Skinny Tiger, Fatty Dragon 1990

Fatty Dragon and Baldy Mak Sui Fu are a pair of detectives who take on a ruthless crime syndicate of Triad gangsters. Their case begins after a jewelry robbery, when they cross paths with Lai, a woman closely connected to the gang, and their investigation quickly spirals into trouble after an inadvertent slip into the women’s changing room. The gang’s leader Wing discovers that one of his trusted henchmen, Johnny, has betrayed him by leaking secrets, and he personally confronts Johnny in a tense, fatal stabbing.

As Fatty Dragon and Baldy dig deeper at Lai’s house, the situation goes disastrously wrong. To escape the mounting danger, they improvise by adopting criminal disguises and end up stealing Lai’s car, triggering a wild, breathless chase that leaves the vehicle wrecked. That night, Lai calls for a meeting at an abandoned building, where a brutal new confrontation unfolds and a pursuit of Lai’s boss, Prince Tak, ensues. In the chaos, Fatty Dragon even disrupts the English Deputy Commissioner’s wedding, underscoring how tangled and unpredictable the case has become.

With orders to leave Hong Kong to cool the tensions, the duo heads for Singapore, hoping to lay low. But Lai, who has shifted away from her former gang, is killed by a pair of Thai transsexual assassins, a shocking turn that intensifies the danger surrounding them. A dinner that night with Baldy and his girlfriend is interrupted when Fatty’s misstep undercuts their personal lives, prompting a tense, public separation that leaves both detectives estranged in part from those closest to them. The mood shifts into a drawn-out confrontation as Baldy fends off two English henchmen while Fatty fights the transsexual assailants, each man fighting to survive the escalating violence.

The human cost of the conflict becomes clear when Fatty’s father and Baldy’s girlfriend are hospitalized in the aftermath. Realizing there will be no real peace until Wing is stopped, the two detectives trace Tak to an abandoned warehouse packed with gas cylinders. The plan to bring down the gang falters, leading to a climactic showdown where the English henchmen close in on Baldy, and Fatty wields nunchaku in a desperate bid to subdue Tak. In the final moments, Tak’s brother pulls a gun, strikes the gas cylinders, and the ensuing explosion erupts as Baldy and Fatty barely escape, taking everyone around them with them. The dust settles with the police chief stepping in to halt the ongoing confrontation, arguing over the spoils of the investigation amid the wreckage of the city’s uneasy balance between justice and vengeance.