My buddy Tom sent me this old school HK flick under the "A Man From Holland" title and it reminded me just how insane those things could get sometimes. Hit-man Wai Fei (Phillip Ko) arrives in Hong Kong from Holland and is given the task of eliminating three targets. He also hooks up with his brother, Wai Keung (Ray Lui), who just happens to be an Inspector who is investigating the two warring gangs (one led by Chai Wai Man starring as a guy named Chan Sai Man) that his brother is dealing with. Sounds pretty straight forward, right? Well, not so fast. This flick is amazingly (and needlessly) complex to the point I got a headache trying to recall what was going on. It doesn't help that the English subtitles will offer you lines like, "Boss Chan, this bottle of wine is a gift from Mr. Chan." Even more bizarre are these random scenes that almost seems like they were filmed by a different group, except they feature the actors involved in the production. The "highlight" is a scene where American John Ladalski, one of the three targets, spends his free time on the beach taking pictures of a topless girl. He then proceeds to tie her down, paint a bucktoothed Mickey Mouse on her stomach and then let a bunch of baby turtles crawl all over her nude body (different strokes for different folks) before Ko shows up to kill him. Scenes like this totally make up for the boring police procedural parts. It apparently got a dubbing and re-edit by Joseph Lai's IFD company as MAGNUM THUNDERBOLT.
