User Reviews

One of the saddest things I know is in cinema is the way that huge stars from certain eras and decades were quickly forgotten by audiences from the next generation, or in some instances just a few years later. So it was with the big Hong Kong names of the 1980s, who lit up the screens with great action movies that remain classics to this day. Phillip Ko was such a name, but his passion for film was so huge that he turned to directing when roles dried up, working first with notorious cut-and-paste specialist Godfrey Ho and later in the Philippines.

POWER CONNECTION is a very low budget Filipino movie from 1995, directed by Ko from a script by Ho. It shouldn't work, packed out as it is with stock footage from prior movies, and it certainly feels choppy and all over the place at times. However, somehow it remains enjoyable, and much of that is due to the presence of high-kicking Yukari Oshima, who burns up the screen here in her plentiful fight scenes. She's a human dynamo, single-handedly making this an enjoyable watch. Otherwise, you get treated to lame-but-funny comic relief, a lunkheaded Filipino hero, nonsensical storytelling, random explosions, a Lo Lieh cameo and Ko himself as a villain early on. Hardly high art, but still fun for fight fans who can overlook the many deficiencies.