In Long Arm of the Law, classic 1980s Hong Kong movie, there are no heroes – police and criminals are as bad as each other

Hong Kong director Johnny Mak’s Long Arm of the Law is considered a precursor of the ‘heroic bloodshed’ films made popular later by John Woo and Ringo Lam

Unusually for a Hong Kong crime film, its portrayal of both police and criminals is unsympathetic, as expert on Asian film Frank Djeng explains

Reading Time:5 minutes

A still from “Long Arm of the Law”. Frank Djeng, who provides the commentary for 88 Films’ forthcoming Blu-ray release of Johnny Mak’s classic 1984 Hong Kong film, explains where there are no heroes in it. Photo: Handout

Published: 4:15am, 21 May 2023

Long Arm of the Law, a grim and gritty cops-and-robbers drama directed by Johnny Mak Tong-hung in 1984, came out of nowhere to achieve critical and box-office success.

The film about a group of criminals from China, members of the “Big Circle gang”, who sneak across the Hong Kong border to rob a jewellery store, featured no stars, and was released at a time when comedy was popular among Hong Kong cinema-goers.

It is considered the precursor of the “heroic bloodshed” films later made popular by John Woo Yu-sum and Ringo Lam Ling-tung.

Frank Djeng, who provides the commentary for 88 Films’ forthcoming Blu-ray release of Long Arm of the Law, tells the Post what is special about the film.

The action scenes in Long Arm of the Law are unusually realistic for a 1984 production.

The gritty street action was quite new at the time. There were several things that were different from the typical Hong Kong crime film of the era. One was that it was shot in a semi-documentary fashion with a handheld camera and a hidden camera, so it was “guerilla style” filmmaking.