Holy Weapon (1993)

Directed by
wilfully convoluted
Reviewed by Simon on 2002-03-03

God bless Wong Jing, mad little genius that he is. Never one to let something like impossible action sequences and a nonsensical plot stop him from making an entertaining movie.

The story is wilfully convoluted, bouncing between comedy skits, drama and wire-based action at a manic pace. Gender-confusion abounds, and love triangle/quadrangle/pentangles galore. Crazy poisons and mysterious kung fu stances too. There's some distasteful rape-based scenes, a Wong Jing hallmark, but overall it's the female characters who come out as the most interesting.

Ching Siu-Tung is the only action choreographer to take on when you're planning sequences as blatantly impossible as six people bound together on a wire rig operating as arms/legs/torso/head of one giant person, and when you want both scenery and people exploding at the drop of a kung-fu powered hat. Sure, it all looks a little cheap and fake - but I still can't work out how the hell he put some of those scenes together.

There a moments when the movie will make you cringe, moments when it will make you laugh, and moments when you will shake your head in disbelief. One thing it never does is get boring though.