Legendary Couple (1995)

Legendary Couple is a 1995 Hong Kong movie directed by Peter Ngor. Ngor is a prolific cinematographer, with 45 credits as recent as 2017 (for the Chinese action epic Wolf Warrior 2, which had some impressive shots/sequences), but he only has a few other directing credits. The movie reunites the dynamic duo of stars Simon Yam and Chingmy Yau a few years after the delightfully unhinged Naked Killer. Legendary Couple isn't as lurid or crazy as Naked Killer, but it is similarly an offbeat romance full of comedy and melodrama with occasional explosions of bloody action (and literal explosions).

It opens with Ko Tin Lap (Yam) robbing and abusing some drug dealers, while a cop bothers Lui Chi Lan (Yau) in a convertible outside (with a baby in the backseat). Chi Lan ends up holding the cop at gunpoint while Tin Lap gets in a messy shootout/melee through dilapidated hallways. An army of cops show up, but they are seemingly stunned into submission by Chi Lan’s cuteness before she lights up their cars with a shotgun.

Tin and Chi escape in an orgy of gunfire and explosions, retreating to an idyllic shore side safe house with no one around (apparently it's easy to find places like this around Hong Kong, Double Impact had a whole abandoned inn/village!). The couple film themselves on a camcorder talking about taking out bad eggs. Then they play and swim in the sea until a fleet of police boats approaches. Before you can say, “You might be wondering how I got into this mess…” we flashback to when Tin had the world’s shittiest day and started down this path. 

Tin works for a powerful businessman who has protesters baying for his blood outside. Chi is the man’s spoiled daughter, who comes by to peel some stacks of cash from money that is supposed to be a bank deposit that Tin has to rush and recount. A distressed looking Tin explains to his boss that he ate something bad and has been shitting all day, while the office discusses his impending baby’s arrival. 

Tin rushes off to deliver the money in time. Sitting in traffic suffering from shit sweats, his coworkers suggest he use a public restroom while they wait. While he is gone, the other couriers are brutally ambushed (one gets a sledgehammer to the face, the other his brains blown out). The robbers make off with the money, and the cops detain Tin as their lead suspect. They hold Tin in interrogation, possibly mistaking his sweating and squirming from diarrhea as a sign of guilt. Despite his protests, they won’t let him use the bathroom and the poor bastard craps himself. This pisses the cops off even more, and they beat any remaining shit out of him while his very pregnant wife waits in the lobby. By the time they are done with Tin, his wife is going into premature labor. After a slow response they are sent to the hospital. 

A doctor with the most casually awful bedside manner I have ever seen tells Tin that his baby is sick and will need to remain in an incubator, and oh yeah, your wife’s dead. As if things couldn’t get any shittier, Tin returns to work to find out he has been fired from his job of ten years AND his boss will not give him his pension because he blames Tin for the robbery. Eventually a despondent Tin breaks into his boss’s home and gets his ass kicked again. As they threaten to call the police, the boss’s daughter Chi shows up and Tin takes her hostage. They start out bickering, Chi scared and Tin enraged. When Tin goes to pick up the ransom money things go south and the pursuing cop ends up accidentally shooting a young bystander. Tin is blamed for the killing.

Sometimes in a movie, a convenient news report will tell the characters/viewers a piece of important plot exposition. In this movie, a news report not only explains plot information but helpfully provides the social context and directly states the themes of the movie about the poor and sick suffering while the people in charge prosper. I joked to my wife, “My favorite thing about Hong Kong movies is the subtlety.”

that sounds familiar...

