Running Time: 92 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR, probably R
Format: Widescreen
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0
Languages: English, Cantonese, Mandarin
Subtitles: English
Region: 1
MSRP: $19.99

Own It!
Man Wanted (1994)

Where most HK action films leave off, Man Wanted starts.

Simon Yam plays Lok, an undercover cop who has infiltrated the gang of a violent mainland gangster named Feng (Yu Rong Guang). Lok turns Feng in (but only after Feng has killed about 50 cops), but Feng insists on going down in a hail of bullets... inside a burning car... plunging into the bay.

Later, Lok finds out that his fellow cops don’t trust him anymore ("If he could turn on a crook, he could turn on us" is their logic, if you can believe that) and he starts cheating on his girlfriend with Feng's former moll. But Feng isn't really dead (surprised?) and he starts a campaign of manipulation and violence with Lok as the target.

Despite attempting to follow the average "heroic bloodshed" situation beyond the climactic betrayal, Man Wanted doesn't do much to distinguish itself. The action scenes are competent, the actors do their usual things, but nothing really stands out, other than the fact that Lok is really dumb. Director Benny Chan would go on to make such high profile as Gen-X Cops and Jackie Chan's Who Am I.

The transfer on this film is dark, so dark that it can be distracting. The sound is fine as far as it goes. The subtitles, though small, are set so high on the image that they often obscure the characters' mouths in close-ups.

This DVD from Tai Seng offers filmographies for Simon Yam, Benny Chan, Christy Chung, Yu Rong Guang. The text they use is very small, so you'd better have a large screen TV if you want to read them. And while I'm complaining about readability, it would have been nice if the menu choices hadn't been written in green on a very busy background.

This disc also features Tai Seng's standard trailers for The Bride with White Hair, The Bride with White Hair 2, Untold Story, Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, the Shaolin Classic series, and Man Wanted.

Scott Hamilton, 9/6/00