Eye Candy #342 - "Full Contact"

Full Contact:  When it comes to Chow Yun Fat, mine is love that dares not speak its name.  I can’t help it.  Anyone out there who has seen “Hard Boiled” and “The Killer” knows why.  So in pursuit of my unrequited man crush, I have watched more Chow Yun Fat movies than the average person, from the good to the bad.  “Full Contact” falls right in the middle of the pack. Jeff (Fat) joins a robbery to help a friend pay off his debts, but double crosses abound.  Wounded in the melee, Jeff disappears to heal himself so he can get himself a heaping helping of that dish which is best served cold. Lots of what you’d expect from any Asian shoot-em-up from the time period, with exotic gunfights and characters painted in the broadest swaths.  And while the plot is fairly standard, it’s the time capsule-like quality I particularly enjoy - made in 1992, apparently early 90’s Hong Kong resembled the mid-to-late 1980’s United States, down to the hard rock score, incessant repetitive electronic dance music, and bad hair.  Directed by Ringo Lam, this doesn’t have the staying power or quality of “Hard Boiled” (that came out the same year) and comes at the end of Fat‘s hey-day (which was 1986-1992, with none of his subsequent films reaching quite the same level as those from that period), but it’s not terrible like say, “Bulletproof Monk”.  Woodchuck sez, “Chow fans will enjoy it.”