From Beijing With Love

The James Bond 007 superspy genre is gleefully ripped to shreds in this typically jaw-dropping action/comedy from Hong Kong's number one goofball, Stephen Chaiu, who also functions this time out as writer, producer, and director with wonderfully crazed results. The plot follows Chaiu, who plays a scumbag pork vendor mistakenly called into government service as he attempts to recover a stolen dinosaur head from a mysterious armored man with a golden gun. Along the way, he also locks horns with a Jaws-inspired baddie, a femme fatale whose breasts hide two high-powered flame throwers, and a cutie-pie double agent played by flavor-of-the-year Anitia Yuen. With helpful gadgets like a hair dryer that doubles as an electric shaver, Chaiu proves to be a woefully inept suave superhero, except when he's throwing knives, a skill finely honed by years of chopping meat. The comic set-pieces of From Beijing With Love are unbelievable, loaded with so many bizarre ideas and inspired toilet humor that even Jim Carrey might balk and blush with embarrassment. Sound hard to believe? Then try the sequence in which Chaiu, while having a bullet dug out of his leg, watches some porno to divert the pain and also keep the blood flowing to his penis so he won't bleed to death! The kinetic action sequences are also suitably wild, with lots of high-flying wire stunts and John Woo-styled gun battles, occasionally accompanied by Monty Pythonesque blood geysers. They can't, won't, and don't make 'em like this over here, reason enough to check out this berserk bit of nonsense.