Little known but talented Hong Kong action director Andrew Kam (responsible for the incredible Eighties gunplay epic The Big Heat) teams up with underrated action hero Donnie Yen (Iron Monkey) for this solid, low-budget action flick, whose many obvious limitations are nicely surmounted due to a solid dose of the two things money can’t buy — style and personality. Yen stars as the titular High Voltage Asian Cop, a Hong Kong policeman whose violent methods and intense demeanor cause his fall from favor with his fellow officers and superiors. The plot follows him as he travels to the Philippines to escort an important witness back to Hong Kong, only to find himself teaming up with a local cop (Filipino actor Edu Manzano) to bring down a wicked crime syndicate, not to mention facing down an old enemy from his past (Wicked City‘s Roy Cheung in a nicely psychotic performance). At times, the script steers dangerously close to becoming an uninspired Lethal Weapon rip-off and, to be sure, the story is far from original, but the film is redeemed by a number of offbeat touches and non-stop, breakneck pacing. Director Kam stages the ultraviolet action sequences with an edgy sense of danger that recalls the hard-boiled crime stories of peers Ringo Lam and Kirk Wong, while Yen delivers a fierce, angry performance appropriate to the vicious goings-on (in addition to kicking some serious butt in the film’s numerous hard-hitting fight scenes). In a time when sorry, kiddie trash is dominating the Hong Kong low-budget scene, and the big-budget movies are getting more and more carried away by comic relief, High Voltage Asian Cop proves to be a nice change of pace — a tough, violent, and unapologetic action picture that may not aim high, but at least fully realizes its own modest ambitions by simply “delivering the goods.”
This article appears in June 16 • 1995 (Cover).