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Mabangis na Lungsod
English Translation: Ferocious City
Alternate Titles: No hoi wai lung; Tough Beauty and the Sloppy Slop
Year of Release: 1995
Directors: Alan Chui Chung-San & Yuen Bun (with action direction by Alan Chui Chung-San & Lee Chi-Kit)
Screenwriter: Fok King-yiu
Producers: Libran Films, Libran Motion Pictures, New Treasurer Films Co.
Cast: Yuen Biao, Cynthia Khan, Monsour del Rosario, Lee Waise, Billy Chow, Yuen Wah, Alan Chui Chung-San, Jerry Bailey, Wai Lam, Peter Chan, Wai Shum, Tam Suk-mui, Wong Ngok-wah, Lam Ngok-wah, Alex Man, Lily Leung
[Note: characters’ names apparently vary depending on language version.] Major Sandos and his partner bust a transaction about to be consummated by some drug dealers in a double-deck bus and later arrest the wife of drug dealer Hwa Quo, who in turn arranges the killing of Sandos’s partner during his mother’s birthday celebration. Meanwhile in Hong Kong, police officer Yiang discovers that Hwa Quo’s operation makes use of counterfeit bills for their overseas drug transactions. She is assigned to befriend Hwa Quo’s wife in jail in Manila, with another operative, Li Chin Tang, masquerading as her husband. The pair succeed in freeing the wife and befriending Hwa Quo, who’s impressed by their fighting skills and assigns increasingly sensitive missions, culminating with the killing of Sandos. Their cover’s almost blown when Li mourns his best friend’s demise, but Hwa Quo’s higher-up wishes to make their acquaintance. Just when Hwa Quo’s suspicions endanger them, Sandos turns up and informs them that he deliberately set up his mock execution in order to end Hwa Quo’s pursuit.
Mabangis na Lungsod may be regarded as one of the realizations of the inter-Asian exchanges that Pinas initiated when it was still a fairly influential American client state. A list of blunders and misjudgments will make itself available for anyone who wishes to insist on perfect representation, but then one should also be obliged to point out any compensatory achievements when these become evident. The ML project was completed during the buildup toward the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, when HK cinema was nearing the end of several decades of productivity; for this reason, the film was considered the equivalent of a B-movie, a ripoff of a franchise sequel, deficient in star power and stunts and explosives. Moreover, the necessarily cartoonish approach to plot and character results in a host of sexist and lesbophobic devices that, coupled with the HK industry’s valorization of police work, create products whose primary value lies almost exclusively in their provision of visual and kinetic pleasure. But the overseas locale also yields a few critical touches: police and government officials readily collaborate with foreign elements when they’re capable of financial enticement, and the opening hostage situation involving a public bus, where the use of firepower only resulted in multiple tragedies, should have served as a warning to local officials when a similar crisis emerged in real life in 2010. Viewed several decades later, the relatively modest dimensions of ML remain superior to the run of most local action films, where its creatives’ aesthetic discipline furnishes split-second edits that serve as conduits for fluid delineations, tongue always firmly lodged in cheek. One could reasonably speculate how action aficionado Toto Natividad, the country’s last best celluloid-era filmmaker, could have taken notes in order to further upgrade his skills set.
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