Tiger on the Beat
- Sun, Dec 6
- Mon, Dec 7
The Frida Cinema's seating is first-come, first-serve. For our Midnight Screenings, please plan on arriving by 11:30pm to ensure ample time for parking, picking up concessions, and securing optimal seats. Screening will begin promptly at midnight.
Director: Lau Kar-Leung Run Time: 93 min. Release Year: 1988
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Conan Lee, Gordon Liu Chia-Hui, Nina Li Chi, Norman Tsui Siu-Keung
“Like Lethal Weapon only far funnier and with more chainsaw action.” -Total DVD
After so much emotion and violence, we are choosing to close our Hong Kong Action Essentials series by cutting loose with little bit laughter and…uhhh…more violence.
Directed by Lau Kar-leung and starring Chow Yun-fat, Tiger on the Beat follows a pair of mismatched cops on the trail of a violent drug dealer, a case that escalates from street-level comedy into something far more savage and unhinged. What begins as a rambunctious action/comedy steadily sheds its humor, morphing into a full-throttle collision of gunplay, hand-to-hand combat, and sheer physical excess. By the time it reaches its infamous finale, the film has abandoned restraint entirely, delivering the perfectly brutal and messy ending to our series.
Our Hong Kong Action Essentials series explores the time from the mid-’80s through the early ’90s, where Hong Kong filmmakers rewrote the grammar of action cinema forever. Directors like John Woo, Tsui Hark, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Ringo Lam, and Lau Kar-Leung fused balletic gunplay, risky stunts, martial arts virtuosity, and raw emotional intensity into a new cinematic language that would be oft-imitated but never replicated. (sorry, The Matrix, we love you too!) Join us every month in 2026 as we explore this golden age where style and emotional collided to change movies forever.