and a pretty decent one.  Sam Lee plays Sam; his brother Wo and his mother are shiftless leeches who borrow from loan sharks and cadge money off Sam (or whoever else stops by) whenever possible.  Sam works for a nightclub as a valet parking attendant; Wo is a skeezy little Triad who manages the club under the reign of Brother Bill.  Bill's a big Boss to whom the illusion of legitimacy is imperative, and when there are allegations that his club sells an MDMA drug called Fing.  Fing happens to kill kids who've used it for too long - their skulls develop holes & their brains are exposed, so a special police force is assigned to eradicate the sales of the drug, and they focus on Brother Bill and his clubs.  What Bill doesn't know is that some of his footmen, including Wo, do indeed sell Fing at the club.  So there's big danger here: the thugs are a threat to their Boss, the pills are killing people, and man, if Bill find out, there's going to be some serious chopping.  But the thugs are prepared for that, too, and there are a lot of sly gangster manipulations for the duration of the film.  Sam has to seek vengeance for a murder, eventually, which means he has to get tight with Bill's gang, which is also dangerous, because we all know, once a triad, always a triad.  I like Sam Lee in this film - he's growing up, becoming more secure in his abilities, and differentiating between characters more often now. [grid]

THE LONGEST SUMMER
Fruit Chan is officially Amazing.  That is my decree.  Hear me now.
The Longest Summer is packed with what, after only two feature films, are trademark Fruit shots (very early in the film is a fantastic subway scene: Fruit's composition and color styles are secure and gorgeously filthy, and in this particular shot, he shoots down the repetitive-partition interior length of a subway train, a hall of mirrors that shifts as the train turns on the track.  Bogglingly good.)  The film opens to a swarming montage of British voices, newscasts, and footage of pre-handover preparations, including the dispersal of the British Army regiments posted in HK and populated by many Chinese.  These men, promised housing and emigration rights which never materialized, are left with nothing good: no military experience beyond excercises, no Crown to whom to loyally defend, no job prospects, and on top of all of it, they, like all HK residents, are unsure what the Handover will bring.  Ga Yin (Tony Ho) chooses to join a triad brotherhood under the introduction of his ganster brother Ga Suen (Li Can Sen), also known as Chopstick.  Ga Yin insists to his dai lo that he's just doing a job, and the soldier doesn't really get it - doesn't get that one does not decide to quit the brotherhood, then return, then quit again like a day laborer, for instance.  He and three of his friends, also discharged soldiers, decide (independently of the dai lo and without his awareness or consent) to rob a bank.  Here there are more of the swap-shots Fruit Chan used in Made In Hong Kong: dream sequences shot normally which are then shown by plot progression not to have actually happened (example - wee spoiler for Made In Hong Kong- in that film, Moon prepares to carry out his first ordered mortal hit.  We see him do it, and he's badass, mean and fast and quick, merciless.  Then we see him try it again, for real this time, and he's sick with fear.)  These shots aren't confusing, don't worry.

The bank robbery doesn't go quite as planned, and the dai lo gets angry when he finds out about all of this, and the friends start to seriously distrust each other (and young tough Chopstick), and Handover Day (1 July, 1997) is fast approaching, and, just like in the first of Fruit Chan's trilogy, there's no solid ground anymore.

I don't know what else to say, because I'd rather just stop writing now and go watch it again. [grid]

HEAVEN OF THE HOPE
Your friend and mine, Anthony Wong, plays an ex-triad in this film.  He's a priest (not officially) who works at a halfway house, helping teen boys get off drugs and avoid the lure of the triads.  His daughter, Mandy, has vanished, but he has her pager.  With this he tracks her to a club, and then into the depths of teen triad activity.  Sam Lee plays Hawk, not a boss himself but a major player within his brotherhood.  Hawk's the kind of guy who beats on and cheats on his woman, then makes her turn tricks to get him cash.  The Priest is allowed to tag along with the kids while looking for Mandy, and they all help to some extent, until the Priest, considered first just an annoyance, becomes an actual enemy of the Boss.

We know that it's not good to burn the Boss's drugs, don't we?  And we know it's not good to tangle with people that have choppers, and use them?  And we know that Anthony Wong does mortal-agony well, and that he does Vengeful Facial Expressions well, and so forth?  The third act of this film is pure vengeance.  It's a good flick: Sam Lee in silly clothes and a bad-guy role, Anthony Wong in first a tender-guy role and then a vicious one, mysterious goings-on, darts to the penis, torture, chopping, limb loss, blood spewage, face-scalding, etc.  Nice. [grid]