Plot Outline: After the gangster “Dinosaur” dies, Inspector
Chan the black sheep of the police department, somehow gets permission to follow around Dinosaur’s
brother Daniel. To do this he has to find a group of officers who can successfully go undercover and
infiltrate the organized crime syndicate. After searching he finds Jack, Match, Alien and the lone
female computer wizard Y2K. Together the five find their way into the cutthroat world of
organized crime and must stop the evil gangster Akatora who has stolen a new dangerous form of
explosive.
| The Review |
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Maybe I’m just too old fashioned, but I like to decide for myself what is ‘cool’ instead of having it marketed to me. Chow Yun-Fat was always cool I thought because he seemed to make his own mark on what is or isn’t cool. The man comes off cool looking without much effort, which is the opposite of what Nicholas Tse does for me. Whenever he’s in some ridiculous action scene jumping over a stack of boxes, I can’t help but imagine his hair dresser or make-up artist is more than three feet away preparing to powder his nose. It’s probably just me and I don’t mean to offend any of his fans, but I just don’t buy Tse as a tough guy. I suppose my biggest beef with Gen-X Cops is how commercial it is. There’s no risqué content in Gen-X Cops, there’s no amazing action sequences, there’s no inventive storyline and there’s almost no differentiating it between one of the many crappy action films Hollywood puts out in any given year, but at it’s heart it’s still got something going for it. What that one thing is I can’t quite explain. Maybe it’s the energy of the lead actors, maybe it’s the peering in on the changing of culture or maybe it’s just how hot Jaymee Ong is, I’m not sure. I just know that, for me, I find it hard to hate the film. Regardless of how cool it tries to force you to believe it is.
I really should talk about the good points the film has to offer, but when I try to think of them, the really bad aspects of the film come up. I don’t know if it’s because I watched it with the horrendous English dubbing or not, but the film is just CHEESY. Not cheesy in a good way like Troma, or cheesy in a fun way like the fashion style and music of some of John Woo’s earlier works, I’m talking unbearable cheese. I found myself groaning quite a bit during the film, it’s just so melodramatic and cliché all around. One scene in particular that that really gets to me is a scene with Stephen Fung and Jaymee Ong later on in the film. The two are expressing there unrequited love for one another, only to be broken up by Sam Lee, where Fung then leaves the girl he’s supposed to love so dear and head off into adventure land once again. I’m not going to go into detail as to why it’s so cheesy, because it should be obvious, but it’s kind of hard to spoil anything in the film when even a blind man can see what is going to be said next. The whole film is just predictable from the get go, and it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if there was something in the film I couldn’t get from going to my local multiplex. That’s what made stuff like Police Story so amazing, sure the plot was fairly predictable, but when you threw Jackie and his stunts in the mix you got a bonafide classic. Gen-X Cops doesn’t have anything like that to keep it feeling fresh, but the least you can say about it is it’s entertaining. Even if it’s entertaining in a dumb kind of way.
| The Conclusion |
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