Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Wyatt There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Leofwine_draca Yuen Biao's leading role and the promise of yet another titanic ding-dong between him and sparring partner Yuen Wah was enough to sell me THE ICEMAN COMETH, a 1989 Hong Kong film that takes HIGHLANDER's central premise and reinvents it with a Chinese spin. Unfortunately, the film is far from the cult classic that it has been advertised as, although it does have much to recommend it. The film features an unlikely combination of comedy and drama, pathos, and more familiar martial arts stunts and action.Unfortunately the subject matter is very dark and the film is often depressing. The central villain is a rapist and at least one scene – a rape in a car – is done in incredibly bad taste, souring the experience of the film as a whole. Clocking in at one hour fifty minutes, the film is also very talky, and much of the dialogue centres around Maggie Cheung as the love interest. Cheung plays an obnoxious hooker, far from her sweet character in the POLICE STORY films. Here she's brash and unpleasant, unappealing to the viewer. Unfortunately much of the comedy centres around her instead of letting the male actors enjoy the type of physical hijinks so beloved of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung.While Cheung is an immediate detraction every time she's on screen, the film is bolstered by Yuen Biao's typically strong leading performance; he's a far better actor than Christopher Lambert, the man he imitates at times, and he ably handles the dramatic scenes along with the comedic ones – the sequence in which he drinks from a toilet bowl is hilarious, made more so by Biao's acting of the innocent. Biao is matched by Yuen Wah, never more evil than he is here as the villain. I have to say, though, that it's pretty odd to see the skinny Wah stripped to his underwear and showing off his muscles to a hooker. With two top martial artists in the film, you can guarantee some great fights, and the film doesn't disappoint in the action stakes.Sword duels, a great battle on top of a car suspended in the air by a crane, and the top-notch one-on-one at the film's climax, which is set in a museum, certainly add up to counter the movie's deficiencies. The painful final fight is a particular keeper and the best showdown we've seen between Biao and Wah – their later chandelier ruckus in ONCE UPON A Chinese HERO is short and unspectacular in comparison. The film boasts some really good '80s animation that I'd choose over CGI any day. THE ICEMAN COMETH is a very different style film than we're used to from Hong Kong. With a better director and more action, it would have been a classic to rival DRAGONS FOREVER. As it is, it's an unwieldy movie with some great fights but a plodding storyline and Maggie Cheung's worst ever role.

Guardia Opera School colleagues Yuen Biao and Yuen Wah face off in this action/drama film, (oh, and Maggie Cheung tags along for good measure). This film has seems to have slipped off the radar somewhat, but if you manage to see it, you'll find it has some very powerful moments.The scope of the film is huge. We start off in Imperial China (the Ming Dynasty), where we are introduced to the characters of Fong Sau-Ching (Biao), and Fung San (Wah) - perfect symbols of good and evil respectively. As in real life, the two are 'brothers', in that they have trained and lived together as Royal Guards. However, Fung has become corrupted, and is a known rapist and murderer. Fong must capture him within twenty days, or face execution himself.Did I mention that they travel into the future Hong Kong, the year 1989? Well they do via a Buddhist Wheel - a kind of primitive Delorian (but built sturdier).This film is by no means perfect, but it's main draw-cards are the exquisitely choreographed (though all too rare) action sequences, and the overall excellent production values. The performances vary somewhat, (Yuen Wah is maybe a little too comical in his delivery), but the film is ripe with powerful scenes and a surprising amount of subtext, if you're willing to look for it.The most interesting contrast the film makes is between the past and the (then) present. We find that honour, loyalty, and friendship mean totally different things in the modern age, and Biao's character has the most difficulty adjusting to his surroundings. Wah's character however (rapist, thief, murderer) adjust very quickly, and has even managed to adopt the most cutting-edge in fashion. The subtle distinctions drawn between Hong Kong and the Mainland are also of interest - though how relevant they are today I cannot say.Clarence Fok has undertaken a very ambitious task here - a film that deals with so much (in my mind) cannot succeed in every area. However, it does succeed in the most important areas for me, and I can only recommend at least one viewing. It does, however, seem to improve with multiple viewings. The rich visuals and and action sequences alone make this a stand-out from it's era.

sarastro7 I am a big fan of Yuen Biao, and I had heard that Iceman Cometh was supposed to be *the* Yuen Biao movie, with a great leading performance and some spectacular kung fu. I finally found the DVD a couple of days ago - and unfortunately I was quite disappointed. Yuen Biao is certainly not bad - far from it -, but the movie actually doesn't have that much fighting in it, and the story, while moderately entertaining, does lack a good deal of charisma. The comedy is fair but not great, and there are some really nasty scenes of violence. All in all, not a very well-balanced product.As a Yuen Biao movie, it certainly falls grievously short of classics like Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain and Prodigal Son. Maggie Cheung is not bad here, either, but doesn't manage to make the movie look better than it is.Iceman Cometh reminds more than a little of the similarly themed 1991 Hong Kong movie Kung Fu Vs. Acrobats (Ma deng ru lai shen zhang), in which Yuen Wah also plays the bad guy, and which I've rated a 6. Iceman Cometh deserves the same grade. But since I had much higher hopes for Iceman Cometh, I can't help being somewhat disappointed.

gerrytwo "Iceman Cometh" starts out as a manhunt by Ming royal guard Yuen Biao after a rapist-killer of thirteen women in the royal palace, including a relative of the emperor. The guard is transported along with the killer to a snow covered area by a Tibetan wheel with time travel properties. After the two are frozen in the snow, a scientific expedition finds them years later and brings their frozen bodies back to modern Hong Kong. The guard and killer are accidentally thawed out, and the guard ends up getting involved with a call girl (Maggie Cheung)Maggie Cheung steals every scene she is in. Yuen Biao is tops in action scenes with his opponent, the actor who played Panther in "Supercop," but Biao is no match for Maggie. She uses him first as a housekeeper to clean up her messy apartment, then as an enforcer to shake down her clients for additional payoff money. She is the one with most of the problems, from a pimp who threatens to throw acid in her face if she doesn't go out with a client to her later run in with the rapist murderer.The movie also has some nice technical effects when the Tibetan wheel goes into its time traveling mode at the end of the movie, but the real special effect is Maggie Cheung's acting range. She can project some personality on the screen.