KnotMissPriceless
Why so much hype?
Incannerax
What a waste of my time!!!
ClassyWas
Excellent, smart action film.
Stoutor
It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.
dworldeater
I bought this excellent movie 10 years ago and I enjoy it immensely . I was expecting Beast Cops to be a bullet ballet similar to the films of John Woo. It clearly is not, this is an excellent cop/triad action drama with the HK sense of humor . This stars Anthony Wong (one of the best actors to work in HK ) and Michael Wong (one of the worst actors to work in HK ) . Both of these actors are part caucasian , but they are not related. Anthony Wong plays a streetwise cop and Michael Wong plays his uptight boss assigned to his unit . Michael 's crappy acting works great for his character . Plus the Wongs together have good chemistry . Sam Lee is great here also, as is Roy Cheung .(who is awesome in everything he is in) This movie is very dark with a lot of funny stuff, action and drama . The characters are off the wall and the cop and triad worlds exist together . This could have been an abortion , but in its own way it really works. I was expecting a standard HK action flick, I got a lot more.
rael
This movie is a pretentious excuse to exploit the two lead actors and their fans. The script makes little sense, which is a bad filmmakers device to make you watch till the end so that you figure out eventually what's going on while this is definitely not the kind of a film that needs it. Acting is really uninspired from everybody, mainly because most of the time there's little to play with. Action is non-existent, people spend more time loitering, clubbing, eating out and in bed, than racing, shooting, fighting and chopping each other. When the action comes it is shot in a "can't see a thing it shakes so much"-vision and presented very badly to you, often employing speed-ups and various stylish editing techniques...badly! The trailer probably looked worthy of all the awards this movie got. Does it mean that there were no better films that year?
sinistre1111
Anyone who didn't like this film must've come to the table with expectations. It does not cascade from one tightly-choreographed action scene to the next like the John Woo classics, which as good as they are to watch, are still played more for bullets and explosions than for story or characters. This is a totally different kind of film, with casual, believable dialogue, some great acting, and its "cowboys" and "indians" not so clearly defined. Not that it isn't high on stylish shot-framing, editing and dynamite costume design; this is, after all, still a Hong Kong production. But I saw flashes of Cassavettes and Pedro Almodovar-less homage to Ringo Lam or Ronny Yu. Anthony Wong's character, "Brother Tung" still gets to go crazy at the end and spill a lot of blood, in a gritty hand-to-hand fight scene. What more could one ask? I've seen more than my share of slow-motion shootouts. This film is something more: a drama, at times a comedy, with cops and triads as its milieu, rather than its reason for being. An easy five stars.
contronatura
A gritty and beautifully shot Hong Kong action film, one that announces all is not lost in the post-Woo/Hark/Lam Hong Kong action genre. Anthony Wong gives an astonishing performance as a cop who walks the line between police officer and triad. Michael Wong is for once not completely bland, and even has a couple of wonderful comic moments. And the violence in this film is remarkably startling, which is not something I find too much in Hong Kong cinema. In most films, even in masterpieces like The Killer or City on Fire, the violence is relatively unsurprising. Here, perhaps because it's mostly committed with crude machetes, the violence is brutal and tough. And the way it's cut and edited makes it all the more effective. For fans of Hong Kong cinema, it's not to be missed. And even for people who aren't usual fans of that genre, this is an interesting film to check out. From me, this is easily a 9/10.