The Adventurers (1995)
Directed by: Ringo Lam
Written by: Kwong-Yam Yip, Ringo Lam, Sandy Shaw
Starring: Andy Lau, Chien-Lien Wu, David Chiang, Paul Chun, Rosamund Kwan, Victor Wong
Available from Eureka on Blu-ray 28th April 2025
In the early ’90s various film-makers planned to take their talents from Hong Kong to Hollywood, including Ringo Lam. Interestingly he’s one of several directors that wound up working on action vehicles starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, but that’s a story for another time. In this case it’s that final project, the one right before the big move to North America, that’s up for consideration. Which means that it’s an exciting prospect; is the film one last mega-blowout like John Woo’s opus Hard Boiled or are the results a mixed bag? Are their still shades of Lam’s grimy excesses from Full Contact or is it closer to the heroic bloodshed in City on Fire? Let’s take a look and see what undercover thrills are on offer.
The year is 1975 and the farmers in a Cambodian village are being terrorised by Khmer Rouge forces. Shang (David Chiang) desperately tries to get his brother’s family out but they insist on staying, despite the corpses in the fields, before he leaves for Thailand. However, things are not as they seem and Shang’s connections to the CIA result in a massacre that leaves only one boy, his nephew, alive on his return some time later. Twenty years pass and Yan (Andy Lau) works with his uncle flying jets for the Thai military. But the brutality of the murders is always on his mind and a newspaper showing that the culprit Ray (Paul Chun) became a wealthy gun runner in the intervening decades sets him on the road to vengeance.
It’s seems clear cut when the plot is described in this way but things are not quite so straightforward. From some of the original poster art and this early sequence it seems to be a Top Gun style thriller mixed with PTSD and bloody war time destruction. Soon it becomes a straight up revenge movie as Yan and one of his wingman buddies team up to buy sunglasses and weapons to take out Ray at a fancy event. Smug villains trade handshakes with military men and talk about the women they own, painting a picture of the profits of war. But the film develops an identity crisis that leads the narrative into an undercover mission involving triads, kidnappings, and even potential love triangles.
Which would make sense if Yan’s thirst for revenge was driving him deeper into an ever growing quagmire of crime and morally questionable decisions. Maybe it would be saying something about him being blinded by his tragic past in ways that strain his friendship with his father figure Shang. Maybe his parasitic relationship with both Ray’s mistress Mona (Rosamund Kwan) and his daughter Crystal (Chien-Lien Wu) would say something about his personality, and the different paths in life that are slowly being closed off to him. Instead he just kind of wanders through the film as it takes him from Thailand to California. There are plenty of stock characters here but there’s not a great deal of chemistry or development.
Which of course isn’t that essential in a gruesome thrill-ride that has four different shoot-outs and various exploding vehicles. It’s a movie where Yan and Mona become trapped in a basement as the former bleeds out, but then they somehow manage to have sex as lurid red filters make the screen glow. She’s here to offer a kind of femme-fatale who wants to see Ray dead, while Crystal is kind of an innocent party that hates her father for other reasons. Various contrivances mean that Yan (under the agency alias ‘Mandy’) meets all the right people and gets all the right breaks on his journey into the underworld. But while there are some challenges (and some sudden shocks) nothing is ever that tense or dramatic.
In fact some of it is overtly comic which goes against the dour and often dry tone of the story as a whole. Since Shang and Mona are often absent entirely Crystal fills the role of both victim and sidekick with mixed results. She certainly has some charm in the lighter scenes and Andy Lau always has screen presence. But when it shifts gears into wacky ‘caught in the shower during a gun fight’ shenanigans it seems they’ve both been transported to another film entirely. It’s a Hong Kong production so maybe the comedy should have been wilder, the violence should have been bloodier, and the soap opera more melodramatic. A truly over the top affair might have made up for some of the slow and generic inclusions.
Things eventually get dialled up during the final return to Cambodia but overall it’s pretty uneven. Fans of these actors and this style of gritty action will be satisfied, despite it being pretty long and sometimes unfocused. It’s just a shame that it’s never as energetic or outlandish as it could have been considering Ringo Lam’s more well known features. It’s also a shame Lam and Lau only made this one movie together. This is still often a great looking movie, even if some sequences are a little fuzzy, but most of the time the restoration is slick and colourful. You might wonder if yet another covert agent drama is for you but it’s worth a look. Just don’t ask which characters are the eponymous Adventurers because that’s the biggest mystery of all.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Limited Edition [2000 copies]
- Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Time Tomorrow [2000 copies]
- 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a brand new 2K restoration
- Restored Cantonese audio tracks (stereo and DTS-HD MA 5.1 options)
- Optional unrestored Cantonese stereo track
- Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release
- New audio commentary by film critic David West
- Two Adventurers – new interview with Gary Bettinson, editor of Asian Cinema journal
- Previously unseen archival interview with writer and producer Sandy Shaw
- Theatrical trailer
- A limited edition collector’s booklet featuring a new essay by Hong Kong cinema scholar Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park [2000 copies]
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