The Adventurers

‘80s Icons like Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Van Damme were action heroes first, romantic leads second…usually a very distant second. But as the action genre diversified in the ‘90s, audiences demanded a bit more than the usual fare of explosions and roundhouse kicks.  Enter Andy Lau, Hong Kong’s answer to Tom Cruise, a smoldering leading man who provided instant chemistry with his female co-stars and managed to be a convincing bad-ass at the same time. All that and a beautiful singing voice too.

In The Adventurers (1995) Lau stars as Yan, a Cambodian refugee whose parents’ involvement with the CIA soon leaves him an orphan.  Vowing revenge against the arms dealer responsible, Yan works his way into the Thai military and finally gets his chance after being placed as an undercover asset in San Francisco.  There he woos Crystal, the daughter of his sworn enemy, and marries into the family.  But will his feelings spoil his one chance for retribution?

Actually, Yan has two women fighting over him in director Ringo Lam’s sprawling underworld drama:  Crystal, his boss’s daughter, and Mona, his boss’s mistress.  And it’s a perfect representation of Lau’s dual appeal as both a maverick rebel-with-a-cause and the softhearted guy you’d bring home for family dinner.  Lam’s film packs in polished action scenes on land, air and sea, the most ambitious of them being a Top Gun-inspired fighter jet sequence and a helicopter finale that would give Apocalypse Now a run for its money. But for all the canted angles, pyrotechnics and macho-posturing, it’s Lau who sells the material best.

Eureka’s special edition Blu-ray  features a brand-new 2K restoration, restored Cantonese audio track, commentary from critic David West, interviews, collector’s booklet and O-Card slipcase with new artwork.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hollywood 90028

Image
While everyone praises a film that is timeless, those that are  of their time  an inevitably more interesting. And  Hollywood 90028  (1974) occupies a singular moment of L.A. cinematic history written by the early generation of UCLA film school grads; an urban desert of sleazy peep shows and dashed artistic aspirations populated by Midwest transplants looking to make it big.  Director Christina Hornisher’s obscure addition to this tragic catalog was sold as a sexed-up piece of violent exploitation (and retitled  The Hollywood Hillside Strangler  and  Twisted Throats ) but this low-budget effort is really anything but.   Mark (Christopher Augustine) is a frustrated filmmaker shooting dirty movies to pay the bills, unable to put together a highlight reel that will get him out of the celluloid gutter.  Michele (Jeannette Dilger) is on the other side of the camera, ashamed of her “performances” but lured by the easy money. ...
Read more

School in the Crosshairs

Image
A pop-music confection of psychic powers, first love, and invaders from Venus, 1981’s School in the Crosshairs is a mainline rush of anime aesthetics and pre-MTV aspirations. And if you think that’s a mouthful, wait’ll you get a look at the film itself! Director Nobuhiko Obayashi ( House ) stacks plot devices like Jenga pieces, relying on the charisma of super-producer Haruki Kadokawa’s handpicked pop princess to keep it from collapsing under its own weight. That secret ingredient is star Hiroko Yakushimaru, the cherub-faced schoolgirl who’d break out later that same year in Sailor Suit and Machine Gun . Here she plays Yuka, the most popular girl in school, who discovers her telekinetic abilities have drawn the attention of a power-hungry alien bent on enslaving her fellow students. With help from a mysterious new girl on campus, the villains drain all the fun from Daii Academy, transforming it into a fascist state devoted entirely to academics.   Based on an oft-adapted novel by ...
Read more

Terminus

Image
Road Warrior   rip-offs are legion. After the success of George Miller’s post-apocalyptic actioner, every two-bit producer with access to a stretch of desert and a box of leftover shoulder pads scrambled to cash in. In the U.S., Roger Corman unleashed   Battletruck , Charles Band gave birth to   Metalstorm   (in 3D, no less), while Italy cranked out so many copycat productions it’s a wonder the Colosseum didn’t wind up with a gun turret and a flamethrower. But France—ah, France—they just might have delivered the most bafflingly sideways homage of them all: 1987’s   Terminus . Set in a near future where a tricked-out truck must pass through hostile territory to reach a predetermined “terminus,” the story begins with its hired driver (Karen Allen) captured and killed by rival gangs. That leaves Stump (Johnny Hallyday), a mysterious ex-con, to complete the journey—accompanied by a mute 8-year-old named Princess. Their mission is guided by an AI system called Monste...
Read more