High-Octane Madness
Summary
Magic Cop is the kind of crazy movie I love as it’s such harmless fun with some entertaining fight scenes and a light tone making for an easy watch.
Plot: A mainland cop (who is also a Taoist) is called to Hong Kong to help in the investigation of of a series of strange murders. Aided by two local cops, he runs afoul of an evil Sorceress.
Review: Magic Cop was recently released on Blu-ray by 88 Films, and I was nearly going to buy it, but then I saw it was streaming on Hi-Yah! for free, so I figured I’d just watch it there instead. I’d never seen it before, but I thought Ching-Ying Lam’s eyebrows were spectacular and had to finally witness it for myself.
As expected, Ching-Ying Lam plays our lead Uncle Feng and his eyebrows are indeed epic and the film is worth watching for that alone. This is the kind of bonkers Hong Kong movie I love as it’s just under 90 minutes and is packed with fight scenes, undead bad guys and a light tone.
This is a film that knows it’s ridiculous and just goes with it; it doesn’t always work, and I found the two younger cops a little annoying at times, but Feng himself is a cool protagonist who knows how to stop demons and ghosts with all kinds of awesome tricks.
Magic Cop has that rapid early 90’s style editing that really works well in creating urgency to the fights and never suffers from shakiness. We can see everything that’s going on and even now most of the special effects hold up.
I thought Michiko Nishiwaki was a highlight as the villainous sorceress and her climactic showdown with Feng was awesome.
Overall, Magic Cop is one of the craziest action movies I’ve seen for a while with entertaining fight scenes and maybe the best eyebrows committed to film. Some of the comedy doesn’t work and the younger cops are a little annoying, but this is an easy film to like and at 87 minutes it is certainly never boring.