When you think of the 80s, Hong Kong cinema, chances are you whip up thoughts of one of Jackie Chan’s frenetic action comedies or John Woo’s devastating examples of heroic bloodshed; but what if I told you that there’s a movie that did both? Surely such a movie would be a whirlwind of frenzied pratfalling, off-colour japery and the sort of savage violence that would result in a hefty bodycount that seemingly contradicted the goofy tone, right? Well, I’m please to inform you that that’s exactly how Shaw Brothers veteran Lau Kar-Leung’s utterly gonzoid Tiger On The Beat plays out as it merges truly bizarre, infantile humour with full-blooded action sequences that sees numerous bad guys meet their end courtesy of pistols, shotguns, bayonets and a fucking great chainsaw.
Fronted by the legendary Chow Yun-Fat, backed up by Conan Lee and threatened by a menacing Gordon Liu, prepare yourself to be immersed in one of the craziest action epics ever to front-flip out of Hong Kong – and that’s fucking saying something.
Francis Li is a talented Sergeant in the police force who has decided to lazily squander his law upholding gifts in favour of vast amounts of womanising and amassing a collection of truly sobering Hawaiian shirts. However, one day after he craftily avoids getting caught spending time with another man’s wife, he runs into eager, up and coming cop Michael Cho when his hungover ass finds himself the hostage in a sudden hostage situation. While Cho manages to subdue the gunman, it’s done so at the expense at what little dignity Li has left and he subsequently tries to get the less experienced officer booted off the force.
Of course, whether you’re in LA or Hong Kong, rules dictate that if you have two police officers who can’t stand one another, you just absolutely have to pair them up as partners and then step back to watch the sparks fly.
Grumbling at their new status, both Li and Cho slowly warm to one another as the more streetwise senior cop tries to temper that erratic exuberance of his new colleague, but soon the duo find themselves stumbling into the workings of a massive drugs ring when they have a run in with low level criminal “poison snake” Ping. Ping has recently had the brass balls to pull one over on crime boss Johnny Law and has found himself in the crosshairs of steely henchman, Lau Fai.
Both Johnny Law’s goons and Li and Cho realise that the fastest way to get to Ping is through his sister, Marydonna, and while the cops manage to barely get to her first, there’s initially no love lost between the trio as they try to get the devoted sister to flip on her sibling.
However, as the law in bubby cop movies plainly states that everything has to soon go to shit, Li and Cho soon find themselves in a bloody battle to the death with Johnny Law’s underlings that involves a neat trick that allows a shotgun to fire around corners in a gunfight and a spectacular chainsaw battle that has to be seen to be believed.
Even when compared to the daffier 80s works of Jackie Chan, there’s something so delightfully strange about Tiger On The Beat that I’ve been slightly obsessed by it from the moment I first laid eyes on its particular brand of insanity. On the surface, it’s obviously an attempt to put a distinctive, Hong Kong stamp on that most familiar of action tropes, the buddy cop movie, and yet while it’s basics are incredibly familiar, Lau Kar-Leung’s cartoonish kill-fest still remains quite unlike anything I’ve seen before. Sure, endearing feats of physical comedy in an action film have been pretty much trademarked by Jackie Chan since the late seventies, but while the legendary martial artist had no problems taking the piss out his nimble heroes by making them fast-fisted buffoons, Tiger On The Beat paints its lead character as such a walking dumpster fire, it takes the notion to a whole other level.
You can tell that after playing numerous, live-fire, anti-heroes for John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat was chomping at the bit to play someone a bit less serious, but even by that standard, the leap he makes to play professional scumbag Sergeant Francis Li is not unlike having Nic Cage follow up his Oscar win by showing up as a nerd in The Rock. Within the first 20 minutes, we see the guy weasle his way out of getting caught by a suspicious husband, glug down a glassful of raw eggs in one go as a hangover cure and then piss his pants after a random gunman shoves a revolver in his mouth and it truly seems as if the actor took the role chiefly because of the ritual humiliation. In comparison, the rest of the cast gets it slightly easier; Conan Lee may have to run around in a pair of unfeasibly tight Y-fronts at one point, but at least he doesn’t urinate in them – however, that doesn’t really account for the spectacularly heavy-handed treatment offered to Nina Li Chi’s Marydonna who absorbs more brutal punishment in this one single movie that Bruce Campbell did throughout his entire career.
The truly alarming thing is, while she has to suffer constant leering, endless jibes about her sizable bust and being threatened by a razor, most of her punishment comes bizarrely from Chow Yun-Fat himself who, in a scene that’s aged phenomenally badly, beats the shit out of her for ten straight minutes in order to show her the error of her ways. Believe it or not, the scene is actually played for laughs predominantly because the Chinese people had it in for the actress, but chances are you’ll be more than a little stunned, especially when she’s put through a glass coffee table for yucks.
It would have to take something truly jaw dropping to bring the movie back from such a hefty slice of 80s misogyny, but thankfully the film’s truly demented climax kicks in and delivers truly one of the best, final 20 minutes of 80s Hong Kong action cinema. Considering this statement puts it in shoulder-rubbing company as such landmarks as the mall fight from Police Story and the final shoot out from A Better Tomorrow II, you’d better believe that Lau Kar-Leung has pulled out all the stops, but I genuinely have to say that there’s stuff in that final, insane sequence that still hasn’t been replicated. Watching Chow Yun-Fat rig up a shotgun with a rope and then have him throw it and then yank it back like a yo-yo allowing him to shoot people around corners would have beeen enough to blow my mind on its own, but the crown jewel of the movie in an absolute mind blower of a fight that sees Lee and Kill Bill’s Gordon Liu go at each other with growling chainsaws. To this day it’s still one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen as it seemingly blends the majesty of a Errol Flynn/Basil Rathbome duel with the balls-to-the-wall savagery of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and it’s still still a major crime it’s not more well known to a greater audience.
Some of the comedy has admittedly aged like cheese on a radiator, but for teeth shattering, eye-popping, jaw-unhinging thrills and spills, Tiger On The Beat proves to be something of a forgotten gem as it takes your basic, Lethal Weapon style formula and runs down the street with it like an utter maniac. And those final 20 minutes…? Surely some of the insane action sequences that you ever sawed.
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