This is an entertaining and amusing action flick, a rare bird in Australia. The dialogue ranges from corny to cheesey but there are plenty of great action scenes and a good, simple cop story well told. This film has our best car-chase scenes before Mad Max and is probably the link between The Cars That Ate Paris and the Mad Max series.
Highlights of this film include a chase and a fight on the top of Uluru (or Ayres Rock as it then was), an extended car chase with multiple wrecks and explosions, wonderful hang-gliding footage over both Hong Kong and Sydney (interestingly showing the brown haze that used to hang over the city in those old leaded-petrol days), a fight with one man on fire, an exploding building, and numerous intermettable kung-fu fights, where Inspector Fang whips multiple butts, complete with hilarious sound-effects. The director ensures that during the fights, nothing in the room is left unbroken and strewn across the floor, though it was a shame to see all those lobsters hitting the deck.
Fang is one tough Chinese cookie, bleeding from multiple injuries one moment and going horse-riding with a blond Aussie girl the next, before jumping into bed for some inter-cultural relations. The photography should be also mentioned as, despite the low budget, this film looks great and captures Sydney in the 70s with its streetscapes (including Taylor Square and Oxford St, Paddington, Sydney harbourside, Narabeen beach and Terry Hills), cars and fashion. Add to this the director's sense of visual humour and this film holds up pretty well.
Besides Jimmy Wang Yu, who was a Hong Kong kung-fu 'chop sockey' film star before Bruce Lee, the film includes Australia's James Bond, George Lazenby, as the villain, and future Mad Max actors Hugh Keays-Byrne and Roger Ward playing the Aussie 'good cop-bad cop' team plus a cameo from a skinny Bill Hunter.
