Absurdly eclectic HK, high octane celluloid lunacy rarely comes more explosive or day glow demented than whacky Wong Jing's godlike, globe-trotting, insanely Indiana Jonesing, fleet-footed 'Magic Crystal'. While the inventive director of loony cult classic 'City Hunter' is greatly beloved for his frantic filmmaking idiosyncrasies he certainly outdoes himself with this kaleidoscopic free-for-all, genre-bending fright-fest, while relatively light on puppets is riotously replete with multitudinously 'zany' absurdist antics, surrealistic slapstick humour and uniquely unhinged, body-rocking, blitzkrieg barmy, solar plexus-bashing action!
'Hire the Hunting Eagles!!!!!' the authorities cried out in desperate need, and their request is promptly answered in the limber form of handsome head-knocker Andy Lau. Having to thwart a heinous miscarriage of justice he promptly perpetrates an exhilaratingly gonzo fight, thereby sinuously displaying the manly, sleek-limbed, fine-fettled Hunting Eagle in full flight. This mercurial martial arts movie continues no less chaotically in the sun-drenched, cheese-soaked antiquarian delights of Athens, Greece, where supercharged action mistress Cynthia Rothrock and FHKBG (Frequent Hong Kong Bad Guy) Richard Norton boisterously butt bellicose heads, knees and toes over the missing, presumed stolen jade nose goblin that currently has the KGB, Interpol and Hong Kong's finest hunting eagles so enthusiastically embroiled in the international race to reclaim this esoteric, ambulatory artefact of unknown origin.
Our crime-crushing crew head back to HK to furiously fight and slapstick their wistful way to a singularly disorientating conclusion, which includes returning once again to Greece in order to pursue their relentlessly mad, roller-coaster dizzying quest for this 'Magic Crystal'. Wong Jing's wildly vascillatory oeuvre is a ceaselessly confounding delight for boggling eyes to behold, and the film's withering pace continues unalloyed until the terrifically tumultuous subterranean climax, delivering a deliriously psychedelic patina of plentifully strange situations for our intrepid tomb raiders to assiduously circumnavigate!
In a giddy, mind-melding, rulebook trashing Von Daniken/Spielbergian finale for the ages, an alien life form robotically claims to be the SOLE inspiration for the goddess Athena while jaw-shattering shot-callers Rothrock, Lau and supreme B-Movie baddie Norton unleash myriad Street Fighter bossage until only the most righteous of heart amongst them may rightfully return the 'self-generated thought form' into the matrix! In a perfect world all genre cinema would be thusly made, wholly unencumbered by logic, free from stultifying filmmaking dogma, unrepentantly hyperbolic, since only the finest B-movies exist in such a rarefied vacuum, infinities beyond conventional rationalization, Mr. Wong Jing, I salute your iconoclastic vision of futurist cinema!
'Pin-Pin! Put me in the Matrix????' I would love to think that future blockbuster filmmakers, who shall remain nameless, took that adorable far flung rock's earnest request just a little too seriously!'
'Pin-Pin! Put me in the Matrix????' I would love to think that future blockbuster filmmakers, who shall remain nameless, took that adorable far flung rock's earnest request just a little too seriously!'