From Beijing with Love

FROM BEIJING WITH LOVE is a fun and low budget scattershot spoof of the James Bond films, Hong Kong style. It's an outing for star, writer, and director Stephen Chow, who brings his quirky eccentricity to all three roles: this is the type of film that can have cheesy romance in one scene, violent death and murder in the next, and mix it up in a plot absolutely chock full of humour from film references to slapstick to some quite surreal moments.

Chow plays an ordinary butcher from the mainland who has a second life as a secret agent. When a dinosaur skull is stolen (this film came out after JURASSIC PARK) he is tasked with tracking it down, beginning a fraught relationship with female aide Anita Yuen (who is very good). The twosome face internal conflict and lots of low rent action scenes, most of which are rather funny. There's a Jaws clone and Pauline Chan as a hot femme fatale. The low budget is very apparent in the staging and occasionally in the special effects, but overall the film works very well indeed and I had something of a ball with it. Sure, it's not as polished as the bigger budgeted likes of SHAOLIN SOCCER and KUNG FU HUSTLE, but it always entertains.

One of Stephen Chow's finest works, so many iconic dialogues and characters. Yes, it is a little derogatory, but it reflects the views of many Hong Kong people at the time, but it is done mostly as comic relief. At the heart of it, I don't think Stephen was being racist, but more as a poke at the system. The movie is only a little less than 1.5 hours long, it's amazing how such a simple film can get so much done in such a short period of time with enough plot and character development to make it a classic. Watching the movie so many years later, I get to see a lot of things I couldn't understand as a kid, and appreciate this film even more. It serves as a token of the past, and in a way reflects how society and perception have changed over the years.

Standard comedy about a wannabe spy who gets double crossed by his boss, except hes got a chopper (butcher knife) and knows how to use it!

The plot is pretty thin, but this is still a funny movie, as are most of Chow's movies. Be sure to add this to any Stephen Chow marathons you might be hosting, otherwise, you can miss this one for another of his better films.

In the grand tradition of Get Smart, we have here a wonderfully wacky send-up of 007 action films. For the first roughly 2/3 of the movie, I was literally rolling out of my seat laughing with this film's ontarget, brilliant skewerings of spy film cliches. As much as I hate to say it, though, at the 2/3 point the film begins to lose its focus. It starts to concentrate too heavily on creating the Bond mood, and consequently ends up being far too serious. Up until that point, though, it was really something special. The only other qualm I have is that it is far, far too violent. You have fingers getting sliced off, a man getting glass shoved into his face, necks being slashed, etc. Heck, just as the movie is building its comedic potential, a minor character gets brutally stabbed in the head. Had this been done in an over-the-top manner, it could have been very funny, like the Black Knight scene in Holy Grail. But they instead opted for a hyper-realistic look, that, when introduced into a heavily comedic environment, presents an uncomfortable clash of styles and makes the often startling violence uniquely disturbing and grotesque. Still, if you can overlook its flaws, this is definitely a movie worth seeing.

I think Stephen Chow is the most genius director and actor in Hong KONG,China. The way he demonstrate something is first class in Hong Kong. After seen all 9 comments i want to say something about the "gore" and something else that make some people feel uncmofortable.Actually this film has criticism to Hongkong films through the contrast of two kinds of performance,make-up,consum and other things. You can find the different way to perform violence.The shot of the robbery in the mall has nearly no blood but only with the way criminals eat,silence and few words the horror can be felt.And the next scene is the usually way diretors used in Hongkong,two people was stabbed with knives in their body and one people was sliced off his fingers.But this scene cant be compared to the previous one with respect to convulse in the audience. There is another example.The bullet removal scene nearly don't have any detail about the wound.They haven't shot the wound since they begin to work but the pain can be still strongly felt. That is what i talk about, Stephen Chow want to say performance is the best way to impress audience.The excessive detailed scene without decent performance backfired. Watch carefully,the difference of two rhythms of conversation, ways they make up, switches of scenes can be found in the movie.