VividSimon Simply Perfect

Lawbolisted Powerful

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

ken-miller Expect The Unexpected is one of those Hong Kong films thatswitches from lightweight romantic scenes to hard-boiled details(like the dead baby in the washing machine), then back to moreupbeat scenes. This kind of thing just isn't done in Western picsand can be disconcerting to viewers used to one kind of story orthe other. The romantic interludes are accompanied by an amiable scorefrom Cacine Wong, which suits the atmosphere of those scenes. But where the film scores highly is with the series the gritty streetshoot-outs that are well-done and vicious. Parts of this film just ramble along, with conversational sequencesthat are just not needed, but Yam & Ching Wan are good, and theending really is unexpected. Uneven but watchable.

experten First I like to say that I see a lot of movies and I have quite a few HK movies. Many HK movies are so bad that it is hard to believe, often ruined by typical ridiculous HK humor and unrealistic acting, but hidden among all those disappointing movies are some really good movies, sometimes so violent, morbid or tragic that they could never have been made in Hollywood. And thats what I like; serious violence, tragic, suspense, maybe a little romance but not too much and absolutely no HK humor. Unfortunately, Expect the Unexpected is not one of those very good movies, even though the ending is enough to make sure that it would be impossible for Hollywood to do a remake of the movie (not that they would want to).The beginning of the movie is good and the ending is even better, but everything in between is uninteresting romantic crap. The violence in the movie is good,consisting of realistic shootouts with some good bloodsquibs. There are no John Woo style massacres, the action is not so stylistic but more realistic. The problem is that most of the movie is a boring study of the cops romantic problems and childish courting. The directing is good, the problem is the weak story. The actors are also good. Ching Wan Lau is one of my favorites, but I recommend for instance "A Hero Never Dies" , "Full Alert" or "Running out of Time" if you want to see him in much better movies. 5/10

Sing-108 A police unit, led nominally by Simon Yam and smokey-eyed Lau Ching-Wan, pursue two gangs, each heavily armed and dangerous, not least of all to themselves. Expect the Unexpected begins conventionally enough, but a nudge to the plot here, a detail of characterization there, and the odd bit of unexpected humour, and before long the story is in territory at once familiar and unfamiliar. For the viewer the results are nothing less than exhilarating, like seeing an over-familiar genre through fresh, new eyes.One interesting touch for a HK film released in May 1998: the mainland Chinese in one gang had come to Hong Kong due to economic difficulties back home. (One government, two systems in effect?)Cacine Wong's routine and seemingly off-the-cuff soundtrack was the only really jarring element to Expect the Unexpected (the effects of low budget filmmaking in HK being pretty much a given these days). Other film scores by Wong include the very good spaghetti eastern-sounding Peace Hotel, co-written with Healthy Poon, and the equally good neo-noirish Too Many Ways to be Number One.Your best chance of seeing Expect the Unexpected is on video or in a rep theater. But however you see it, and whether you come in expecting the unexpected, I think you'll be in for a pleasant surprise.

Thorny-3 This flick starts off as a typical Hong Kong cop movie, with a dream team of post-unification stars as the good guys: Patrick Yau (who also directs), Lau Ching-Wan and Eric Tsang. There are all the staples -- nasty villains, a beautiful love interest, lots of gats blazing. But you know what? The predictable plot falls apart and leaves you agape, wondering what will happen next -- and the ending... well, I'll let you see the end for yourself.