Hong Kong 97

"Hong Kong '97" is one of those many "hitmen-with-a-conscience" flicks. The T-1000 himself Robert Patrick plays a laconic assassin named Cameron, who succeeds in killing a Chinese diplomat just on the eve of the day Hong Kong becomes part of China from the U.K. The killing results in trouble for Cameron, as guys with itchy trigger-fingers try to pump lead into our "hero", his girlfriend, and his buddy (played by Brion James, who finally portrays a good guy!) Though visually striking, "Hong Kong 97" is a pretty dense film, with an incoherent plot and bad dialogue. Patrick tries hard, but his charming good lucks can't really save this film from falling down a well of despair!

This was one of the many video's i found way bk in the day at a 2nd hand old video store called Enterprise, such a Cool place to find obscure & rare films & they had sections of video's by the actors name so Robert Patrick had his own section & that was too Awesome in my eyes as I've been a huge Robert Patrick fan since T2 & FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2:TEXAS BLOOD MONEY & really wanted to check out other Patrick films & i found in the Awesome Robert Patrick section HONG KONG '97 & ZERO TOLERANCE!!!! Both good pure 90's action Thriller's but the Awesome vigilante flick Zero Tolerance is the better of the two but hey it was so good to discover two films where Patrick was the action lead!!!! Also stars other B film greats such as Brion James (Nightmare at Noon, Southern Comfort) Tim Thomerson (Nemesis, Dollman) & Andrew Divoff (Wishmaster, Blast) all often star in Albert Pyun films.

Hong Kong '97 Was pretty good in it's Albert Pyun Directed DTV low-budget quality as the Cult Director always puts plenty of style & slow-mo action on screen for us & he does do plenty of Cool action scenes & shootouts with Robert Patrick looking very Cool in his long coat with two hand guns jumping around capping bad guys & Pyun does this greatly & has many moody music sequences that adds an emotional element to the action scenes.

Patrick is a hitman on an undercover mission over in Hong Kong & of Course nothing is as it seems & he's hunted by many bad guys with guns & we get a low-budget "John Woo" style action film that yes can be cheesy but it's entertaining & is exactly what it's supposed to be an action B-movie Thriller with a Cool lead in the underrated Robert Patrick who usually gets bit parts in big films & very rarely gets to headline a movie!!!!

Patrick blew me away with how great he was as criminal Buck in the fantastically fun & ferocious DTV scuzzy sequel From Dusk Till Dawn 2, a real gem for us Horror fans & full of crazy action & bloodshed & put Robert Patrick in the limelight as the movie's hero character & from then on i was a huge fan & he became one of my all time favourite actors ever.

This is an easy watching action flick with plenty of style & Coolness & a very good Robert Patrick doing plenty of Action, i love B-movies because it gives our other fave actors a chance to lead films & be the main character for once.

I rented Decoy and this flick one night as a Robert Patrick double bill. Hong Kong 97's story would seem to have potential, but nothing comes of it. Robert Patrick stars along a bunch of recognizable faces (some b-movie regulars) that have seen better days in the typical gun-for-hire on the run / can't trust anyone routine.

I still remember when Hong Kong was going to revert powers. It was almost surreal. All British assets were clearing out and the news was portraying it as the 90's version of the Berlin Wall. Of course, this movie has none of that underlying paranoia or sense of unease. It's just a bunch of cheaply filmed scenes helmed by Albert Pyun. For fans of direct-to-video action, this doesn't register a blimp on the radar and even Robert Patrick fans will have to agree Hong Kong 97 is pretty sore.

I was only expecting something good, but the movie turned out to be bad.

All the movie's missing is I Love Beijing Tiananmen, Deng Xiaoping's head being used as an ultimate weapon, and ugly reds rushing from the mainland. The worst part is that Chin is not in this movie, and it's too bad he's busy fighting ugly reds.

I've read through every YouTube comment, and they have the same issue as I'm having right now in this movie. Even though this movie came before the game with the same name, the movie's still bad.

I know that the ugly reds and Deng Xiaoping's head were behind the making of this movie.

It's a tragedy to see Albert Pyun slumming it with this sort of direct-to-video car crash, Hong Kong 97 is far from his finest hour, a shame given the potential of the story and setting is a winner. Robert Patrick takes the lead alongside a bunch of B-movie frequenters, including Andrew Divoff, Brion James and Tim Thomerson, they do what they can with the rather poor, cliched script but even then their natural chemistry can't lift what's fundamentally shoddy writing. Pyun's direction is alright but his action scenes rely too much on choppy slow-motion, lacklustre gunfights and poor staging, I don't think even a better quality of print would be able to save these. I can give some credit to Michael McCarty's score which does a decent job of matching the mood and atmosphere of the setting but that's about it. While there's a bit of B-movie fondness to be found with Hong Kong 97, it doesn't mark many of its contributor's finest hours and is probably best left forgotten for the most part; just stick to the AVGN video.