The Delinquent/Comments

• Good but not excellent modern day film from Chang Cheh and Chih-Hung Kwei. Graceful old school choreographies have been thrown into trash bin and replaced with brutal street fighting (although still courtesy of Liu Chia Liang and Tang Chia) and hectic cinematography that isn’t too far from Kinji Fukasaku’s yakuza films of the same era. Frankie Chan’s score accompanies the action rather succesfully. Storyline and character fates are typically black, to the extent that near the end it starts feeling a bit too much. The main character’s motives can be understood in the beginning, but later he becomes quite dislikable. But the film’s got a few surprises in its back pocket, too. The amount of female characters is higher than one, and one of them actually gets topless. Usually in Cheh’s films you only have half naked men and close ups of their oiled muscles! I guess this was Chih-Hung Kwei’s doings here. Looking at the film, it seems like Cheh’s contribution may not have been awfully huge, although it’s hard to know who exactly directed the film and how much of it (sometimes Cheh basically ”borrowed” his name for the credits). --HungFist