MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*
Writer/director/actor Wong Jing has a rep for crazy kung-fu comedies, but as I've said only four of his 1990s outings, I can't confirm that, aside from saying that the 1993 CITY HUNTER is really stupid. But by contrast, this 1986 chopsocky is easy to follow. It's pedestrian, but it's not any more incomprehensible than a lot of other HK adventure-comedies.
Andy Lau (playing a trouble shooter named Andy) is contacted by a friend who claims to have found an alien artifact. Andy and his goofy sidekick Snooker (played by director Jing) go to meet the friend in Greece, but the guy is captured and interrogated by the KGB (led by badass Richard Norton). The artifact, a green rock, falls into the hands of Andy's young nephew Pin Pin, son of another of Andy's friends, and soon Pin Pin learns that there's an alien intelligence inside the stone, capable of controlling (some) minds and even wreaking miracles, like causing Snooker's hands and feet to become interchanged.
Meanwhile, two Interpol agents-- one a non-entity, the other played by Cynthia Rothrock-- are also after the rock, and they try to persuade Andy to help them locate it. The various fights between the stars (Lau and Rothrock), the Russians led by Norton, and a few lesser combatants (Lau's sword-wielding sister, played by Mei-Mei Wong) are the real attraction here. None of the rinky-dinky SF elements in CRYSTAL are half as wonder-inspiring as the speed with which actors Norton and Rothrock move to pull off their stunts.
CRYSTAL is a little funnier than the average HK comedy and certainly scores in the fighting department, and even though it's low-mythicity it makes a pleasant enough confection.
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