Burning Ambition (1989)

Burning Ambition (1989) is my second Frankie Chan directed Hong Kong flick after Outlaw Brothers (1990). It opens with ruthless efficiency, as a crime boss tells his family and associates that he is handing the reins of his empire over to his younger son Hwa (Simon Yam, Naked Killer). We quickly see why, as during this important family/business dinner, older son Wai (Michael Kiu Wai Miu, Fatal Termination) is upstairs playing drinking games and flirting with girls. As they all leave the restaurant, motorcyclists roll up and open fire. Dad’s right hand man Old Uncle Hsiong (Ko Chun-Hsiung) tackles him, but daddy ends up dead as dirt. They all leave the scene, and when Hsiong and Wai are alone in the car, Hsiong reveals he intentionally broke the boss’s neck when he tackled him. He wants Wai to be the next boss, not Hwa. He says Hwa is weak, but really he seems to think Wai would be easier to shape and control (as shown later by a not so subtle shot of Hsiong in a chair petting his huge dog while Wai is kneeling at his other side). Hsiong gives Wai a gun and tells Wai to either shoot Hsiong and get revenge for his father, or join Hsiong and become the new boss. A trembling Wai can’t pull the trigger and agrees. All that before (and during) the short but stylish opening credits sequence!

Things don’t go as planned for Hsiong and Wai. Accusations fly between the brothers and the other crime bosses, and in the end the widowed mother of Hwa and Wai takes control. This kicks off an endless series of attempting and evading assassinations and backstabbing. I did get a little confused as the movie introduced more characters and relationships, but that was due to sometimes poor subtitles and seemingly every older man being an “Uncle” whether as a crime boss title or an actual blood relation. After a few scenes I felt like I caught up, though.

The gang war kicks into full gear when Hsiong’s daughter played by Kara Wai (Angel Terminators) is followed to a family dinner and they are all ambushed. That scene also introduces Hsiong’s son and other daughter, played by Yukari Motherfuckin’ Oshima (Angel Terminators 2)! The son is shot almost immediately as the rest of the family have to flee the Japanese restaurant without their shoes into the parking garage. When an American action movie goes to a generic parking garage or warehouse, I often assume some forgettable low-grade action is about to happen. When a Hong Kong movie goes to those locations, I anticipate awesomeness. 

SPOILERS AS I DESCRIBE THE MOST AWESOME SCENE IN THE MOVIE EVEN THOUGH IT IS ONLY 30 MINUTES IN

There is some chasing and fighting and sneaking (with some neat shots I would totally steal if I made movies). Then Kara Wai gets broken windshield glass stuck in her stockinged feet, and shit goes crazy! Kara keeps fighting, trying to avoid making painful kicks with her fucked up feet as she rolls around on car hoods and walks upside down on her hands! Meanwhile, Yukari is smacking seven shades of shit out of bitches with a baseball bat!

this shit rocks

Then their attackers start pulling windshields out of cars and smashing them all over the ground! Things get even worse when Kara gets shot and keeps going, until she falls flat on the glass! Then she tells her dad and sister to WALK OVER HER to escape! And they do! I am running out of exclamation points!

END SPOILER FOR THE MOST AWESOME SCENE IN THE MOVIE

After that both sides call family members back to Hong Kong with reinforcements. At one point, Yukari sees a man in the street and drives straight at him. He jumps on top of the speeding car, she stops, and then they fight on top of the tiny car! It turns out it is her returning brother Chi-Shau (played by the director Frankie Chan), and this is just the most intense version of siblings greeting each other with a punch in the arm that I have ever seen. Chi-Shau brings his biker gang from Holland, and an Uncle on the other side brings in assassins from America. They all end up fighting each other in an amusement park full of people. That’s where Chi-Shau has a great showdown with an assassin played by the hardest working honky in Hong Kong, Jeffrey Falcon (who I last saw getting the crap kicked out of him in The Inspector Wears Skirts). Things continue to go poorly for everyone as each side loses or sacrifices family and friends until the inevitable dark ending. 

Jeffrey Falcon vs. Frankie Chan

This had some great scenes, but I didn’t like it quite as much as Chan’s Outlaw Brothers. That one had a lighter tone, a little more action, and a lot more Yukari (she doesn’t have much screen time here beyond the two scenes I described). Burning Ambition also threw me for a bit of a loop because the last major action sequence comes an hour into the 100 minute movie. The last 30 minutes are all drama and short, messy fights between the remaining characters. This is also different from a lot of Hong Kong action I have seen in that no one really felt like the main character or featured fighter. Due to the high mortality rate characters keep coming and going from the plot, and each of the two big set pieces involve different characters.  By the time the reinforcements are called in, there is a small army of martial artists and stunt people and it becomes the Hong Kong industry equivalent of a bench-clearing brawl. If this got a cleaned up blu-ray release with some improved subtitles, I would definitely be interested. The character stuff would probably hit a little harder, and knowing the structure of the movie now I wouldn’t be disappointed by the lack of action climax. There are plenty of Hong Kong movies that only deliver ONE big action scene at the climax after more than an hour of waiting to get to the fireworks factory. This one at least has two great action scenes, they just come at the 30 and 60 minute marks.

If nothing else, Kara Wai telling John McClane to hold her beer while Yukari Oshima hits a henchmen home run derby will live on in my heart forever.