Chow Yun-Fat on TVB
saat sau qi shi er siu si/dai gong nam bak
killing hands 72 hours/big river south and north
The Killer 1
principal cast:
nbsp;nbsp;Chow Yun-Fat
nbsp;nbsp;Ng Man-Tat
nbsp;nbsp;Wong Sun
nbsp;nbsp;Wong Hang Sau
As you can see I have listed two completely different Chinese
titles for this series. On the copies which I have from TVBI, it is
named (in literal translation) killing hands 72 hours but I am
fairly certain that this is the series known as big river south and
north. To support this theory, it was originally broadcast in
1976 which would place it in the proper time period; there is no
documentation anywhere that I have found on a series named killing
hands 72 hours (or any of the reasonable transliterations of the
Chinese for this) and from the back of the box this sentence:
So while it is possible that this is an undocumented series, I think that
possibility is remote enough, and the pointers to big river south and north
convincing enough, that I have listed this as one and the
same.
Leui Gong (Chow Yun-Fat) is a killer who has been hired to eradicate a certain young
gentleman by the name of Leui Gam-Shan (Ng Man-Tat), also a gun-for-hire. Following
him to an inn kept by Gong Leung-Tin (Wong Sun in one of the four hundred thousand parts
he played for TVB), Leui Gong meets up with a band of other characters including a pocket
of revolutionaries; one of these, a woman who is as deadly as she is seductive,
is sent to spy on the situation and of course she ends up in a sort-of love triangle with Leui
Gong and the sweet young daughter of the innkeeper.
The series is twelve episodes, and for eleven and a half of them very little actually
happens except for a lot of frowning, posturing and endless droning about politics.
I will be quite honest and admit that most of the dialogue went right over my head.
I hesitate to say this series is boring, since I couldn't comprehend most of it, but
I get the feeling that even if I were a native Cantonese speaker I wouldn't have been
all that interested. The acting is wooden (CYF has a few moments where he shows some
life, Ng Man-Tat is interesting in spots) and the settings bland; even when something
relatively exciting happens the characters seem so bored with it all (or
is that machismo?) that I was bored right along with them.
If you are fluent in Cantonese, this might be of interest to you. If you're like me and
just limp along as best you can without English subtitles, this really isn't something
you're going to want to sit down and watch for 12 hours. Trust me.
As for the original title of this series, "big river" refers to the
Yangtze River. According to Joey Shao, a kind lady living in Taiwan
who answered a query about the possible meanings of this title,
"big river south and north" is a euphemism for "well-traveled", as
in a person who has traveled widely on both sides of the Yangtze.
Killer 1 image gallery
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