Future Cops (1993)

Its been a while since I’ve done a foreign movie so I’ve been all about changing it up, so I went to my collection and pulled out this flick! The other name for this one is Street Fighter. Just to give you an idea of what you will be expecting. Its one that I’ve been looking for since forever.  I had it on VHS and then it just didn’t work anymore..so I went hunting for a new one and it was impossible to find.  I ended up finding it a few months ago.

Director: Wong Jing

Cast: Dicky Cheung, Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Simon Yam, Chingmy Yau, Charlie Yeung, Ekin Cheng, Andy Hui, Richard Ng, King-Tan Yuen, Aaron Kwok

In 2043, the world is completely different.  Judge Yu is about to send the triad leader Vega to jail. In the midst of all the chaos during his imprisonment, the future cops, Ryu (Aaron Kwok), Balrog (Andy Lau), Dalsat (Simon Yam), Guile (Jacky Cheung) are trying to stop his gang leader, Ken (Ekin Cheng) leading two others, Honda and Sagat.  However, they learn that Ken and company have time travelled back to 1993 when the Judge was only in his 20s to brainwash or kill him, so that it will change the course of events in 2043.  Shortly after, Balrog, Dalsat and Guile also travel and end up landing on the roof of Tai Hung (Dicky Cheung).  They end up making a deal to help Tai Hung gain respect at the high school and get the girl he likes, Charlie (Charlie Yeung) while he helps them search for the young Judge and protect him.  It now turns into a race between the future gangs and the future cops to see who can find the young Judge first.  In the process, they get a bit of help with Tai Hung’s sister (Chingmy Yau), his mom (King-Tan Yuen) and her boyfriend (Richard Ng).

Right off the description up there, you can already see that its going be a cheesy flick, especially now that its 20 years after and we have such good CGI.  This movie is based right off of the characters of Street Fighter.  We have the more noble characters trying to protect justice while there are the triad members who will do anything to not be caught.  Its not going to go down in the greats and some people will even find it a horrible watch.  For me, it may have laughable CGI effects when they are doing all the fighting sequences with the Street Fighter moves, but its just a silly action comedy. I still find it incredibly funny and ridiculous in a good way.

Why do I like this? First of all, its my type of comedy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Comedy is very personal.  Your genre could be different from mine and its going to be hard to appeal to everyone.  This one appeals to me and I find it incredibly cheesy funny.  On top of that, they have a great strong cast.  No doubt though, that they did try to build it on the 4 biggest male superstars in that era of Hong Kong show biz: they were known as the 4 Kings in the entertainment business.  This one features 3 of them: Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung and Aaron Kwok.  Aaron Kwok does only a cameo so we’ll leave him out for now.  You all should know Andy Lau by now, he did Infernal Affairs for one.  I’ve also talked about him in a previous review for Tricky Brains. Andy Lau is amazing at what he does.  He may have started as a singer but his acting skills are fantastic and as a comedian, he does a great job.

I have never been a huge fan of Jacky Cheung and his movies.  Not that he did a lot either.  He focused on his forte and thats singing.  He has an awesome voice and in this one, he does sing a bit.  However, as mature and friendly as he always seems to be on stage, this movie really showed his humorous side and its just fun to see a new character for him.

The rest of the cast definitely deserves some mentioning and introducing.  The lead is possibly Dicky Cheung who is awesome in the area of jokes and being stupid.  That is his forte and he is damn good at it. King Tan Yuen and Richard Ng are now older in the business but still, they were red hot back then as supporting comedy actor and actresses.  King Tan Yuen eventually went on to do supporting roles in Hong Kong TV series where she shined with comedic roles as well.  Of course, how can we forget the great Simon Yam? He did Killzone with Donnie Yen and I personally think he has aged into a very handsome man.  Aside from that we have Charlie Yeung, who has made a comeback in recent years in some action films, her first being New Policy Story across Jackie Chan  (I should rewatch that one soon).

Being based on a video game, probably did this one crazy wonders, it put a really nice spinoff to the game that was super popular in the 90s.  It brought alive the characters and even though it was horrible CGI, back then, I think in the 90s it would be at par to most of it.  The storyline was pretty decent and they used really awesome jokes.  Some moments were ridiculous, but they were ridiculously funny.  They gave a twist to what the future would be like as well.

Looking back at these movies, cheesy as they are, they were a lot of fun to watch.  Of course, its part of nostalgia to me. However this one held up really well. I had a crazy laugh rewatching this the other day. Its definitely a great source of entertainment. If you can take cheesy action movies, get right on board and give this a shot (its on Youtube, I believe), you won’t regret it!