For Bad Boys Only (2000)

Director: Raymond Yip

Producer: Manfred Wong

Writer: Manfred Wong

Cast: Ekin Cheng Yi-kin, Shu Qi (Shu Kei), Louis Koo Tin-lok, Kristy Yang, Daniel Chan, Mark Cheng Ho-nam, Josie Ho, Frankie Ng Chi-hung, Blackie Ko, Gigi Lai

Running Time: ?

Plot: A Wedding ceremony of a wealthy man is about to be held on his exquisite marine boat when suddenly a small aircraft appears, two young man with surprising agility fall from the sky. They tell the bride that the man of her first love still loves her now and hope that she could return to him. This moves the bride and she decides not get married. The wealthy man's bodyguards try to take control of the chaotic situation, but the two young men with unbeatable strength and cooperation defeat them. The bride is then successfully brought back to the men of her first love. The operation is arranged and executed by a private investigation agency called "Bad Boy Special Agents", managed by Ken and Dick.

GWAILO'S REVIEW: Unfortunately Hollywood has barred HK cinema into submission....almost. The tired effects(terrible in the Matrix) are almost palatable here. Lifted right from it's California counterpart, FBBO is made watchable by it's young cast. Funny turns by all involved, yes even Ekin, manage to turn a lazy script into something tight and enjoyable. The appearance of Shu Qi x 3 only helps. Yes the characters are poorly developed and the script very silly, but who cares. That is what drew us to HK cinema in the first place. The oddity of it's form and content. Now we all think we're experts on the genre. Most lost sight of the nations cinema when it's most prominent stars and directors went Hollywood swingin'. There is still excitement to be had in HK. FBBO is not a bad movie. The goofiness of the script keeps it afloat over many other recent action comedies. The photography of the great Jingle Ma is excellent. How is an industry supposed to compete in it's flailing market? HK is being overrun with Hollywood productions. To keep up with Hollywood, Hk is heisting it's content. If you can't beat em', join em. What else can the industry do at this time? Eventually when the film going public gets tired of both countries productions, a reinvention will occur. I'm sure we're all waiting for the next Full Contact or something with the passion of a Bullet in the Head. Don't dismiss films like FBBO, and run to your nearest multiplex to catch the new DMX (!?) action flick (!?) Stick around and you will be pleasantly surprised!

GWAILO'S RATING: 7/10

ALEXANDER'S REVIEW: "For Bad Boys Only" is easily one of the most bizarre and derivative films I've ever seen. Two hours into it I had been reminded of "Blade Runner" (Escaped replicants!); "Weird Science" (Let's make out with the hot, naive clone!); Bond (Super cool super-sleuths that use neat gadgets!); Queen (Arena rock!); Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (Yes, the opening piano riff is in here.); Casio keyboards (Y'know, the ones given away as parting gifts on those old game shows like "Press Your Luck".); "The Matrix" (The ubiquitous bullet dodging scene); director Walter Hill (Didn't that pulsating synthesizer soundtrack go out of style with his "The Warriors" and "Assault on Precinct 13"?); and Sheena Easton (Okay, that's a stretch, but tell me YOU didn't think of her when you saw the movie's title.). These aren't simply allusions to other films and songs, but blatant rip-offs.

This seriously schizophrenic film has the requisite amazing looking cast. Ekin Cheng ("Tokyo Raiders") is well-suited for the role of suave investigator King who ultimately falls in love with superpowered clone Eleven (because she's more perfect than a 10, get it?), played by pouty Category 3 star Shu Qi ("Gorgeous"). Louis Koo is also decent as Ekin's partner in the Bad Boys Squad detective agency. But the most appealing cast member is Kristy Yeung ("Portland Street Blues") as Queen. She's definitely the best thing about this film and is arguably the hottest female actress currently working in HK cinema.

The special effects are cheesy to the point of distraction and the sound effects apparently involved someone with either a naked butt or large side of beef (for slapping, of course) at their disposal, along with a box of Legos. (Drop a handful of Legos on a hard surface and VOILA! you have a motorcycle crash.)

This film is really beyond description. It's one of those movies that is never quite sure, exactly, where it wants to go. It inexplicably opens with an Austin Powers-like skit -- frenetically edited by Yip Man -- involving a Porsche, a military wedding, a couple of cigars, and a preening Ekin Cheng. After the next embarassing segment aboard an airplane, I was ready to stop the disc (and remember, I've sat through "Sexy and Dangerous"). Fortunately, the movie slowly works its way into a romantic-comedy groove and loses -- mercifully -- what began as simply a series of comedy sketches. But by trying to be too many things at once (spy caper, sci-fi adventure, romantic comedy, etc.), it fails at all of them. Had it solely stuck with the misadventures of the Bad Boys Squad detective agency, it might have succeeded, at the very least, as a good B-movie.

ALEXANDER'S RATING: 6.5/10

DIGITAL D'S REVIEW: This is a movie about a private detective agency who looks for lost loves or first loves of well paying customers. This seems like a very silly concept and the bad boy agency never really does any detective work to find these people. It seems like pretty public knowledge who and where these people are. Shoot, give me the money and I could probably find them with Yahoo people search and some common sense. And the other times, they find them by chance, "oh that looks like the girl I'm looking for, good thing I ran into her at the mall!" The bad boy agency are made up of Ekin Cheng. Louis Koo, Kristy Yeung. They are super slick and super cool and girls just swoon for them. But damn, they seem stupid. They are out partying more than doing work.

Well, the meat of the movie is that two people are looking for people that appear to be the same (Hsu Chi). It ends up that Hsu Chi plays three characters in the movie (an older woman who use to be a gold medal winner, some chick named Shadow and a cyborg clone of Shadow). I don't know if Hsu Chi is a really bad actress (this is the first movie, I've seen her in) or if that's the effect she wants to give off but at least she's easy on the eyes. It's a convuluted plot line about human cloning and how they wanted to clone the gold medal winner, but couldn't so they found some chick that looked like the gold medal winner and used her instead (makes sense to me, not!). So they make this cyborg clone for which purpose is never fully statedÉis she a sex machine and weapon???? And bad boys agency unravels this plan.

The film looks great style wise, and the special effects were straight outta the matrix. And there are some funny moments in the movie. Unfortunately the film just tries to tell too many stories in one movie. It's hard to care about characters that only show up for 15 minutes in the movie. I think the director's were trying to make some bold statement about love, but they should have stuck to one or two love triangles instead of 4 or 5 love octagrams.

On a side note, why do Asian film makers always want to mislead you on the cover? For Bad Boys Only had all the characters posing with guns. If I remember correctly only 2 used them. Even the guy who has no reason to use a gun has one! And why are they flashing Movie title throughout the first half of the movie?

DIGITAL D'S RATING: 5/10 (visual style and 3 Hsu Chi's in one movie save this from a lower rating)