In short: Red Wolf (1995)

Ah, luxury cruises. What a great way to celebrate the new year. That's also what a merry band of gangsters thinks, so they infiltrate the crew and the house band of a luxury liner. While they're at it, they might as well steal the uranium that's kept hidden in a highly secured safe - it's the modern way of uranium transportation. Oh, and they're gonna have to kill everyone on board.

To their very lethal dismay, Alan (Kenny Ho), an Ex-Cop With A Tragic Past, is part of the ship's security detail and doesn't take to slaughter all that kindly. Well, slaughter he doesn't commit himself, so he goes on a hitting, kicking, shooting and macgyvering rampage to show the evildoers how it's really done. His only help is the supremely annoying Christy Chung, who - I am sorry to say - just isn't funny at all.

 

I don't know why anyone would think it to be a good idea to rip off a Steven Seagal rip-off of Die Hard, but this were the ways of Hong Kong cinema and I hope they always will be.

There are quite a few things that recommend Red Wolf as a rip-off better than the original:

Firstly, director Yuen Woo-ping who has made too many films and choreographed too many action sequences to not be able to deliver a nice pay-off for friends of screaming, kicking, hitting and shooting with creative use of just about everything that isn't nailed down; there's no idea so stupid Yuen wouldn't make an effort to look as cool as possible.

Secondly, there's the combination of slight sadism and not always so slight stupidity of much of the script. Usually, those aren't points one mentions to recommend a movie, but ideas like the uranium on board a cruising ship or the great use the film makes of its child actor (you'll see - and probably applaud) give Red Wolf the over the top feeling that really lets it work.

Thirdly, Kenny Ho might not be the best actor around, but he jumps into the action with abandon and (to compare to the movie's source) does not look like a geriatric hippopotamus.

Lastly, Elaine Lui makes a great sadistic first henchman, whose cure for heart attacks I'll keep in mind as an alternative to more conventional methods.

 

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