Mercenaries from Hong Kong

Ti Lung leads a team of tracksuit-wearing commandos into the Cambodian jungle. That’s the setup. The execution is bonkers.

This 1982 Shaw Brothers actioner wants to be a tough mercenary thriller. It also wants to be a comedy. Director Wong Jing can’t decide which, so he gives us both, sometimes in the same scene. The result is a tonal whiplash that somehow becomes the film’s weird charm.

The plot is derivative: Lung plays a mercenary hired to extract his client’s father’s killer from Cambodia. He assembles his team. They bicker. They bond. They blow things up. The twists telegraph themselves. Standard stuff. Except nothing here is standard.

First, the matching outfits. Lung and his crew coordinate their wardrobes like they’re in a boy band. Red motorcycle jackets with white pants. Blue-and-white Kanga tracksuits. Different day, different ensemble, always matching. It’s absurd. It might be genius. I still can’t tell.

And then there’s the tone. One moment, we’re watching characters dish out shocking brutality, the next, we get oversized condom gags and bathroom humor. The film lurches between parody and earnestness without warning. A character jump-kicks into frame with obviously ripped pants. A child actor cries fake tears so theatrical you wonder if Wong Jing is winking at us. A climactic shootout features a guy firing one-handed from the hip, chest thrust out like he’s auditioning for a Schwarzenegger movie. Is it satire? Is it sincere? Yes.

But here’s the thing: the action delivers. The opening sequence is pure James Bond insanity—Lung dives through a high-rise window onto a truck, then bursts out on a motorcycle. A later car chase threads vehicles on two wheels through Hong Kong alleys with genuine peril. These aren’t CG safety nets. These are real stunts with real danger, and you feel it.

This sense of danger extends to the fight scenes. When Lung’s team gets ambushed by Triads, the resulting brawl—bats versus pipes—is visceral and ugly in the best way. Bones crunch. Flesh squishes. You wince.

There’s something fascinatingly meta about Shaw Brothers assembling its aging stock company in a desperate attempt to chase shifting consumer tastes. No recycled soundstages here. No period costumes and hats to hide their receding hairlines and weathered features. Real Hong Kong locations. Real streets. These icons of medieval China suddenly thrust into 1982, fighting for relevance.

This could have been Shaw Brothers’ Wild Bunch. Instead it feels like a cop out. With tighter writing and clearer intent, this could’ve been a classic.

Then again, maybe it already is. This was early Wong Jing, before his prolific run. I’m curious how it plays on rewatch, knowing the madness ahead. The pieces are here—the talent, the stunts, the audacity.

They just didn’t quite fit together for me—yet.

Still, it’s damn close to good. That might be enough.