The Death Games (1997) | Hong Kong Movie World review

Since his spectacular showing in Story of Ricky, Fan Siu Wong has remained a powerhouse talent in need of a worthy follow-up vehicle. While The Death Games doesn't live up to expectations, it provides a few minutes of good action scenes which may be of interest to fans.

The "story" is about a guy called Tong who caused the death of drug lord Lion. Years later, his vengeance obsessed son Tiger (played by a bald white guy I've never seen before), and his sister?/girlfriend? Shelly (Kim-Maree Penn) are back to settle the score. Tiger assassinates Tong and then goes after Tong's best buddy Kao Fu (Leung Kar Yan in a somber non-action role).

Fu has adopted Tong's daughter Jin, who has come to stay with her new sister Min. They befriend martial arts instructor Kao Hwa (Fan Siu Wong), whose late father was also a good friend of Tong's. He looks after them as it was his Dad's wish to pay back Tong.

Also noteworthy is that blonde knockout (in more ways than one) Kim-Maree Penn, one of the few foreigners that I actually look forward to seeing. She has three fights with Fan Siu Wong- hand to hand as well as with weaponry- sword, spear, and whip chain.
Fan himself is impressive as a virtuous kung fu expert. In the opening sequence he fights four guys in karate uniforms, using flying side kicks, leg sweeps, roundhouse kicks and acrobatics. All these skills would be better put to use in a bigger budget production with a decent script. But what are ya gonna do.

Most of the movie is just a series of scuffles with Tiger's undefined gang, its attempts to attack or kidnap them, etc. Towards the end, Tiger hires two killers to beat Kao Hwa- a stern Thai fighter played by Billy Chow, and Collin Chou (aka Ngai Sing) as a fan-wielding gay Japanese fighter. Collin is always great at playing charismatic bad guys, and his part here was probably the most entertaining portion of the film.