There are also multiple scenes where Tin records himself on a camcorder talking about the evils of society. The thing is, the movie ain’t subtle, but it ain’t wrong either. There are a few dialogue exchanges that are extremely on the nose, but also completely nail the hypocrisy of those who have and abuse power. After Tin gets the ransom money, he lets Chi go and she visits her father in the hospital (after one of the protesters finally had a go at him).

you miss a 100% of the shots you don't take

Chi asks her father why he wouldn’t just give Tin his pension. The amount was life-changing to Tin, but so insignificant to dad that they establish he has spent that much on a single party for Chi before. Her father responds that money is money, it doesn’t matter how much. And there are a lot of poor people, should he donate to all of them? A disgusted Chi leaves and eventually hooks back up with Tin. In a later scene Tin confronts the cop who framed him, and the piece of shit tries to say it's Tin’s fault. Then he tries to justify his lies, saying that he has been a good cop for many years and now it could be “All over because of one mistake.” After that, he reasons it would affect the reputation of the police as a whole. “It is so unjust!” the hypocritical pig cries out, with nary a hint of self-awareness. Yeah bro, it sure is crazy how a person can make one mistake and all of a sudden their life and humanity is reduced to that one bad moment, and that everyone else in their peer group could suffer or get a bad reputation based on one person's actions… Even through the language barrier and awkward subtitles these scenes capture the truth of how people with money and/or power come to see themselves as inherently good or better than poor people/criminals/the masses, and how it lets them justify preserving their wealth or power no matter how much those “others” may suffer.

Tin decides since everyone thinks he is a criminal, he will start robbing other criminals and corrupt people. Chi joins him and they retrieve Tin’s baby from the hospital. After their first failed attempt to rob a good humored gangster, he takes pity on them and gives them an assault rifle, pistols, and a bag of ammo! It's like bonus content in a video game, where it just dumps high level weapons and equipment on you the second you start your quest. There is a montage of robberies, date nights, child care, mural painting, and tiny crab-based foreplay.

weapon cache unlocked!

Eventually the movie catches back up to “now,” as a fleet of cops approach the couple’s hideout. I was very amused by all the cops holding and pointing their pistols and shotguns from speeding boats thousands of feet off shore, what are those going to accomplish?

FULL ENDING DISCUSSION AHEAD

Completely surrounded, the couple opens up their front door… and all the cops freeze again! Maybe they were stunned into submission by Tin and Chi’s dope all-white silk outfits that look like they stepped out of a 90s R&B music video.

The Legendary Couple seem to have the video game ability to slow down all their enemies at the beginning of a shootout. Eventually the couple’s Bullet Time meter runs out, they each take some hits and retreat into the house. Realizing they are doomed, they send the baby to safety and then the cops fire approximately a million bullets into the house. I loved the image of Tin and Chi dancing and spinning around together as they take shot after shot, blood covering their white silk outfits. It was like the romance version of some John Woo Heroic Bloodshed shit (since his movies usually only include bro-mances). 

This is one of those cases where a Hong Kong movie ping-ponging between tones and genres works out for the best. The blunt social commentary and related melodrama could have felt didactic, but surrounding it with silliness, sexiness, and the occasional burst of bloody action (and some excellent explosions) makes the whole thing feel more like a ride than a lecture.

that's the stuff

That is helped by over-the-top energy of the pacing, stylish camera moves, close-ups and cuts that also persist outside of the action beats. Yam and Yau have moments where they get ridiculously broad and goofy (there is one scene where they are both literally jumping up and down yelling at each other), but they also hit the quieter dramatic beats, and always look cool in action. Yau wears an endless series of sexy skirts, short shorts, and silk blouses (I’m a fan) and does some high-kicking (also a fan).

I’m not as big on Yam’s very 90s sunglasses and styles, I guess I dislike the Men’s fashion of the era almost as much as I enjoy the Women’s fashion. At least he doesn’t have to do an action scene in the onesie he is wearing on the movie’s cover, unlike Jackie Chan in Rumble in the Bronx!

The movie/premise shares similarities with Western films Natural Born Killers (1994) and A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Legendary Couple is less depressing/exhausting than Natural Born Killers, and the fact that it is so bright, fun and blunt works better than NBK’s “don’t you feel bad for enjoying this grimy violence we made you watch?” attitude. Despite Legendary Couple’s wild tonal shifts and goofy moments, it is also somehow still less aggressively quirky than A Life Less Ordinary (and way more exciting!). Legendary Couple is a fun ass time, and the ACAB (All Cops/CEOs Are Bastards) attitude is more welcome than ever. Hey business dad, how do you feel about being a cheap bastard after your daughter got shot to shit?

the couple in happier times

#relatable