Christy Jones is the leader of a street gang. A maniac nicknamed Scat, who runs the city, kills Christy’s sister. Together with policeman Nick DeMarco, the unruly Christy begins a hunt for the criminal in order to bring justice in a fatal battle.
4k movies reviews
Godfrey Ho. The Great and Terrible. However, if the awfulness is obvious from the first frames of any of his creations, the true greatness of the maestro is revealed only to those few who are not sparing their belly – now and then threatening to burst with laughter – diving into the depths of Asian cinematography. Ho, a virtuoso filmmaker, mastered the art of making a movie for five hundred Hong Kong dollars so that it would look like two. He was able to plan several films from the previous day’s footage interspersed with excerpts from forgotten films of the past, which he absorbed with his mother’s tea. Having elevated his mediocrity to the rank of art, Godfrey concocted many future gems of “YouTube” under the common call-signs “ninja-plotting”: “Ninja Squad”, “Vampire Robo”, “Terminator Ninja”… Undiluted etymologically correct thrash, the best means for Uweball and Bondarchuk Jr. to fight the demons of self-criticism.
But all good things, no matter how bad, come to an end sometime. With the advent of the ’90s came the end of Godfrey Ho’s most fruitful and sincere ninja-period of activity. And so, having changed a thousand creative pseudonyms, ruined kilometers of film celluloid, overcome mountains of criticism and oceans of ridicule, the indefatigable Asian finally found himself before the gaze of Western producers. Of course, such a colorful and even cult figure – albeit in very narrow circles – could not remain unclaimed in the stamping of more expensive export products for long. However, as one ancient, but no less wise man accurately put it, qualis rex, talis grex. Godfrey only had access to the stars of the acting world, which his underdirector’s stature and Hong Kong citizenship allowed him to reach. One of these luminaries was the militant Cynthia Rothrock, a VHS legend who never made it beyond the magnetic video underground.
The union of these two monsters of a bygone era gave birth to Unruly in 1993. An uncomplicated – suddenly! – story about a simple American waitress who moonlights as a beater of thugs for money, and a simple American maniac who kills women not so much because of his oedipal complex mixed with misogyny, but because of the blossoming stupidity of the script. Of course, he shouldn’t have touched the waitress’s sister – then the heroine Cynthia wouldn’t have had to team up with a simple but stern American policeman, who can shout “wheeeeeeee!!!” no worse than the maniac himself… Twenty minutes of comic rather than combative confrontations and an hour or more of delirious chatter with random shouts, tense faces and doublest pathos – these are the sums of this “masterpiece”. And at the end, of course, the one who doesn’t stumble twice in a row with his eye on the iron hook wins.
Of course, in all seriousness, Unruly is quite a bit of progress for Godfrey Ho compared to any of his Asian stage ninja miscarriages. The film is cinematic instead of wrap-around, the soundtrack doesn’t make you cry blood, and the main actors look more like people than just talking dressers in robes – in general, technically, the film almost reaches a tolerable level. However, first of all, it is boring and silly to talk seriously about such gibberish, and secondly… Secondly, the magic has disappeared from the screen. Yes, many of those who are secretly nostalgic at night for the Turbot inserts will be happy to see the childhood heroine, Mrs. Rothrock. But even this maiden with the title of world kiya champion and the face of a streetcar conductor can’t dispel the despondency that reigns for most of the hour and a half. Ironically, Godfrey’s “creativity” was contrary to improvement.
In his early epics, everything was so deliberate and inane that it was willy-nilly admirable. The director’s inventive impudence made one look forward to what he would have the viewer do in the next episode. And quite often he would bring up something that nowadays thousands of people on the Internet, who have seen a lot in their lifetime, raise their hands in giggling amazement. That was Ho’s magic: the ability to make a film “so bad it’s great.” In “The Unruly,” however, things got a little better – and that hauntingly outlandishness disappeared. All that’s left is a primitive story with boring dialogue and a couple of medium-lousy fights. Familiarity with such concepts as “producer” and “copyright” was the beginning of the end for the Hong Kong anti-genius. After making a few more duds for the West, he disappeared from the horizons of the cinema. Now Godfrey Ho talks about the intricacies of his profession at the Hong Kong Film Academy. How? Why? We don’t know. Maybe because he’s the only director in the world to make watermelons burn.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (79.9 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Subtitles
English SDH.
