Review of Skinny Tiger Fatty Dragon

Introduction

Not to be confused as a parody of Crouching Tiger, Skinny Tiger Fatty Dragon was made some 14-years ago and stars Karl Maka and Sammo Hung as cop duo Skinny and Fatty fighting crime in their own inimitable fashion. The "King of Cocaine", as he`s known in Hong Kong, is being investigated by our crime fighting pair. It`s not all plain sailing however as the duo cause so much trouble that their own families, as well as themselves, are on the hit list.

Skinny Tiger Fatty Dragon is an action comedy with added martial arts. Sammo`s character is obsessed with Bruce Lee and this is something borne out in all of his action pieces; it`s incredible to see how nimble he is performing in the same way as Bruce with scenes set-up in the same way from various Bruce Lee films. Sammo was also Lee obsessed in a previous film to this one, Enter the Fat Dragon. Sammo`s partner in crime, Karl Maka, is known appropriately as `Slaphead` and considers himself a bit of a hit with the ladies. It makes you wonder how this pairing can manage to do what they do and this provides quite a few comic moments.

Video

Presented with a 1.78:1 widescreen enhanced video transfer, Skinny Tiger looks good throughout, which is somewhat uncharacteristic of the usual Hong Kong action films of a decade ago. Colours are well balanced and detail looks good with very minimal grain on show. There`s little in the way of dirt and I couldn`t spot any problems with the transfer.

Audio

Dolby Digital 5.1 English (dubbed) and Cantonese are available. I won`t go into the horrendous dubbing (needless to say it`s terrible but funny nonetheless); the 5.1 Cantonese works well and sounds clear with the sound focused mainly from the front. Don`t count on any surround action though.

Features

Easy to navigate animated menus in the usual HKL style.

• Trailer Gallery (widescreen enhanced) - The UK Promotional (1:42) and Original Theatrical trailer (5:19). Five minutes for a trailer is a bit long...

• The Weapons` Master: an interview with Lau Kar-wing (24:52) (widescreen enhanced, subtitled) - He`s the Director of Skinny Tiger and seems an amiable chap. He`s made a lot of films and talks about his beginnings, Sammo Hung and Bruce Lee. This is interspersed with film clips and is worth watching.

• Partner In Crime: an interview with Ridley Tsui (18:30) (widescreen enhanced) - Ridley is one of the two action directors credited on Skinny Tiger. He talks about how he started in HK cinema and makes comparisons between working on Western and Eastern film. Again, there are plenty of film clips to break up the interview, but the only slightly irritating thing about this is the constant background music.

• Sammo Hung: The Bruce Lee Connection - A series of static pages about the Sammo Hung/Bruce Lee working partnership. It makes for an interesting read.

• Audio commentary - A man that needs no introduction when it comes to providing some of the best DVD commentaries, Bey Logan. Again Bey provides fantastic insight into the film, it`s history, the cast and crew and just keeps rolling throughout the whole film. His research on HK cinema is unmatched and his commentaries are a pleasure to listen to.

• Further Attractions - The usual array of Premier Asia and HKL trailers.

There are English and Dutch subtitles with the English ones reading fine.

Conclusion

Skinny Tiger Fatty Dragon is a fun action film so long as you put all the problems with the script and story to one side. Apart from the poor film logic (such as running away from the bad guys and using traditional martial arts weapons as opposed to the guns that they carry) there`s a distraction in the Singaporean storyline, which is totally redundant and doesn`t do anything for the film.

The Singapore bit goes something like this. After causing mayhem chasing a suspect through the police commissioners wedding banquet, Skinny and Fatty are suspended so they go to Singapore to take a break. Here they meet two lovely girls and decide to quit the police force so they can live a leisurely life running a karaoke bar. Once they return to Hong Kong they get caught up in closing the case they left with barely another word said about Singapore. It was reckoned however that the film had financial help from Singapore in return for featuring in the film so perhaps this is something to do with it. It still doesn`t make any sense though!

Minor niggles aside, there is some fun slapstick and humour as well as very good martial arts from Sammo Hung. Sammo`s Bruce Lee obsession is so on the nail it`s incredible. A nice package of an average film, Skinny Tiger Fatty Dragon is a silly but harmless action film.