Po-Chih Leong's debut film was a trendsetter in Hong Kong cinema. Shot from the shoulder, the fast-moving world of cops, informers, drug dealers and other crooks are evoked in a very lively and realistic way. The action all takes place in carefully selected locations, among them the walled city of Kowloon and Yuen Long. The film looks like a documentary and evokes the kind of excitement usually seen in news programmes. The story focuses on the battle between two gangs and starts in Amsterdam, where one of the gang leaders is murdered.
Cinematography
Shoulder-mounted guerrilla shooting inside actual Kowloon Walled City.
Direction
Leong's debut invented the Hong Kong cop thriller template.
Production
Yuen Long and Amsterdam locations shot like war correspondence.
Director
Josephine Siao Fong-Fong
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot in the actual Kowloon Walled City before its 1993 demolition; residents appear as unpaid extras. The location was technically Chinese soil surrounded by British Hong Kong, making filming legally murky.
Josephine Siao co-directed while starring—rare for 1970s Hong Kong—and would later become a children's literature icon, making this her grittiest career outlier.
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