Hong Kong '97

MOVIE #2,341 • SCORE 5.1/10 • 02.27.24
SERIES: ALBERT & AKERMAN

While on some levels, this Pyun at his most straightforward and/or competent (read: normal), this film commits the cardinal sin of moviemaking: it’s a bore. He can’t do much with this politically-charged script (written by Randall Fontana, co-author of 1996’s Femalien, and future Pyun collab, Sorcerers). This is simply not his bag, and that lack of interest/engagement bleeds into the action as we get shoot ‘em up set-piece after shoot ‘em up set-piece that, while occasionally bathed in cool light/ambiance, is delivered in a wretched slow-mo to mask the fact that it’s not actually good. It doesn’t work. Robert Patrick does his best with the material but I just couldn’t get on the narrative’s wavelength for one second (and didn’t want to).

When tasked with a sappy, overlong bit of dialogue, you can almost feel Pyun falling asleep at the wheel as he lets the camera linger in a borning two-shot for the duration…


Still, seeing Pyun regulars Tim Thomerson and Brion James (doing a ridiculously bad British accent) in prominent roles gives this some flavor, if not some vague continuity within the filmography — I’m thinking mostly of the scene where they converse with a monk/secret agent through six stacked tube TVs (for some reason), the most Pyunian part of the movie…


Though it’s much more professional-seeming than some of the early Pyun works (like Vicious Lips, for example), it’s doubly forgettable.

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Hong Kong '97 is a 1994 American political action thriller film directed by Albert Pyun starring Robert Patrick, Brion James and Tim Thomerson. The story revolves around the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China. An assassin kills several high-ranking Chinese officials and must get out of the country quickly before he himself is murdered. The movie was released directly to video. It was released on November 9, 1994.