Tiger on Beat

I used to watch this movie with my cousin when we were kids. It's a pretty entertaining cop comedy starring Chow Yun Fat as Sergeant Francis Li Conan Lee as Michael Cho as mismatched detectives who try to solve a case involving a cocaine ring. Nina Li Chi also stars as Marydonna, the woman unfortunate enough to get caught up in the drug ring mix.

As mentioned earlier, it's a pretty entertaining old school cop comedy - plenty of good guy vs bad guy action, slapstick moments and even a touch of drama and gloom.

The plot is pretty fast-paced and the acting was spot-on.

Grade B-

This film showcases HK star Chow Yun Fat as a police sargeant, who is paired up with detective Cho, played by Conan Lee. This film gets less like a comedy as it goes along and becomes a series of fairly violent scenes. This film is better on a big screen for full effect, but its still good. The action is fast paced and the kung fu moves, especially by Conan Lee, are fun to watch. Women are extremely secondary in this film, despite the pretty Nina Li. If you like Stallone type action with some HK acrobatics thrown in, you'll like this. Chow Yun Fat, as anyone knows who has watched him in America, is always an asset to a film. Its not great, its a little too much a few times, but if you like action/police buddy films, you'll like it.

A pleasant police/buddy comedy starring Chow Yun-Fat and Conan Lee. The requisite action scenes are there as well as a few dramatic moments, but this one is still played more for laughs. It reminded me of a Hong Kong "48 Hrs", but brightened considerably by the two leads. A fun way to waste a couple of hours.

Hollywood may only watched Chow-Yuen Fat serious performances in films of John Woo, Ringo Lam and Ang Lee. But in Tiger on Beat (1988), not only feature him used gunplay and swordplay but also comedy (one of his strength when he was still acting in Hong Kong). The movie is funny with lots of kung fu fight scenes and gun-fu, although there are a couple scenes very misogyny and abuse on women.The co-lead Conan Lee's performance is one-note but his crazy stunts and chainsaw fight with Gordon Liu is a must-see to believe. 7/10.

The HK action film had by the mid-80's developed a set of characteristics that hardly varied from film to film. Absurd gun fights, swingy arm kung fu fights with lots of people yanked around on wires to simulate powerful kicks, lots of dangerous stunts frequently involving unprotected falls from balconies or second story windows and plots that shouldn't be dwelled on lest the holes be revealed. This is one of those but with some pluses that lift it above the crowd.

Chow Yun Fat plays it light and gives his character an appealing goofiness that carries the entire film. His chemistry with co-star Conan Lee works really well. Anyway the movie deals with drug smugglers and a beautiful mainland Chinese woman whose criminal brother gets her to delivery his stolen illegal drugs. Chow and Lee are cops assigned to the case.

The film is very rough at times. The action scenes are frequently bloody and harsh which is in contrast to the light comedy of Chow's scenes. There's a lot of juvenile humor about breasts and a tough scene where Chow's character smacks around the beautiful woman, tosses her through a glass table and stuffs her mouth full of powder. She, of course, falls in love with him. Director Liang, know for his distinctive kung-fu films earlier in the decade, is absolutely invisible in the film. Aside from the well paced fight scenes, his style is not apparent at all. The whole film is very much in debt to Jacky Chan's earlier police films.

Not bad if you give it a chance and don't expect too much.