Before I dug kung fu films, zombie yarns or sexploitation muck I loved crime movies. Especially the gritty kind of crime movies, leagues away from the safe soft-boiled tv detectives and their pristine murder of the week mysteries that show up on daytime tv. 1979's 'Cops And Robbers' is Hong Kong's first step towards the modern cops and triad yarns of Dante Lam and Johnnie To. The director was Alex Cheung, one of the best of the initial HK New Wave directors in terms of genre movies. There was attempts in the 70s but I have always found those films stiff and clunky. Alex Cheung, for a handful of films, caught a spark that became a fire for Hong Kong crime cinema. Much in the same way, Fernando Di Leo's crime movies marked the epicentre of the Italian cop wave, something similar should be said for Cheung and his legacy. 'Cops And Robbers' begins wistfully with little kids playing cops and robbers in the street in that knockabout fashion as is the way childre...