Profile in Anger (1984)

I once saw the trailer for Profile in Anger over at Jack’s place, and I fell for it directly. It’s an insane and violent trailer, which made the movie look like the best Hong Kong-movie ever. Unfortunately that’s not the case, but after a rather slow and boring first half, it finally kicked into action with some generic, but still cool action scenes.

Leung Kar Yan plays Liang, a famous ex-sportsman and nowadays just rich and happy. He’s just gonna marry his girlfriend and is meeting her at the airport. There he also meets an old schoolmate and they bring him home, because he just arrived from South Africa. During the night the schoolmate disappears and a little while later Liang’s girlfriend his brutally killed.

Furious with revenge Liang understands that he’s also under attack, and hides and try to figure out why it’s happening. After several violent attacks he’s going crazy, start to grow a beard and works out at the gym until he becomes a deadly fighting-machine! And finally he can take his revenge…

I’m not gonna hide it, but Profile in Anger is a quite silly movie. It’s also the directorial debut for Leung Kar Yan, which he handles quite well – it’s more the script that could have needed a little bit more work. The first part is more of a stupid love-drama, then becomes a normal revenge-movie, until he goes crazy, builds himself a Mad Max-style battle truck and fights a deformed killer who prefers to fight in his underwear!

That killer is no one else than the brilliant Phillip Ko, who makes the best performance in the movie and also – which is weird, because the role is quite small – has the best written character. He’s crazy, psychotic – but also loving against his girlfriend/wife.

So the script and character (and beard) is all over the place. How’s the action then? Yes, it’s very violent (this version can be cut, probably a scene when a drill enters a hand) and bloody, lots of hard-hitting fights and some really cool stunts. A cool scene is where a motor cross-gang of gay post-apocalyptic drug users is attacking a restaurant with their vehicles! But at the same time the action and fighting isn’t especially extraordinary. Just something you’ve seen a thousand times before and after. It’s not bad, but could have been funnier. But all violence has a very mean-spirited streak of sadism, so don’t be afraid – this is not boring Wuxia-movie for children.

Still quite fun and violent, I think I can recommend it to all of you that appreciates something out of the typical mainstream.