| Crocodile Hunter | |||||||||||
| Native Name: |
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| Director: | Wong Jing | ||||||||||
| Producer: | Wong Jing | ||||||||||
| Screenplay: | Wong Jing | ||||||||||
| Starring: | Andy Lau Alex Man Cheung Kwok-keung Sandra Ng Elvina Kong Lung Fong | ||||||||||
| Music: | Lowell Lo Sherman Chow | ||||||||||
| Cinematography: | Gigo Lee | ||||||||||
| Editing: | Robert Choi | ||||||||||
| Studio: | Win's Movie Production | ||||||||||
| Distributor: | Win's Entertainment | ||||||||||
| Runtime: | 101 minutes | ||||||||||
| Country: | Hong Kong | ||||||||||
| Language: | Cantonese | ||||||||||
| Gross: | HK$10,880,861 | ||||||||||
Crocodile Hunter (專釣大鱷[1]) is a 1989 Hong Kong action comedy film written and directed by Wong Jing, and starring Andy Lau as an ace police officer who teams up with his less than competent subordinate (Alex Man) to capture a group of wanted thieves with bounties on their heads.
While on duty saving hostages in a movie theater, Special Duties Unit officer Happy Chiu is shot in the head by a criminal disguised as a hostage and is hospitalized for nine months. Despite having a bullet lodged in his head, Happy refuses to retire so he applies to transfer as a senior inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to earn cash to pay for his mother's kidney transplant operation.
At this time, a group of thieves led by Prince have escaped from prison and the police have issued a bounty of HK$800,000 to have them captured, so Happy assigns his CID detective Bad Odor Chuen, a cowardly, incompetent, officer who was previously humiliated by Prince's underling, Shrimp, who forced Chuen to undress himself at gunpoint. Lam Tin-fu, elder son of Lam's Group CEO Lam Yuet-ting, is unhappy that his father appointing his younger brother to be his successor, so he hires Prince to stage a robber at Lam's Group to get his father and brother killed.
Happy and Chuen then tricks Bitchy Ying, the imprisoned girlfriend of Stalled Engine Tak, who is the computer hacker in Prince's gang, into work with them by paying her fellow prisoners to threaten her. Happy is then informed by his superior, Superintendent Wai, that TV actress Lam Ka-sin is being stalked by another one of Prince's underling, Convulsion, and rushes to her apartment with Chuen and narrowly saves her from being killed by Convulsion and bring her to the safe house where she gets into a fight with Ying as they were childhood rivals. When Prince sees Tak calling his mother asking the whereabouts of Ying, Tak reveals to Prince that Ying is held by Happy and Chuen at Kowloon Peak and pleads Prince to save her, but he and his gang shoots up the safehouse and also shoots Ying (who was wearing a bullet vest given by Chuen) and lies to Tak that his girlfriend has died but still convinces Tak to work for him. Tak then requests a computer to practice his hacking skills and uses it to send a tip that Prince is robbing the Lam's Building Saturday at 7 PM to his computer at home, which is seen by his family along with Chuen and Ying, who were visiting his family for tips. Happy and Chuen then tails Lam Tin-fu, which irritates the latter, who then frames the two for assaulting him. Happy and Chuen are put under investigation and suspended from their duties, but Superintendent Wai purposely gives them their suspension letters without a start date to allow them to continue to work on the case.
On the night Lam Yuet-ting announces to pass down his position as CEO to his second son, Prince and his gang arrives and holds a number of rich guests hostage while demanding Lam to bring him to the antique vault in the company to obtain the priceless Along the River During the Qingming Festival painting inside. Chuen and Ying were tied up by Shrimp, who forced them to undress themselves, while Happy saves the hostages and keeps them safe locked inside the elevator. Prince then reveals to Lam Ting-yuet that Tin-fu colluded with him before killing the latter and Ting-yuet gives the password to the vault before being killed by Prince. Happy arrives in time and save Lam's second son while Tak smashes the computer to the vault which triggers the alarm to the police and was shot by Prince. Chuen and Ying manages to untie themselves and the latter finds Tak who opens the vault and take the priceless painting for themselves. Happy shoots the rest of Prince's gang and kills Convulsion in fight, while Chuen kills Shrimp after re-enacting their first encounter.
Prince pretends to be a hostage and escapes after knocking out an officer, but Happy catches up with him in the parking lot but is at an disadvantage when he drops his glasses. Fortunately, Tak and Ying arrive to help him and Happy kills Prince by throwing and impaling him with a pen belonging to his deceased journalist father. Chuen is then reunited with his estranged wife and daughter after witness his heroic acts on live news.
The film is described as a "typical Wong Jin concoction"[2] containing "some really rather silly humor".[3]
”Andy Lau and Alex Man make an entertaining cop team, and the action sequences are as exciting as you'd expect from an early-nineties Hong Kong film. It's Lethal Weapon-style excitement in Crocodile Hunter!.”, commented YesAsia.[4]