Bullets Over Summer

One of the livelier teams working to reactivate the HK film industry, director Yip and producer Ma aim quite high in this comedy-thriller about a protracted stake-out. Two ill-matched cops take over a dotty old lady's apartment to watch the one opposite, believed to be a base for a gang of murderous robbers. The volatile elder cop Mike (Ng), supposedly terminally ill, grows fascinated by the pregnant, unmarried girl at the local dry cleaner's; his young partner Brian (Koo) is lazy, unfocused and more interested in dating a new girlfriend than in the job in hand. The cops-in-love motif and the off-the-wall humour doubtless owe something to Chungking Express, but the film is at heart glad to be generic. This stance pays off in the climactic confrontation, which comes out of the blue and manages to be funny, suspenseful and intense.