'Millionaire's Express' movie poster  'Shanghai Express' movie poster

Millionaire's Express

AKA: Shanghai Express

1987

Director: Sammo Hung

Stars: Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Richard Ng, Eric Tsang, Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton, Dick Wei, Yukari Oshima, Kwan Tak Hing, Rosamund Kwan

This movie is a bit of combination of a "Eastern Western" and the big all-star, multi-plotted event movies such as Cannonball Run and My Lucky Stars. The film revolves around the inaugural running of a new high-class train called the Shanghai Express, but events occurring around the train and the towns it passes through brings in new characters into the mix, with main one involving Sammo Hung as a hustler who tries to save his hometown by intentionally wrecking the train so that the rich patrons will spend their money in the town.

There are several other sub-plots as well, such as one with Richard Ng trying to get away from his wife so he can carry on his affair, Kwan Tak Hing reprising his long-running role as Wong Fei-Hung battling one of his rivals on the train, Yukari Oshima and several other Japanese attempting to steal secret documents out of China and a group of bandits (including Richard Norton and Cynthia Rothrock) who want to rob the train. And that's this movie's main problem -- with so many characters and plots in the mix, almost none of them get resolved in any way, much less successfully. Still, the movie runs at a fast enough pace and throws so much at you in the way of comedy and action that you'll won't really notice the script's weaknesses too much.

RATING: 7.5

A review of the DVD for this movie can be found here

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