Sea Wolves is the seventh part in the In the Line of Duty film series. At first I was under the impression that this was the sixth part. God forbid they would just use the one title. I swear they do this to trick you into buying these over and over again. And you know what I probably would if they are actually available to purchase. These titles are so hard to come by. Mind you in this case it's not a problem.
Since while Sea Wolves does offer some kind of entertainment I hardly would qualify it as worthwhile. The biggest problem of this entry is the fact that it's more about two Vietnamese refugees (Simon Yam and Gary Chow) than super cop Inspector Yeung played by Cynthia Khan. How can you upstage the lead in her own film and genre?
Well, firstly, Cynthia Khan has not been given much to do. She is in a couple of scenes but you don't actually get to see her kick ass that much. You blink and it already has happened. However even from the short sequences you can tell she really has grown as an action star. It's therefore a real shame that she is playing second fiddle to Simon Yam and Gary Chow. He is interesting since you can tell he does have a presence, they jokingly call him the Chinese Sylvester Stallone. And it's not far from the truth. He obviously loves to work out. But at the same time is very quick on his feet. He does seem like he knows how to move but can't find any information on him and if he has a martial arts background or not. But I assume he had the potential to be a big action star as well. It's kind of weird he only has been active in the movie business for 5 years. He also did well acting wise. Although it was a little ridiculous how they made him portray someone who is suffering from amnesia like he was mentally disabled or something. Credit to him that he still managed to be likable.
Last but not least, Simon Yam. Like always he is very dependable. Although I did keep wondering why he was in this film in the first place. Wasn't he already a big star around this time? Not saying that being part of this film should be frowned upon. Still you would expect him to be in big blockbuster titles and here he is in a pretty bad B film with very minor redeeming elements. What are those redeeming elements you might ask? Brutality. There is one scene in particular that hits hard. It's terribly shocking but amazing at the same time since it reminded me why I love Hong Kong films in the first place. Too bad that other than this scene the action is hardly memorable. It entertains while it lasts but it's far removed from the action that once was in the first two parts of this film series.
Overall this is a real letdown since it doesn't give you the action goodness the franchise started with.
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