Touch and Go (1991)

Touch and Go (1991)
aka: Point of No Return
Chinese Title: 一觸即發
Translation: One Touch Immediately

 

Starring: Sammo Hung, Teresa Mo, Vincent Wan Yeung-Ming, Tommy Wong Kwong-Leung, Irene Wan Pik-Ha, Ann Mui Oi-Fong, Lam Chung, Billy Chow Bei-Lei
Director: Ringo Lam
Action Director: Yuen Tak

Sammo Hung’s films from the late 80s and 90s are often uneven efforts, struggling to juggle comedy, romance, and superior kung fu action, with frequent forays into the darker corners of humanity. Even his masterpieces, like The Pedicab Driver, suffer from this sort of identity crisis, although the quality of the action and acting often make it easier to forgive these jarring gear switches. A similar problem dogs this 1991 action drama, brought to us by director Ringo Lam. Lam is best known for his gritty, brutal crime films, like Full Contact and City on Fire. And much like Jackie Chan and Kirk Wong in Crime Story, we have what might be a vicious action thriller about a man who’s torn between doing the right thing and saving his own hide, but the film’s tendency to dip into typical Sammo Hung humor keeps it from being a better movie.

Sammo plays Fat Goose, a humble noodle maker whose sassy mother lives in an elderly home. She’s eager for him to get married and have children, and Fat Goose pays his slutty neighbor to act like his girlfriend to keep his mother calm. One evening, Fat Goose witnesses a murder: a trio of thugs led by “The King of Hell” stab a cop to death after he takes incriminating photos of important people frequenting a brothel—a brothel staffed by illegal Mainland immigrants. Fat Goose ends up fighting off the thugs and escapes.

The lead cop on the case—whose partner was the victim—finds Fat Goose and convinces him to come on the case as an eyewitness. Initially reluctant, Fat Goose accepts the responsibility once the King of Hell tries to kill him and the cop in traffic. This makes life especially complicated for Fat Goose when he’s placed in the same room as the suspect—where the heck are the one-way mirrors?—and then the suspect is released on bail by his solicitor, the weasly Mr. Kam. Watching this, Righting Wrongs, and Flash Point, I can safely say that I’d never be a witness in Hong Kong. Their witness protection doesn’t work for s***.

That evening Fat Goose’s home is bombarded by Molotov cocktails, forcing him to stay with the cop and his reporter sister, Angel (Teresa Mo), until the trial. At this point, Fat Goose is adamant about not testifying, although the villains don’t care by this point. The situation quickly escalates as the killers target the cop’s other partner, and then his sister as well. Fat Goose will quickly need to decide whether or not he’ll help fight for justice or remain on the sidelines, hoping that the King of Hell will let bygones be bygones.

Like Twin Dragons, this is a case of the director(s)—in both cases, Ringo Lam was involved-- and the lead actor having such conflicting persona that the final result isn’t a good showcase for either. This is frequently an intense film with sleazy undertones—the villains like to get public officials laid with sex-traffick victims and document those encounters with hidden cameras for blackmail purposes. People are tortured, beaten with baseball bats, stabbed, shot, etc. A woman has her face mutilated by one of the main villains and is almost raped at another point. The King of Hell is a menacing villain, played by an actor who’s even uglier than Shing Fui-On was! Surely these are the trappings of a classic—or at least solid—action thriller.

But then you have some out-of-place comic elements that don’t sit well with the more serious stuff. There’s an extended comic interlude where Fat Goose takes Angel to meet his mother, asking her to play the role of his girlfriend. During the visit, the mother and another lady subject Angel to all sorts of tests to determine if her body is ideal for having children! And during the climax, Sammo is given a traditional broadsword as a weapon, but ends up leaving it behind in the car. When the car eventually explodes, the weapon flies through the air and lands straight in his hands. Goofy stuff like that would be fine in a Lucky Stars film, but stands at odds with the rest of this movie.

On the subject of swords and explosions, the question regarding the quality of the action is an important one, since quality action can salvage an otherwise messy film. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of that in this. Former Seven Fortune Yuen Tak handles the fight scenes, and despite the quality work he did at the same time with Saviour of the Soul and Shanghai Shanghai, he seems to be at a loss as to how to balance realism and quality choreography.

Sammo Hung gets three fights, although they’re all fairly brief.  During the first major fight, Sammo and the detective wreck the former’s apartment when he mistakens the flatfloot for an assassin. There’s some painful stuntwork here, but the moves themselves feel sloppy, as if they were shooting for a more realistic match. Much later, Sammo fights off a bunch of henchman at the villains’ lair, including Billy Chow. For a minute or two, the quality of the action approaches the level of his other late 80s/early 90s movies, and Chow makes a welcome addition to the crew, even if he’s just a nameless stuntman here. At the end, Sammo fends off a couple of men armed with choppers, while one of his arms is incapacitated in a sling. It’s a decent fight, and Sammo finishes off one guy with a nice flying backfist. The rest of the action consists of explosions, car chases, and a fight scene involving the detective. This latter sequence is interesting, as it’s set at the exact same restaurant as Jackie Chan’s introductory scene in Dragons Forever. I recognized that place immediately.

Touch and Go is a mediocre entry in both Ringo Lam’s and Sammo’s respective filmographies. The ingredients are there, but nobody knew what exactly to do with them. If the violence had been toned down a little and the fight scenes extended more, this might sit comfortably with the likes Pantyhose Hero and Skinny Tiger, Fatty Dragon. If the comedy scenes had been excised and replaced with more scenes developing the leader of the gang—the King of Hell’s boss—and their hooker racket, and then upping the brutality of their comeuppance a couple of notches, than it would be more in line with Ringo’s other films and make for an interesting contrast with Sammo’s previous offerings. As it stands, it’s an oddity mainly for die-hard fans of the star or the director.