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Rating:

7.5

AKA: Shanghai Express

Year of release: 1986

Genre: action/comedy

Director: Sammo Hung

Action director: Sammo Hung

Producer: Leonard Ho

Writers: Barry Wong, Alfred Cheung, Wong Wang Kai

Cinematography: Arthur Wong

Editor: Peter Cheung

Music: Anders Nelsson

Stars: Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Kenny Bee, Eric Tsang, Olivia Cheng, Rosamund Kwan, Emily Chu, Yasuaki Kurata, Hwang Jang-Lee, Yukari Oshima, Richard Norton, Cynthia Rothrock, Shek Kin, Jimmy Wang Yu

Rated IIA for mild violence

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Millionaire's Express

This Lunar New Year release is a bit of combination of a "Eastern Western" and the big all-star, multi-plotted event movies such as Cannonball Run and My Lucky Stars. The film revolves around the inaugural running of a new high-class train called the Shanghai Express, but events occurring around the train and the towns it passes through brings in new characters into the mix. The main one involves Sammo Hung as a hustler who tries to save his hometown by intentionally wrecking the train so that the rich patrons will spend their money in the town.

There are several other sub-plots as well, such as one with Richard Ng trying to get away from his wife so he can carry on his affair, Shek Kin reprising his role as the Wong family's nemesis (fighting Wong Kei-Yin, played by Jimmy Wang Yu, and his son Wong Fei-Hung), Yukari Oshima and several other Japanese villains attempting to steal secret documents out of China, and a group of bandits (including Richard Norton and Cynthia Rothrock) who want to rob the train. And that's this movie's main problem -- with so many characters and plots in the mix, almost none of them get resolved in any way, much less successfully. Still, the movie runs at a fast enough pace and throws so much at you in the way of comedy and action (in particular, some of Yuen Biao's stunt work is brilliant) that you'll won't really notice the script's weaknesses too much.

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