Best ending I've ever watched. I'm absolutely obsessed with crappy kung fu movies and sometimes the endings are so eye-brow-raisingly MAD, they become instant favourites. Especially the tragically cut/edited dubs! I mean, these movies can range from 2 hours to 3 hours long -- I'm trying to imagine when they RELEASED. How were people in theaters watching these things for their entire afternoon?!
So one film in particular stands out to me -- it's not necessarily my favourite film but the ending had my brothers and I completely silent in horror/shock with how quickly it progressed and then ended.
目無王法 (or What Price Honesty?, the English title) is a constable movie that chronicles a police force corrupted from inside out. Three officers try to make a difference in a particular area with a disgusting set of higher-ups. They work together, promising to never sway, standing up against bribery, cronyism, and blackmail as best they can. OF COURSE, they're all slowly picked down. They have families being threatened and tortured, they give in, but our hero fights against even his familial obligation to prove the good of the law WILL prevail. He won't die with such injustice.
Trying to contact the head (the minister of justice, I think) to inform him of the abject poverty and disproportionate moral order in his area is proving impossible. He's constantly intercepted by other crooked cops to the point he's finally jailed and severely tortured (they even feed him a bowl of rice after starving him for like a week and once he gets to the bottom, there's a dead rat in it, oh my god, he loses everything). Anyway, yes, he loses everything in the process of contacting and assuring the head minister hears of what's going on -- his family is killed, his friends are killed, he's imprisoned on the grounds that he's a madman trying to uproot the entire government, he's just left with absolutely nothing. NAME RUINED, but in a slew of secret messages sent back and forth, the minister's coming to free him under the guise that he's just there to oversee his death sentence.
"If you can hold on until I reach the village, all will be cleared! I will see to it that the entire force is eliminated and your name restored. Please hang on!"
He's virtually on the edge of death in this disgusting prison cell but he hangs on. The minister's gonna clear his name, all this fighting, all this sacrifice, good will prevail over evil! Heheheh, yeah, you get the message.
The minister shows up, shakes his head in disgust at the corruption, begins shouting at the beasts, "Let this good man out!! You are all going to pay sorely by the Emperor's order!!" He can barely walk but the minister escorts him down the hallways, talking about how brave and honourable our hero is for all he's done to alert him to this savage area. They get to the door, our hero humbly saying he's done nothing noteworthy, "My duty to our fine country and justi--" head chopped off the minute they get to the door by the minister's guards outside. END. I AM NOT KIDDING. Nothing more is said. It ends.
What a bloody righteous statement on corruption, it just left such a big impact on me once I saw it. Bloody amazing (and made me bloody wordy, I'm so sorry).
