Rosa (1986)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Yuen Biao, being the lesser known from the 'Three Dragons' (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao) hasn't starred in many classics that doesn't include his more famous friends. 'Rosa' is one of them non-classics. Yuen Biao is equally capable martial artist and actor as his internationally known compatriots, so is Kara Hui, but both of their abilities weren't fully used in this quite trivial action comedy. The film is quite entertaining, and there are some fine fight scenes, but some of the slapstick bits are drawn too long and start to get annoying by the end.This movie is only worth to see if you are a huge fan of Yuen Biao and/or Kara Hui (they both have done some more amazing movies), but in every other sense 'Rosa' is barely above average time filler.

With two of the most underrated - and most capable - action stars of Hong Kong cinema (Yuen Biao, Kara Hui), Lowell Lo handling most of the mugging and busty Siu-Fan Luk providing the sex appeal, "Rosa" had the potential to be a much better movie than it is. Although the comedy did make me laugh at a couple of points, pretty soon I realized that the film is a nearly plot-free collection of overlong comic bits, some of which don't translate so well (there is a 4-minute mahjong sequence that will be completely meaningless to most non-Chinese viewers). And even the big warehouse fighting climax pales in comparison to the big warehouse fighting climaxes of other Hong Kong movies (just to mention one I saw recently: "Naughty Boys", also featuring Kara Hui and also made in 1986). The film is still worth seeing if you're a fan of any of the stars, but it's by no means a HK classic. (**)

It's easy to love Yuen Biao. He's got that cheeky face and I find him a decent comedy actor. And of course he's a great martial artist and acrobat.But the material here is weak, especially as a lot of the comedy seems to be verbal and does't translate well into English. One whole scene is full of MaH Jong jokes. If you don;t play and can't read Chinese, the whole scene is a waste. Most of the other jokes involves '2 guys coming up with wheezes to impress girls'. It's a staple of the HK scene, but I've scene it done much, much better ('Pantyhose Hero', anyone?).The action scenes are fine, but nothing special. The big fight at the end is Yuenb Biao vs Dick Wei in a meat packing factory. It's decent, but too short and too often interrupted by the other 'comedy' characters.For a non-Chinese speaker, this really isn't worth the 6/10 score it's getting on IMDb at the time of writing. Go get a proper Yuen Biao movie instead ('Dreadnought', 'Eastern Condors', 'Kid from Tibet'). I give this one a 2.

Not much of a story. More character development and situational comedy scenes. Several inducing load laughter from this viewer. For example when Yuen is fighting one of the drug dealers and they end up in a deep freeze storage locker. The Kung Fu slows and instead of injuring the opponent....acquiring clothing becomes the focus.Yuen plays a hand in his superiors demotion and meets future partner Lo by putting his sister in the hospital during a pursuit. Lo meets his girl, an informers ex, when the new partners are assigned the duty of locating him. Both are now working for the newly demoted Inspector.A cute movie that may be lacking in areas, but not in fun.